Today I was reading material on the National Right to Read Foundation's website, and came across a great summary of how literacy education in America got derailed by "whole word" education: Illiteracy: An Incurable Disease or Education Malpractice?
Very cool website; lots of great information.
Here are some quotes that stood out to me:
One philosophy of teaching reading is usually called "whole language" but many other labels are used to describe it, such as: the whole-word method; language experience; psycholinguistics; look and say; reading recovery; balanced literacy; or integrated reading instruction. The "whole language" or "look and say" method teaches that children should memorize or "guess" at words in context by using initial letter or picture clues. According to estimates given in one widely used "look and say" reading series, a child taught this method should be able to recognize 349 words by the end of the first grade; 1,094 by the end of the second; 1,216 by the end of the third; and 1,554 by the end of the fourth grade. Learning to read this way is supposed to be more meaningful and fun. This way of teaching is currently used by nearly all of the schools in the United States. It is clear that the current high illiteracy rate is directly due to this scientifically invalidated approach to reading instruction.
Another approach is called intensive, systematic phonics first. With this technique, children are taught how to sound out and blend the letters that make up words in a specific sequence, from the simple to the complex. Today, educators call this method the "code" approach because it teaches the skills and logic children need to understand the English spelling system. When a child comes to school he or she has a spoken vocabulary of up to 24,000 words. Children taught to read using systematic phonics can usually read and understand at least as many words as they have in their spoken vocabulary by the end of the third grade.
The English language contains approximately half a million words. Of these words, about 300 compose about three-quarters of the words we use regularly. In schools where the "whole language" is taught, children are constantly memorizing "sight" words during the first three or four grades of school, but are never taught how to unlock the meaning of the other 499,700 or more words. Reading failure usually shows up after the fourth grade, when the volume of words needed for reading more difficult material, in science, literature, history, or math cannot be memorized quickly enough. The damage to children who have not been taught phonics usually lies hidden until they leave the controlled vocabulary of the basal readers, for more difficult books where guessing, or memorizing new words just does not work.
That is a great summary of why focusing on learning words by sight rather than sounding them out isn't a sustainable way to learn to read. With whole words, a child has learned to "read" around 1,500 by 4th grade; with systematic phonics, a child has learned to decode the majority of the 24,000 in his spoken vocabulary. Kind of a no-brainer there.
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In 1973, Dr. Robert Dykstra, professor of education at the University of Minnesota, reviewed 59 studies and concluded that:
"We can summarize the results of 60 years of research dealing with beginning reading instruction by stating that early systematic instruction in phonics provides the child with the skills necessary to become an independent reader at an earlier age than is likely if phonics instruction is delayed or less systematic."
A person's eyes would go crossed to try and read all the research studies that are being published as educators and researchers try to pin down the science of reading education. A thorough review of 59 studies is pretty telling. :)
Happy reading, friends. :)
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