Reading Problems:

Y Hole Langwidg Seams OK

 

            Today's Snack: Since we're talking about the most widespread reading philosophy used in schools, and it's called "whole language," but it causes most kids to become really bad spellers, let's have something really good (a sugary treat, which we don't usually recommend on this website) - doughnut holes! Or, for kids who haven't been taught the rules of spelling and how to apply phonics to words, "donut wholes." :>) How about some orange "joos" to go with?

 

 

 

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Scholars who have analyzed the best methods for teaching young children to read all say that the skills that come from systematic, intensive, explicit phonics instruction are much better than the sight-reading techniques of whole language.

 

            But almost all schools use phonics only as an add-on to their basic reading program, which is almost without exception the "Whole Language" philosophy. Part of that philosophy is to let kids guess at unfamiliar words they come across in reading, or spell words any way that makes "sense" to them, while denying the kids the 30 basic rules of spelling because that kind of direct instruction is "stifling."

 

            Sigh. What's stifling is to be functionally illiterate. It's a real problem.

 

The lack of systematic, intensive, explicit language education in the early grades of school explains why so many more kids today than yesteryear can't read, write or spell. It's because they haven't been taught the basic building blocks of our language.

 

Parents, teachers, and after-school program instructors would be very smart to give kids systematic, intensive, explicit phonics instruction, since schools aren't doing it, and then to schedule hour-long read-alouds every day, and expect kids in their care to use a dictionary and correct their own spelling errors.

 

But here's why schools have made this huge error:

 

Good readers really DO sweep their eyes across pages of text, quickly and accurately, and glean the meaning very well, despite not actually "reading" each and every word.

 

That's what you do AFTER you have learned the basics and have had a lot of practice. The trouble is, as brain PET scans show, beginning readers, and those who are struggling, are NOT able to read the "whole language" way because they don't have the physical structures in place in their brains. It's not that there's anything WRONG with them. It's just that they haven't been TAUGHT in a way that BUILDS that reading-friendly brain structure.

 

For disadvantaged kids, or those whose parents are not engaged with their schooling, there's often a triple whammy: besides the inadequate language instruction in school, they may be parked in front of the TV after school and therefore are not improving their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills at all . . . and disengaged or stressed-out parents don't tend to talk a lot, own a lot of books in the home, or take kids to the library, museum or anyplace besides the grocery store.

 

So . . . disadvantaged kids aren't being taught right at home, aren't being taught right at school, don't have access to books, aren't being read to, are being deprived of the outside learning experiences that build the background knowledge that is vital to decoding unfamiliar new words . . . you can see how we're in a terrible mess with reading.

 

Phonics keys off the sound-symbol relationships of the alphabetic letters and the sounds they make, alone and in combination with other letters. Children are taught the 70 phonograms, or written symbols for all the spellings of all the sounds in English, in a particular order.

 

Quickly, they internalize pronunciations of the phonograms so that when they read text, their brains silently "pronounce" them. It becomes lightning fast in just a few months. They also are taught the rules of spelling, proper handwriting, and do a lot of listening and speaking aloud under the direct instruction of the teacher.

 

            Whole language is a more holistic, implicit approach. In it, the teacher reads aloud to children, and they are exposed to text in mini-books that come with illustrations. They are taught several cues for deciding what the words are and what they mean.

 

But rather than directly decoding each word, they are to absorb the whole sentence and try to come up with the meaning as a whole. They scan the words, look at the pictures, check out what the first letter is and the last letter as clues to what the word might be, and think about the context the word has in the sentence.

 

            Adults who already know how to read do exactly that. Adults never take time to think about how to pronounce the individual words; they just scan along at a very fast clip and their brains take care of the "breaking down" of the phonograms automatically and accurately.

 

However, that's adults who learned to read with phonics. Adults who rely only on sight-reading techniques rarely gain much function. And boy, does that show in our society today, with relatively low levels of literacy compared to generations past.

Children today, who don't have phonics instruction, are basically guessing at what words mean. And it shows in everything from standardized test scores to literacy deficiencies in the workplace.

 

            But it's easy to see how educators and educational psychologists came to believe that whole language was an effective reading method. It's how "able" readers already read. So, they figured, it's how we could make children into "able" readers. But they were wrong.

 

            An adult who reads well can scan the following passage despite its atrocious spelling errors, and know what it means, because the brain is already set up to scan and analyze text and discern meaning.

 

But a child who's still learning to read, or without phonics skills, will flounder.

 

 Without phonics training, this is what a lot of kids see when they read today. Unlike adult, veteran readers, they can't grasp any meaning:

I cduolnt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uendsatnrd waht I was rgdnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh.

 

            What's sad is that teachers' colleges and many educators don't realize that this "miraculous" ability to make order out of chaos, and read a completely mixed-up passage like that, only comes with proper instruction . . . and too many kids aren't getting it today.