| 1a. Whole Word / Look
and Say / La methode globale (France) Ganzheitsmethode (Germany)
1b. Whole Language / 'A psycholinguistic
guessing game'/ Real Books / Discovery Method / Language Experience / Apprenticeship
Approach / 'Meaningful experiences with print'
Children are expected to memorise whole words (or whole sentences!) or guess words
using context, syntax or picture clues
with no phoneme-grapheme instruction and, if they are lucky, they will 'discover'
the alphabet code for themselves and reading will 'emerge'. e.g. Ladybird's
'Janet and John' (Dick and Jane. USA) Oxford Reading Tree,
Ginn 360. Whole word remedial (!) programmes include Reading
Recovery, Catch Up and Wellington Square. Scroll down to base
of page for 'What's wrong with Reading Recovery'
links.
Words, viewed as wholes, form abstract visual patterns which
humans find difficult to memorise and for this reason no true
writing system is based on whole words. Contrary to the myth
that they are logographic writing systems, Japanese writing
consists, mostly, of sequences of different consonant-vowel
pairs (diphones) whilst Chinese writing is based on morphosyllabic
phonetic units combined with semantic 'classifiers'. There are only around 1,200 syllables in Chinese (English has approx. 60,000) which makes it possible to base the written language on this size of unit.
An in-depth examination of writing systems, ancient and modern, reveals, amongst other things, that the average visual-memory limit for whole-words is approximately
2,000 (D.McGuinness GRB p214),
but a good English dictionary contains from 250,000 to 500,000
words. A writing system based on whole-words will never work
as for each learner it would be like trying to remember the
contents of a telephone directory (McGuinness
ERI p17) Victor Mair, Professor of Chinese Language
and Literature, comes to the same conclusion, 'there is a
natural upper limit to the number of unique forms that can
be tolerated in a functioning script. For most individuals,
this amount seems to lie in the range of approximately 2,000-2,500'
(The World's Writing Systems p200)
*Whole word methods lead some children to believe that they can memorize each word as a random string of letters. This makes learning to read exactly like trying to memorise the telephone directory. 'Like printed letter strings, telephone numbers contain a small set of symbols … Unless all numbers are dialed correctly and in the right order the connection will fail … Unfortunately, there are no systematic or predictable relationships between these strings and their corresponding entries; so each of the many thousands of such associations must be painstakingly committed to memory. There may exist a few rare individuals who are capable of memorizing entire telephone directories, but for the average child about to learn to read, the absurdity of this task should be obvious' (Share. Cognition 55/2.1995. quoted in Goswami)
The following are the 20 most frequent words in the English
language taken from the Dolch word list, coded into numbers:
2085, 2015, 1144, 85, 1, 9, 251521, 920, 156, 914, 23119,
19194, 8919, 208120, 1985, 61518, 1514, 208525, 22120, 814
The very first whole-word programme was invented in France,
by Abbe Bertaud in 1744; the Quadrille programme. Derivatives
of this programme spread through continental Europe - endorsed
by the King of Prussia, used by Basedow and Gedike in Germany,
and Jacatot in Belgium. Back in France, Abbe de l'Epee (circa
1760) was inspired by the Quadrille programme to produce his
own whole-word programme, which he used with deaf-mutes. By
1826 whole-word books were being promoted both sides of the
Atlantic, De l'Epee's method being used by Thomas Gallaudet,
with deaf-mutes in America. Gallaudet also produced a beginners'
reading book (1836) for hearing children 'The Mother's Primer'.
This taught reading by the whole-word method with all mention
of the deaf-mute connection erased (Rodgers.
Born Yesterday)
Whole-word reading
methods were pushed into schools by a procession of self-appointed education 'experts',
working in the new teacher-training colleges, who had political clout. They ordered
teachers to use the whole-word, look-say method using 'flash-cards'. The look-say
method metamorphosised into the whole-sentence 'meaning' method, using reading
schemes (basal readers.USA) written using only high frequency words. The disappearance
of phonics and its replacement by these methods caused reading scores to plummet.
Professor
Thorndike of Columbia teacher-training college identified the 10,000 most frequently used
words in the English language (1921). Just 1,000 of these words form 90% of all
reading material. It is these words that children taught with whole-word methods
partially memorize in order to read. Unfortunately for these children, it is the
remaining 499,000 words without which '...almost nothing of any real importance
can be written or read with real understanding.' (Rodgers
p75)
Optometrist Byron Harrison developed an eye tracking device
and discovered that 'whole-word guessers' scan words as though they were pictures,
focusing only on the high visibility letters: the beginning and end letters plus
any letters with 'limbs' which extrude above or below the line of print (Harrison
p48) One of the continuing stream of education 'experts', Dr. Russell
of California University, produced a book in 1949 that included the following
strategies, in order of importance, to aid recognition of new words: 1. The
general pattern, or configuration, of the word. 2. Special characteristics
of the appearance of the word. 3. Similarity to known words. 4. Recognition
of familiar parts in longer words. 5. The use of picture clues. 6. The
use of context clues. 7. Phonetic and structural analysis of the word. (Flesch
p55) These strategies (1-6 are forms of guessing) are almost identical
to those advocated by some reading 'experts' today.
The reading schemes
were very dull and repetitive and taught words at a very slow rate, but proved
lucrative for the newly emerging educational publishers. The whole-language theory, created by Kenneth
Goodman and Frank Smith (an ex-journalist who by his own admission has never taught anyone to read), was the
next mutation, appearing (circa1960) as a reaction to the dreary schemes. "Matching letters with sounds is a flat-earth view of the world," Goodman declared in his 1986 book, What's Whole in Whole Language (Allen)
In, Reading Without Nonsense, Frank
Smith wrote, 'It is easier for a reader
to remember the unique appearance and pronunciation of a whole word like 'photograph'
than to remember the unique pronunciations of meaningless syllables and spelling
units". Professor Kozloff retorts, ''Smith must be insensitive to irony. Surely
he is not referring to his own book when he writes about reading without nonsense.
Of course it is easier to remember one word by sight than to learn the sounds
that go with each letter. What Smith neglects to tell the reader is that if a
child memorizes ten words, the child can read only ten words, but if the child
learns the sounds of ten letters, the child will be able to read 350 three-sound
words, 4,320 four-sound words, and 21,650 five-sound words. Moreover, if the child
merely memorizes (but cannot sound out) "photograph," what is the child
likely to "read" when the child bumps into "phosphate," "phonograph...?'(http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/wlquotes.html
20/01/06)
Whole-language purists were hostile to whole-word methods
and even more so to phonics. Children were given 'real books' ie. story books,
to read from the very start. No reading instruction was given as it was decided
that children could, and would, learn to read as easily as they learnt to talk,
simply by having access to plenty of good books with lovely pictures. Reading
scores plummented further.
The whole-word reading methods crossed to
Britain from both America and the European continent and were used in some areas
of England from about 1840 or so onwards' (Diack p45),
often in combination with phonics. The change to almost exclusive use of whole
word methods began in the first quarter of the twentieth century and they have
remained in place ever since, the latest guise being 'a mixture of methods' or
'a balanced approach' which are no more than whole-word reading schemes used alongside
the teaching of a bare minimum of phonics - see Method
2. There is no sound scientific evidence to support the whole-word/language
method.The research cited by the whole language advocates consists almost entirely of collections of anecdotes (qualitative research) or 'kidwatching' (Allen)
In response to the final Rose Report, the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA: an organisation which continues to support and promote whole language and the multi-cueing strategies) put out a statement which included the following assertion, ''(T)eachers and teaching assistants need time, support and high-quality professional development to enable them to fine-tune their practice in order to ensure that all children become skilled, competent and highly motivated readers'' (www.ukla.org) Need TIME! The 'professionals' in charge of development have already had 80+ years to show teachers and assistants how to 'fine-tune' the whole-word/ mixed-methods practices, and during every one of those years over 20% of children have left school still unable to read.
In 2002 Ofsted reported that student primary school teachers
at Cambridge University, one of the country's top teacher
training courses, still did not know how to teach reading
at the end of a four-year degree course. In particular the
teaching of phonics "left much to be desired" and
was hardly touched on (RRF50 p12) Disturbingly, it appears that teacher trainers are still strongly wedded to whole language theory and are extremely reluctant to implement the Rose Report recommendations.
Trainee primary teachers are still not being taught exactly how to teach
children to read and write. To put it bluntly, there 'is an overwhelming bias in
teacher training courses against teaching phonics' (Turner/Burkard
p24) Evidence of this bias can be easily seen in the choice of authors
on reading lists for trainee primary teachers. The lists are totally dominated
by authors who are committed to the whole-word / language philosophy whilst books
by pre-eminent, pro-synthetic phonic, early reading experts, such as Professor Diane McGuinness, Professor Rhona Johnston and Dr. Bonnie Macmillan,
never appear.
http://lib5.leeds.ac.uk/rlists/educatn/pgceprimeng.htm#earlyliteracy Leeds PGCE Primary reading list 2007-8
http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/resources/paper2.doc Cambridge Primary reading list 2008
See Resources 9. for recommended books on teaching reading.
T.H. MacDonald says, 'I, as a former professor of education
and as one who is thoroughly familiar with the curriculum in such courses, know
that only rarely is the teaching of reading taught as a specific skill and in
a series of indentifiable stages. What happens is that the trainees are told that
there have been, and are, a number of possible approaches to the task- including
phonics and whole-word recognition - and that the best routines seem to involve
an eclectic mixture of methods (see- Method 2) ) Often the trainee teachers are given instructions in various aspects of educational
psychology, but they are not given enough specific instruction in methodologies
of teaching reading for them to feel confident about it. The result is they are
obliged to simply fit in with whatever method prevails at whichever school they
take up as their first post (MacDonald p3)
Professor Henrietta Dombey describes the Rose Report as 'amateurish' (!) and says that it 'takes the profession along a dangerous path, not supported by sound research evidence, into some dangerous territory' (Wyse/Styles. Editorial), yet she is unable to produce any 'sound (scientific) research evidence' to support the type and timing of reading instruction she prefers, as none exists. 'Unfortunately, education has become the preserve of ideologues who consider that their own wisdom should prevail over empirical evidence' (Turner/Burkard)
Anybody can 'teach' a child to read with whole-word methods;
it doesn't need any skill or training; just provide lots of
lovely story-books or a glossy whole-word scheme and let the
children 'discover' how to read for themselves - if they can.
Many (20+%) don't ever figure out how alphabet code works
and, as a result, join the 'special educational need' statistics.
The American homeschool 'guru' John Taylor Gatto (former
New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year, with
30 years of teaching experience) numbers himself among the
critics of whole language (Gatto p65)
'A sight vocabulary is faster to learn than letters and
phonograms but the gain is a Trojan horse; only after several
years have passed does the sight reader's difficulty learning
words from outside sources begin to become apparent.'
(Gatto p68)
Professor Steven Pinker, a leading cognitive scientist, says,
'In the dominant technique, called 'whole language', the
insight that language is a naturally developing human instinct
has been garbled into the evolutionarily improbable claim
that reading is a naturally developing human instinct. Old-fashioned
practice at connecting letters to sounds is replaced by immersion
in a text-rich social environment and the children don't learn
to read' (Pinker p342).
In other words, although speech and language are 'hard wired'
into our brains, reading, which is a relatively recent cultural
phenomenon, cannot possibly be fixed in this way.
http://mams.rmit.edu.au/m1bqt3d6xzi5.rtf
What whole language really implies -quotes compiled by Kerry
Hempenstall.
www.nychold.com/talk-stotsky-051002.doc
Why Reading Teachers Are Not Trained to Use a Research-Based
Pedagogy:
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/wlquotes.html
Whole Language quotes examined. http://my.execpc.com/~presswis/phonics.html
Learning To Read and Whole Language Ideology http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/groff.html
Groff's Essays: Antidotes to Infectious Whole Language Twaddle
www.illinoisloop.org/anon_thankyouwl.html
A personal essay:Thank you Whole Language www.home-school.com/Articles/BlumenfeldDyslexia.html
Dyslexia: Man-Made Disease
www.pisd.org/academic/reading.htm
Reading.
http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4151The
Phonics vs. "Whole Language" Controversy
www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/whole.1.html Blackboard
Bungle.1.
www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/whole.2.html
Blackboard Bungle 2.
www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/fonicsfobia.php
PhonicsPhobia www.tlc.li/articles/other_tenets_of_whole-language.htm
Other Tenets of Whole-Language.
www.balancedreading.com/3cue-adams.html
An expose of the three-cueing system ('Searchlights' UK):
Marilyn Jager Adams
www.ednews.org/articles/4084/1/The-three-cueing-model--Down-for-the-count/Page1.html
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy338K/Gough/Chapter5/three-cueing-system.html
http://tortoise.oise.utoronto.ca/~kstanovich/pdfs/reading/RRQ86.pdf
Stanovich: Matthew Effects in Reading.
www.societyforqualityeducation.org/newsletter/archives/pandoras.pdf
Teachers who can't read.
www.rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?t=543
Burkard's 'Schools of Bricklaying' :-)
www.nrrf.org/satire_golf.html
Whole language takes on golf :-)
www.nrrf.org/satire_WL_at_Fork.html
Whole language at the Fork in the Road :-)
What's Wrong with Reading Recovery:
www.rrf.org.uk/newsletter.php?n_ID=186
www.nrrf.org/essay_ReadRec_10.html www.uoregon.edu/~bgrossen/rr.htm www.educationation.org/readingrecoveryresearch.htm www.ednews.org/articles/2484/1/EVIDENCE--BASED-RESEARCH-ON-READING-RECOVERY/Page1.html
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/30/ED20575.DTL
www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.asp?ID=3430
http://www.ldanh.org/docs/Reading%20Recovery.pdf
http://LightfootRR.notlong.com
Reading Recovery = No systematic, explicit teaching of synthetic phonics - In their own words:
www.ioe.ac.uk/schools/ecpe/readingrecovery/pages/newsletter_running_record_2004.pdf
see article: ''Sound it out''.
www.ioe.ac.uk/schools/ecpe/readingrecovery/pages/newsletter_running_record_%2005.pdf
see article: Phonics in Reading Recovery
www.ioe.ac.uk/schools/ecpe/readingrecovery/pages/newsletter_Running%20Record%2006.pdf see article: Skilful teaching of phonics in Reading Recovery.
A typical Reading Recovery lesson (spot
the 'phonics' element, if you can!)
It is divided into three main sections each lasting 10 mins.
Familiar Reading (5 mins) – this gives the child the
opportunity to ‘warm-up’ for the lesson by reading
a selection of texts read at least once before. It enables
him/her to pull together reading behaviours on familiar material,
read with fluency and expression and revisit favourite stories.
Running Record (5 mins) – each day at the end of the
lesson a child is introduced to and reads a new text. This
is then re-read the following day and a running record of
the child’s reading behaviour taken on this as he/she
reads. Salient teaching points are addressed after the running
record and it is analysed at the end of the lesson to direct
future teaching moves.
Letter/Word Work (2/3 mins) – in the early stages this
concentrates on knowing the letters by name, sound and trigger
word, their relationship to words and how this knowledge enables
us to attempt unknown vocabulary in reading and writing. Later
this develops into looking at how words work and feeds into
the reading and writing components. It is SHORT as most of
this work is done in context.
Writing (7/8 mins) – Here the child composes and writes
his own short story with increasing independence. He/she learns
a bank of well-known high-utility words which occur frequently
in writing and is supported in his/her learning of different
ways to problem-solving on unknown vocabulary. The teacher
re-writes this story on a strip of paper, cuts it up to emphasize
a pertinent teaching point and the child then re-assembles
it.
New Story (10 mins) – The teacher chooses an appropriate
new text for the child each day. She introduces this to the
child who then reads it. The text will have been chosen to
give the child opportunities to consolidate and extend existing
reading strategies. This will become tomorrow’s running
record text. http://tre.ngfl.gov.uk/server.php?request=cmVzb3VyY2UuZnVsbHZpZXc%3D&resourceId=8374
''In the Summer of 2001 Dame Marie Clay, creator of the New Zealand based Reading Recovery program, and her entourage came to the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, to speak with House Education Committee Staffer Bob Sweet. Her purpose was to ascertain whether Reading Recovery would be eligible for Reading First funding once the bill was passed. Bob explained to Ms. Clay that explicit, systematic phonics instruction had to be included in any program eligible for RF funding because it was one of the necessary key components of reading instruction that had been established through decades of carefully conducted quantitative research. These findings had been validated in the Report of the National Reading Panel in 2000 and were now going to become an essential part of the Reading First Law. He pleaded with Ms. Clay to use her extensive network of teacher training programs all over the US to help in the implementation of the RF program. He encouraged her to provide the leadership within the RR family to make the modifications necessary, and thus make RR eligible for RF funding consideration. With a stare as cold as ice, Marie Clay replied that RR would not be making any changes to their program; however, Mr. Sweet could be certain a new description of its components would be written in such a way as to bring it into compliance with the RF law. Momentarily dumbfounded, he maintained that Reading Recovery could not be eligible for RF funding without modification, and his initial estimation then still stands today.'' www.therant.us/staff/nsalvato/2007/print/2006/10272006.htm
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