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


Next page >

©