Phonic Vs. Whole Language Approach

Many linguists and teachers have been debating about two major instructional approaches to learning to read. These approaches are the phonic approach and whole language approach. The phonic approach to literacy instruction places emphasis on the bottom up processing of reading. Teachers who believe that bottom-up theories fully explain how children become readers often teach subskills first: they begin instruction by introducing letter names and letter sounds, progress to pronouncing whole words, then show students ways of connecting word meanings to comprehend texts. For example, children must learn to convert unfamiliar words into their familiar spoken words by learning that <n> is pronounced /n/, that <c> can be pronounced as /k/ or/s/
to name a few.
Phonic approach therefore focuses on teaching children to read and write by developing their phonemic awareness.
This approach helps children to understand how speech sounds relate to letters (alphabetic principle). This should be done explicitly. (Module 4, Unit 2, p. 32). Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling and Scanlon, 2005 & Snowling in their study found that poor readers perform poorly in comparison to good readers in phonologically related task while dyslexics find it more difficult than normal readers to process phonologically complex material due to phonological deficits (as cited in Module 4, Unit 2, p. 29). They concluded that phonological understanding is necessary to learn to read. In addition to this, Adams, 1990 and Ehri and Sweet, 1991 also states that phonemic awareness is a necessary component for reading, as cited by Module 4, Unit 2, p. 30). Although the phonemic awareness and sounding out process is slow at first, it becomes automatic with practice allowing the reader to focus on
meaning.
To acquire meaning in this approach readers must be able to decode words by sounding them out, or blending the sound-spelling patterns. The content of the material and students interests is not the only criteria for choosing reading materials, the words must be easy to decode. For example, a story about a pig that got trap would be selected over a story about a worm that can walk, as the o in worm is not pronounced typically as in the <a> and < l> in talk. Nicholson (1991) in his research to investigate effects on comprehension of training students to decode found that the decoding group understood the passage better than the meaning group.
Wang (2011), in his study , that the widely used "phonics" teaching method can disadvantage children for years later additionally, they found that children taught through phonics read at a much slower speed than children taught through book centred approach.
Contrariwise, the whole language approach is based on the idea that top down processing plays an integral role in learning to read. It is a method of teaching children to read by recognizing words as whole pieces of language. Whole language teachers focus on the meaning and purpose of printed language rather than individual letters and sounds. Activities may include reading stories to children using pictures or the context to figure out the words.
The outcome of the whole word approach is to gain meaning from engaging in print.
Therefore children become literate if they are placed in an environment that is rich in print and are encouraged to explore it just as they master the spoken language if they are spoken to by others as it provides an opportunity for them to respond (Mason & Allen, 1986, as cited in Module 4, Unit 2, p. 32). Goodman (1970) in his studies found that children made 60%-80% less errors when they read words in context. Therefore, children should focus on the meaning of what they read rather than laboriously sounding out individual words. Goswami (1986 & 1988) as cited in Module 4, Unit 2, p. 29 , states that children can read unknown words by making analogies with known words. Sounding out the words is a last resort strategy and they are given little guidance on how to do this. Smith 1973, p. 184 as cited in Module 4, Unit 2, p. 33, argues that the production of sound alone does not give meaning. In addition to this, whole language teachers also encourage integration of reading and writing, expecting children to write independently from an early age and offers little or no instruction in conventional
spelling.
Similar to the bottom up approach, the whole language approach also present problems for students with reading difficulties. Wang (2011) research findings indicated a high prevalence of processing disorders (15-20% of all students) and in order to improve reading skills for students with dyslexia and other language processing disorders explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and decoding.