Truth: Instead, teach only by sounding-out words. Phonics structure the brain properly for maximum, efficient reading capability. Phonics heals the dyslexic brain.
My illustrator Leah Shingleton says, “I have never met a phonics-learner who couldn’t sight-read, but I have met plenty of sight-readers who don’t know how to decode an unfamiliar word. As adults they must often guess and feel embarrassed.” This sad scenario can be prevented by teaching children to read early the right way.
My co-worker Dave was taught to read by the sight-reading method back in the 1940s-50s by the old ‘Look Dick, See Jane’ method. He can read functionally but always wrestles with new words.
Learning to read by memorizing the shapes of words is confusing, like trying to memorize thousands of hieroglyphics. NEVER do this:
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Teaching children to guess based on context is one of the worst practices in schools and lowers self-esteem. Later, sight-reading will naturally follow sounding-out the words, but should NEVER be first.
The educational system has been going backwards for several decades, now. Many schools teach sight-reading in kindergarten. Several commercial early-reading programs are also based on sight-reading. If your baby can read by sight-reading now, he probably will struggle with reading as an adult.
Sight-reading has many names, like Whole Language. Don't be fooled. It can trigger dyslexia, too.
If you want your children to be their best, keep them away from the Whole Language method of reading. I focus on phonics often in my columns, and there is a very important reason for this. Successful children know how to read well- it is the foundation of everything else- and that is impossible with the Whole Language method. Why, you ask?
The Whole Language dogma is a pernicious propaganda that has nearly destroyed reading ability in all the English speaking countries; not just the in United States, but it also invaded the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and possibly New Zealand. What surprises me is that the governments, universities, and public school administrators turned a deaf ear to those proclaiming that this emperor has no clothes.
(Of course, the children of the government elite attend private schools where proper phonics is taught.)
The Whole Language fiasco* convinced leaders and teachers that phonics was low-level sub-skills. It indoctrinated them to think that explicit, systematic phonics was lower-order thinking. This is completely the opposite of the truth, but several nations swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Is there a purposeful, dumbing-down of future voters, here?
What the Whole Language doctrine put in place of intelligent phonics was a system of ‘natural’ learning (we know that even though language is natural to humans, but reading is not. It must be taught). Whole Language taught a ‘cueing system’ where looking at the context of the sentence helped the child guess at the unknown word. Yes, it said guess. What a slow, frustrating, error-filled process.
There is no more damaging method that guessing. My son is a perfectionist. If he guessed wrongly, he would be distraught, give up, and his self-esteem would suffer deeply. Luckily, his mother taught him phonics early and right.
Then Whole Language goes on to say that children can get others to help them guess, called cooperative learning. They ask the question, ‘What would make sense, here?’ They see what letter the word started with and how long it was, and guess at possibilities from the limited words that they learned by sight-reading. How horrible! And it doesn’t help them with isolated words, such as signs, where there are no pictures, clues, contexts or cooperative partners. The children are confounded and confused. Basically, a Whole Language reader is still illiterate.
True comprehension and 'meaning-making' come from decoding a word properly by phonics, getting it right in a short amount of time, knowing what it is, and knowing the rest of the sentence words with confidence. Not from guessing.
Take a look at spelling bees. Most winners of spelling bees spell by phonics. They are able to hear the sounds in the words and take them apart. They can build words from root words, adding prefixes and suffixes, so they can also deconstruct them for spelling. Phonics makes it easier to remember which spelling goes with which homonym, too. These children don’t have to memorize thousands of sight words.
They have been able to make sense of words on a foundation of phonics rules, and can decode new words, with only about 42 sounds. That is just sheer genius. It is higher-order thinking. It even makes it easier to remember irregular spellings.
Have you or your children ever taken piano lessons? Students are taught each note’s name, sound, place on the piano and in the musical staff, individually before putting them together into chords, measures, and complete songs. Once those are mastered, they can move on to more complex pieces and learn to add nuances to the music with soft and loud, slow and fast, slurring or staccato, etc.
Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to learn piano the Whole Language way? The piano student would have to learn whole songs by sight, guess through context, cooperation, comprehension, and meaning-making. How many whole songs can a child memorize by sight? Not many. But any student who has a foundation of individual notes can build up to any and every tune out there. It is the same with phonics and reading.
*Whole Language at the Fork in the Road, Cathy Froggatt, Former NRRF North Carolina Director, Right to Read Report, February 1998
http://www.thegodfreymethod.com/blog/top-ten-myths-reading-myth-4
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