The Australian newspaper published an interesting article in the week which has ignited the age-old ‘phonics versus whole language approach’ debate in relation to the teaching of reading to young children.
The article outlines how remedial reading experts have criticised the ‘National Curriculum Board’ – the group responsible for devising the national teaching guidelines from kindergarten to Year 12 – for giving in to the demands of a number of university academics and teachers, who advocate ‘the whole language’ approach to reading rather than the letter-sound relationship, or ‘phonics’, approach.
Reading experts sent a letter to the Australian Education Minister, Julia Gillard, complaining that the board had ignored “key players in drafting its latest advice on the shape of the proposed new English curriculum”.
The general concensus among child literacy experts is that a balance of phonics teaching and whole language instruction is the key to a solid grounding in critical literacy. It stands to reason that children need to know how words are constructed, and how the compound elements of those words sound, before they can understand the full context of what they are reading. That’s not to say that a holistic approach to reading instruction is wrong, nor that it shouldn’t be embraced as part of the K-12 reading syllabus; it’s just probably more appropriate for it to be introduced after the basics of ‘word decoding’ have been taught.
The most surprising aspect of all this is that the university academics and teachers, who allegedly have little or no experience in teaching reading, do not advocate the ‘balanced’ approach held by the majority reading experts.
