A war of words has raged for decades over the ‘right” way to teach children how to read.
The phonics versus whole-language debate first gripped educationalists in the 1960s, when the whole-language approach emerged as a new way to teach literacy.
Phonics, based on breaking down words to their smallest parts and sounding them out, was considered too conservative, outdated, unimaginative and limiting for the holistic development of children.
Whole-language proponents argued their approach to reading allowed children to engage more meaningfully with the material they were learning.
The emphasis in whole language is to pronounce entire words, read whole sentences and for children to process the meanings of what they read. Books and materials are designed with more developed storylines rather than ‘The cat sat on the mat”-type books, which whole-language supporters say sacrifices a story for rhyme. With whole language there is also a strong push to create a culture of reading by immersing children in a world of words and books.
But whole-language detractors dismiss this method of teaching as flaky and unstructured, and say learning to read like this reduces a teacher’s role to a mere facilitator and leaves a child unguided.
The debate is far from dead and a quick scan of Internet postings reveals just how deeply divided the two camps are. There are websites that scream ‘whole language must be stopped!”. Websites in the United States give a negative political twist to phonics, saying it is a backwards, Republican-driven educational tool.
The debate is less virulent in South Africa, though an educational books stockist in Rosebank, Johannesburg, declined to comment on record. He says he knows that ‘either way, I will step on someone’s toes”. His shop stocks material used by both reading
systems.
Paula Gains, training manager at the Molteno Project, believes both phonics and whole language have a role to play in developing reading skills and enhancing literacy levels in South Africa.
Molteno is a language and literacy programme that is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and enhances reading programmes for learners.
Gains says: ‘A good indicator of literacy combines phonics, word recognition, a love for reading and comprehension. There is no real recipe for developing literacy”.
The Molteno approach, called ‘Breakthrough to literacy”, works by first exposing the child to phonics. Once this is established, then a whole-language approach is applied, where children develop more enhanced comprehension skills and better conversational skills, and work with words in their visual and written format.
Molteno is used in a range of mother-tongue programmes and has been adopted in all Limpopo schools, as well as in Zambia, Namibia and Lesotho.
‘We work closely with teachers across the country to train them to use these very specific methodologies,” says Gains.
Though she says it’s difficult to ascertain exactly how far-reaching or effective literacy programmes have been in South Africa, she believes the government and other stakeholders are becoming more alert to the problem of ‘cracking the literacy nut”.
Debbie Botha, material development manager for Read, says that while a whole-language approach has proved beneficial for literacy organisation, phonics cannot be dismissed out of hand.
‘We also call whole language the top-down/bottom-up approach and the key differences are that phonics is more aurally based and the top-down/bottom-up approach is more visual,” says Botha.
She says that the two methodologies can be tailor-made to suit individual needs.
‘Some children are more visual and some children are more aural, so a combination of both often works well. Also some languages that are more phonetically regular, such as most African languages, are better suited to a phonics approach,” she says.
‘There is a myth that teaching a child to read stops at the foundation phase. But if you can enhance a child’s reading ability by gradually introducing more difficult text at different intervals, they can get to a level where they are able to read even academic text.” Botha says this is particularly beneficial for school leavers who enter university and are suddenly required to wade through dense academic papers as part of their studies.
The jury may still be out on just what the best approach is, but in South Africa good teachers are taking a dual approach, keeping abreast of new thinking and new concepts and considering their learners’ individual needs.