Currents in Literacy

Recent History of the Phonics Debates, Part II

By William T. Stokes

In Part I of this essay (Spring 1998), the great debates about approaches to the teaching of reading and writing were introduced from a historical perspective. First, phonics, as an approach to teaching sound-letter correspondences, is not a recent invention. Indeed, phonics was first introduced in the sixteenth century, when the Latin Bible was being translated into vernacular languages of Europe and widely distributed during the Protestant Reformation. The current debates between phonics and whole language, for example, are only the latest versions of very long-standing efforts to aid children (and adults) in the early stages of learning to read and write.

Second, English does not have an alphabet that is uniquely its own - English is written with the Roman alphabet. An ideal alphabetic system provides one letter for each sound in the language, achieving one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Unfortunately, the twenty-six letters of our alphabet must serve a language having at least forty-four sounds. As a consequence, a complex pattern of spellings in English emerged over many certuries as the language itself has also changed and been influenced by other languages, especially French, Latin, and Greek, as well as many other languages. (Balmuth, 1982)

Third, by the end of the nineteenth century, educators already had devised many approaches to teaching reading (and writing); among these were alphabetic, phonic, phonetic, whole word, object, sentence, story, and thought approaches. Debates about the merits of alternative approaches were well established. Part II of this essay focuses on more recent developments of the twentieth century.

The debates about the teaching of reading became more fierce with the publication of Rudolf Flesch's Why Johnny Can't Read (1955) which offered an emotional polemic that tended to vastly oversimplify and polarize the large and complex realms of theory, research, and practice. All reading programs were cast categorically as either phonics or whole word approaches and the latter was portrayed not only as an utter and absolute failure, but also as a threat to democracy and as evidence of conspiracies between publishers and educators. As Adams (1990, p 25) points out, Flesch "developed conspiratorial motives, alluded to communists, and made negative insinuations about the intellectual predispositions and capacities of females and minorities. Thus, not only was the debate politicized, but it was politicized on dimensions that were wholly irrelevant to the question of how best to teach reading."

While the public debates became polarized and while researchers might sharply disagree with one another (see Carbo, 1988; Chall, 1989; Turner, 1989), it is important to note that the differences between approaches were never absolute or categorical, but rather have been matters of emphasis. Competent teachers have always tended to make use of multiple strategies for fostering children's acquisition of literacy and their development of specific skills. The textbooks themselves have tended to combine approaches.

Moreover, given the nature of local control of schools in the U.S., at any given time every alternative approach to reading instruction is being practiced somewhere - and not just in small isolated pockets. In this context, sweeping historical trends are perhaps little more than sweeping generalizations. In my experience over the past twenty years in eastern Massachusetts, in a region of several million residents distributed throughout over a hundred communities, it is simply impossible to assert that one approach or another effectively dominated all or nearly all schooling for any period of time.

One community might have just purchased a new basal series, as Boston did in 1988, and be determined to implement a strict, intensive phonics program, while the neighboring Cambridge was just beginning to expand a whole language program beyond the confines of the few schools that had been experimenting with it since 1982. Other nearby communities were each following their own local concerns - some shifting in one direction, others in a seemingly opposite direction, and still others in yet another direction. And, of course, each teacher has her or his own history. Teachers certainly develop and change over their careers, but they also tend to reshape or transform their professional competencies rather than utterly replace past practices. It is easy to make too much of grand historical trends unless one also looks very closely at local events.

Chall (1983) suggests that by the 1940s and 1950s, approaches to reading instruction were dominated by the content of the basal reading series issued by publishers, and this content relied principally on the word method. Among these were the "Linguistic Readers" that sought to restrict the vocabulary in the books so that only words conforming to regular spelling patterns would be encountered in the earliest reading materials. It was proposed that children would naturally analyze the presented patterns and therefore, explicit teaching of basic sound-letter (or phoneme-grapheme) correspondences would be unnecessary (Fries, 1963).

In the early 1960s, new versions of older phonetic approaches were offered. These tried to reform the alphabet by adding letters or diacritical markings so that the differences in the sounds associated with the letter combination ea in bear, earth, heart and near would be marked explicitly. Among these were Distar and i.t.a. or Initial Teaching Alphabet (see Chall, 1983, p 119-125).

Then, "from an almost unanimous preference for meaning-emphasis in the textbooks published before the 1960s," there was a "shift toward code-emphasis in the 1970s" (Chall, 1983, p. 3). As code-emphasis approaches were developed from the 1960s through the 1980s, these tended to be referred to collectively as phonics approaches, or even "the" phonics approach - as if there were only one. In fact, there were substantial disagreements about the detailed nature of the programs. Readers will notice that it is common today to modify the term phonics with any of several other terms: explicit, direct, systematic, intensive, and extensive are often used. These are used in contrast to indirect, inherent, implicit, analytic and embedded. Add to this barrage of jargon the tendency of different writers to use the same terms differently, it is little wonder that new teachers and parents are likely to be anxious about what program their young learners will be presented. Some programs call for beginning with long vowel sounds (because the letter name approximates its sound in a word, as the a in ape; others call for beginning with short vowel sounds (because these tend to be more regular in short common words, e.g., bit, fit, sit, etc.). All approaches must introduce the consonants, but there too, there will be disagreements about which and in what order with respect to the vowels.

More recently, there is renewed interest in a very old practice. Some researchers advocate for presenting words as composed of an onset and a rime - i.e., .bake would be presented as b plus ake, the advantage being that the child can be introduced to word families: cake, fake, lake, make, take (Adams, 1990). Other researchers continue to recommend complete segmentation of words into phonemes (e.g., s-t-a-n-d) coupled with teaching blending (i.e., sounding out, then repeating smoothly as the word would ordinarily be pronounced).

Different publishers of systematic phonics materials may choose among these options, and further differentiate themselves by the extent to which words are presented alone or in sentences or in stories with or without pictures, and so forth. Separate workbooks may be included. And, there will be different emphases given to whole class lessons, small groups (ability groupings or heterogeneous groupings), individual one-on-one instruction and self-guided seat work with worksheets.

Another significant difference is whether phonics instruction is separate from or incorporated into instruction for reading comprehension, or indeed, for writing. I have visited many classrooms where separate times are scheduled for reading, for phonics, and for writing - other classrooms join all these together.

Yet another important question is the relationship between reading and writing, or between phonics programs and spelling programs. From the point of view of the learner, especially at the beginning stages, the task of decoding a string of letters is a matter of assigning the correct sounds to a group of letters. For example, consider this nonsense word, steart. Should the ear be pronounced as in bear, or as in spear, or as in heart? The writer, however, is presented with the problem of assigning letters to sounds, i.e., encoding. Context cannot provide the same help in this instance. The child may wish to spell a word with the final sound oo, as in boo. Let's assume, for this example, that the child wants to spell a word that begins with fl- and ends with the oo sound. The child writes "f-l", then pauses to figure out the next letters. Possibilities include flew, flu, flue or even from the learners point of view, floo or flo or flwo (as in too, to, or two). Sound to letter correspondences are not sufficient. Knowing the intended meaning of the word is required. The question for code emphasis programs is whether to separate or join the teaching of decoding and encoding. Here again, different publishers will offer different options.

While explicit phonics approaches dominated throughout the last thirty years, alternatives also existed. Following the Open Education movement of the early 1970s, there was great interest in the language experience approach, which emphasized reliance upon the learners own language and experience, and usually included linking learning to read with writing children's own stories (see Edelsky, Altwerger, and Flores, 1991). During this same period, psycholinguistic research in language development and speech perception was yielding new insights about natural language processes. In the language arts journals, the psycholinguistics of reading became a common topic throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soon too, there was interest in sociolinguistic perspectives. And, during the same period, a few researchers and educators were paying more attention to the relatively neglected "second - R", i.e., writing. The writing process became the center of increased attention by the 1980s.

From about 1980, there was great interest in emergent literacy. It was found that when pre-school children were immersed in an environment rich in print, they soon discover that writing conveys meaning, has function, and is an aspect of everyday activities. This may begin with product labels (e.g., the logo for a favorite cereal). It soon extends to road signs and other conventional symbols. While recognition of "wholes" clearly precedes the child's appreciation of the details of graphic representations, children soon progress to make finer discriminations (Weaver, 1994). In Australia and New Zealand, and to some extent in England and Canada, work had been progressing toward what is known as natural, developmental literacy learning. As this work was joined with that of some researchers in this country, the term whole language emerged. Other important programs also emerged including Reading Recovery (Clay, 1991).

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, as whole language became the most talked about "new" approach, a reaction was also forming, sometimes referred to as a "back to basics" movement. Phonics advocates continued to publish research findings which suggested that direct systematic instruction to develop phonemic awareness and to teach letter-sound relationships was especially important for learners who exhibit learning disabilities. In the past few years, the "reading wars" have become ever more fierce, political, and even sometimes apocalyptic. The debates between advocates of whole language and phonics have become explicit features of national political campaigns and have even become elements of positions taken by some conservative religious organizations. The newest medium for these conflicts is the World Wide Web. In a very cursory search for web sites that address either phonics or whole language, I located over 2500 sites. I surveyed more than a hundred of these and found a full range of views including everything from thoughtful, reasonable arguments to utterly uninformed and vicious attacks. Viewing these, I could easily understand the confusion and anxiety many parents and members of the general public may feel concerning these issues.

Toward a Balanced Approach

Most recently, educators have begun speaking of balanced approaches in an effort to join the best elements of all the prior programs and perhaps to transcend the seemingly endless reading wars. Properly understood, whole language has always provided for direct instruction intended to guide children to discover the alphabetic principle and letter-sound relationships (see Holdaway, 1979 and Weaver, 1994). Phonics approaches typically include equal concern for comprehension and fluent reading of meaningful texts. All language arts teachers wish children to love reading and to find their voices as writers. At the same time, it is recognized that, at some level, readers and writers of an alphabetic language need guidance to learn the sound system of the language (phonemic awareness) and learn the system of letter-sound correspondences. The newest developments in the field, e.g., guided reading and the Early Literacy Learning Initiative, offer the greatest promise for establishing programs that explicitly balance concerns for the meaning and communication with concerns for accurate and fluent reading and writing (see Fountas and Pinnell, 1996). Under the impetus of state "curriculum frameworks" and similar "standards" issued by national professional organizations, school systems and individual teachers are being required to reexamine all their pedagogical practices.

Reading and writing are complex activities; like speech perception and production, they entail the simultaneous processing of information at various levels. Some versions of the phonics vs. whole language debate suggest that one requires a "bottom-up" model of processing, while the other requires a "top-down" model. Fortunately, it is not necessary to chose between these models. Reading and writing require the integration of information from several different levels - it is what cognitive scientists call a parallel processing system. Briefly, there are at least seven levels that must be considered: (1) Graphic - visual perception of letters and symbols; (2) Phonological - sound system of the language, phonemic awareness, phoneme-grapheme relations; (3) Lexical - words, morphophonemic system; (4) Syntactic - grammar of sentences and larger units of discourse; (5) Semantic - meaning, thematic structures; (6) Communicative - intentions, purposes, and pragmatic functions of texts; and (7) Cultural - shared knowledge and belief that underlies all communications. All approaches to reading and writing instruction should attend to all levels of processing since each supports the others. In those instances when it is necessary to isolate concerns for one or two levels, attention to other levels should not be long delayed.

Children should be encouraged to use all the resources available to them in their efforts to interpret print or to compose texts. When a child misreads a sentence such as "The car has a big engine" by replacing motor for engine, then we know that the child is being supported by context, but needs to focus more carefully on the graphic information. If a child should read "The whale could swim" by replacing cloud for could, then we know that the child is not attending sufficiently to structure and to meaning in context, as well as making a visually based error. As a final example, if a child reads "The pants began to tear" by pronouncing tear to rhyme with fear, then we know that the child is not attending to word meaning and semantic context. All levels of processing are required for comprehension and fluency.

A balanced approach to literacy instruction offers an opportunity to transcend the endless debates and return a measure of commonsense to teaching and learning. Teachers and parents can be supported in the development of effective strategies that recognize the complexity of language and literacy, that connect reading, writing and oral language, and that promote the development of skills, comprehension, fluency, voice, and appreciation for literature and for the power of written language to shape the world.

References

Adams, M. J. (1990) Beginning To Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Balmuth, M. (1982) The Roots of Phonics: A Historical Introduction. NY: Teachers College Press.

Carbo, M. (1988) Debunking the Great Phonics Myth. Phi Delta Kappan, Vol 70, (3), November, 226-240.

Chall, J. (1989) Learning to Read: The Great Debate 20 Years Later - A Response to 'Debunking the Great Phonics Myth'. Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 70, (7), March, 521-538.

Chall, J. (1967, 1983) Learning to Read: The Great Debate. NY: McGraw-Hill. (Updated Edition, 1983)

Clay, M. (1991) Becoming Literate: The Construction of Inner Control. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Edelsky, C., Altwerger, B. & Flores, B. (1991) Whole Language: What's the Difference? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Flesch, R. (1955) Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do about It. NY: Harper & Brothers.

Fountas, I and G. S. Pinnell, (1996) Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fries, C. (1963) Linguistics and Reading. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Holdaway, D. (1979) The Foundations of Literacy. Sydney: Ashton Scholastic.

Weaver, C. (1994) Reading Process and Practice: From Socio-Psycholinguistics to Whole Language. (Second Edition) Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

William T. Stokes, Ed.D. is a Professor at Lesley University, co-Director of the Literacy Institute, and the Director of the Hood Children's Literacy Project. For the past twenty-five years he has focused on children's language and literacy development.