Learning to Read: Phonics Revisited

The ongoing debate over the best way to teach reading may sidestep the more important issue of focusing on the individual child’s needs and helping teachers respond appropriately.

Should children know how to sound out words correctly, or should they understand what they are reading? Obviously, the answer is both, yet the so-called “reading wars” make it sound as if one must choose sides.

“Phonics” refers to the connection between written letters or letter combinations and how they sound. Some argue that until students master these connections—until they can “decode” letters into sounds, they cannot learn to read. First, you learn the rules for sound-letter relationships, then you move to reading for understanding. “Whole language” proponents, on the other hand, argue that reading is about making sense of the words, not simply sounding them out. They emphasize reading for understanding while teaching spelling and pronunciation along the way.

In fact, there are many effective ways to teach how letters and sounds are connected and many ways to teach reading comprehension. Yet many children do not learn to read.

Some children take to reading like a duck to water. Typically raised by well-educated parents, in homes filled with books and conversation, these children will learn to read however it is taught. They start school with large vocabularies and once they grasp the basic idea of correspondence between letters and sounds, they take off.

For those who start school with limited exposure to books and small vocabularies, learning to read is much more difficult. Or consider newcomers, speaking Spanish, Chinese, or one of dozens of other languages, trying to learn to read in English. It is difficult not only because of their backgrounds, but also because English is particularly complicated as languages go. Unlike Spanish or French, English has many more sounds than letters; and, to make things even tougher, the same sound can be spelled in different ways and different sounds can be spelled the same way. Try describing the rule for pronouncing “ou” or “gh” as in: cough, through, though, tough, bough, dough.

For too many children, even those who can pronounce all the words, the ability to understand what they read lags far behind. By 4th grade, when reading and thinking come together in the school curriculum, reading scores plummet. The problem gets worse as students who can’t read well reach middle and high school where they are expected to make sense of textbooks in different subjects.

National data from 2005 suggest that only a third of the nation’s 4th and 8th graders can be considered “proficient” in reading. Minority and poor children are much worse off. In addition, more than half of black and Hispanic 4th graders tested at the “below basic” level compared with less than a quarter of white students, according to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).1

This is the backdrop to the current debate over how best to teach reading. The controversies are especially heated because the federal government has taken sides, promoting not only a phonicsbased approach but, in particular, reading programs that are “scripted”—that literally tell elementary school teachers what to do and say each step along the way.

Where did the idea originate?

By the middle of the 20th century, there were two main schools of thought on teaching reading: phonics and look-say. Look-say focused on recognizing words and what they mean rather than the code that connects letters to sound. Some readers may remember: See Dick and Jane. See Dick and Jane run. See Spot. See Spot run.

Look-say was prevalent in the 1940s, ’50s, and ‘60s, relying on books with very simple words. The ‘70s and ‘80s saw a return to phonics in many different forms, with claims it was superior to look-say. Throughout, most teachers actually used parts of both approaches. Most children learned to read well—and many did not. Whatever the popular approach of the day, those who struggled with reading tended to come from the least affluent homes with the least-educated parents.

In the 1980s and 1990s the idea caught on that reading naturally develops if children are exposed to good books and guided to learn the sound-letter connections as they run into them. Called “whole language,” its philosophy attracted strong adherents and vicious attackers. Advocates sported T-shirts making fun of the limitations of phonics: “Foniks rilly werks.” Critics lambasted whole language for allowing students to make mistakes and to use “invented spelling” in their efforts to teach students to write before they could spell.

The 21st century brought a strong backlash against whole language. Critics used the federally supported National Reading Report (2000) as ammunition to justify both a return to phonics and use of reading programs that specify exactly what teachers should do. Although the report itself was limited in scope and modest in its conclusions, the more broadly read summary and the rhetoric surrounding the report made claims about the connection between phonics-only instruction and learning to read that the report itself does not make.2

What problem is the emphasis on phonics intended to solve?

Phonics-based instruction has the same goal as every other approach to reading: helping children become literate adults. Whole-language teachers are faulted for insufficient attention to phonics. Phonics teachers are faulted for inattention to how children make sense of the words and sentences they read. Each approach tries to compensate for the weaknesses of the other. But the problem remains: a high percentage of children cannot read, and most are from low-income, minority, and immigrant homes. So the root problem is how to teach children to read, especially those who start school behind their peers.

Reading specialists and researchers argue that the issue is deeper than whether one approach works better than another. In fact, along with teachers, most other experts reject the idea that one size fits all. The key question is how to figure out what each child needs to become a proficient reader. Researchers who look beneath test scores in reading find that struggling readers have quite different kinds of problems. So the underlying challenge is to pinpoint the stumbling blocks for each child.

The root problem is how to teach children to read, especially those who start school behind their peers. The key question is how to figure out what each child needs to become a proficient reader.

Children who have trouble learning to read typically hit one or more of three main obstacles.3 The first is understanding letter-sound relationships. The second is extracting meaning from what is read, which gets harder and harder as students advance through school. And the third is being motivated to want to read and understand.

Phonics instruction targets the first stumbling block head on. It begins to focus on the second, comprehension, but is criticized for reliance on simple-minded paragraphs and stories that do not require much thinking. Phonics-centric instruction is not designed in itself to motivate interest in reading for children, but instead intends to provide the skills needed to decode words.

To ensure that teachers provide adequate phonics-based instruction, federal officials and several state governments now push for elementary reading programs that dictate the details of each day’s lesson, even providing an exact script for teachers to follow. Intended as a solution for poorly prepared and new teachers, such an approach contradicts the importance of diagnosing each child’s particular needs. Such diagnosis, however, relies on teachers having the skills to act on the results.

Students need to grasp the fundamentals of reading by 4th grade so they can read and understand the progressively more difficult materials they encounter in their schoolwork. Even those who master phonics are not necessarily able to handle the more complicated demands of reading in middle and high school courses. So, along with phonics, students need preparation for “reading to learn.” Learning to read and reading to learn are not the same. As one researcher noted, students who have no experience hearing ideas discussed can move through school without ever understanding what “understanding” is.4 High school students who have not learned to “read to learn” are doomed to failure in most academic courses.

Does ‘new phonics’ work?

National data on reading achievement for the past 35 years strongly suggest that whichever reading approach is in vogue makes no difference overall. Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show little change since 1971. One exception is a jump in scores for 9-yearolds from 1999 to 2004, too early to reflect changes in federal policy, but perfect timing to reflect the impact of the hugely popular Harry Potter books.5

This does not mean that there are no better or worse ways to teach reading. Whether the emphasis is on phonics or comprehension, there is no one best way. Both are essential, and either can be done poorly. Students drilled on phonics could sound out many words, but have no idea what they had just said. At the same time, students who needed some basic rules of thumb to translate letters into sounds might never have gotten them in classrooms where poorly trained teachers went overboard on reading for pleasure.

As one researcher noted, students with no experience hearing ideas discussed can go through school without ever understanding what “understanding” is.

Researchers and educators agree that it is important to focus on explicit phonics instruction in the early grades. But not at the expense of reading, being read to, and discussing words and stories. Like any sport, learning and practicing the individual skills is important. But if years go by without the student ever playing the game, interest quickly disappears. Imagine practicing dribbling and free throws without ever playing a basketball game. On the other hand, throwing a youngster into a game before she has acquired any of the necessary skills could be overwhelming.

Government encouragement of scripted reading programs that emphasize phonics appears to solve one set of problems while causing others. For new teachers, having a set of textbooks and guidelines for what to do and how fast to proceed can be an enormous help. As a top New York City administrator said:

“Instead of everyone trying to figure out their own way in the classroom, which is the way these schools used to work, new teachers in particular need a very clearly defined program that isn’t going to change with every new year. …It’s like learning to cook. You learn the basics first, and then you can get fancy.”6

Yet such lock-step approaches fly in the face of one of the basic tenets of effective teaching: the need to identify where each student gets stuck. A team of nationally renowned reading experts analyzed reading difficulties in young children for the National Academy of Sciences and concluded: “If we have learned anything from this effort, it is that effective teachers are able to craft a special mix of instructional ingredients for every child they work with.”7

Only a third of high school seniors are considered proficient in reading, according to 2003 national data, and these are the students still in school.8 Half of black and Hispanic students have dropped out by the time they turn 17, and those who remain—the top half—have the same reading scores as white 13-year-olds.9 This discouraging picture suggests the need for solutions that go well beyond the federal emphasis on phonics in the early grades.

The solution…in our view

It turns out teaching reading is “rocket science.” Far from being a simple matter of connecting sounds and letters, reading is about understanding and thinking. Most teachers embrace the view that reading is key to all academic learning and, as a result, they seek to balance the extreme positions. Educators know that children need the skills to break down a word and that phonics instruction is especially important for struggling readers. They also know that teaching phonics is relatively straightforward. Teaching understanding and thinking is not.

Balance in reading programs is equally important. Leaving it up to teachers to figure that out does not make sense. Nor does telling teachers what to do every minute. Scripted programs may have their place, but most teachers need a better balance between direction on what, when, and how to teach, and the flexibility to respond to the particular needs of individual students. Still, it does not make sense to leave all the work of achieving balance to teachers already pressed for time and, in some cases, without adequate training.

Thus, teachers need better training and better reading programs. They need opportunities to learn better ways to figure out which of many problems a particular student is having and guidance on what to do. They also need experts to turn to for advice when they are not successful. At the same time, students from backgrounds where little reading occurs need preschool and other early-childhood experiences that introduce the concepts of reading and talking about ideas. They also need interesting books to read and the time to read for pleasure as they go through elementary school.

(c) 2006 Education Week Press

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