2.3.2
Phonics vs Whole Word
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Phonics
Linguists (and educators) debate over how we should teach children to read and the biggest rivals are the phonic and the whole word approaches.
The phonics approach
- The phonics approach is all about learning what combinations of graphemes (letters) correspond to sounds.
- For example, they would learn that the orthographic
aligns with /d/, with /ɒ/ and with /g/ to pronounce as /dɒg/.
- For example, they would learn that the orthographic
Popularity
- This approach is incredibly prominent in schools currently.
- As a result, you may hear younger children pronounce their alphabet as /æ b k/ rather than the traditional pronunciation, as this gets children learning the most common pronunciation of letters.
Issues
- The issues with this approach are that:
- It does not teach meaning.
- It doesn’t prepare children for words that have no phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
Phoneme-grapheme correspondence
- Phoneme-grapheme correspondence (also known as PGC and grapheme-phoneme correspondence) is the link between the sound and the letters of a word.
- For example, the word ‘cat’ has phoneme-grapheme correspondence, as it is pronounced as it is written.
Partial/no phoneme-grapheme correspondence
- A word like ‘coat’ isn’t fully pronounced as it is written, as it would be pronounced (using phonetics) as ‘co – at’.
- Therefore it only has partial phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
- A word like ‘hour’ has no phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
Whole Word Approach
Linguists (and educators) debate over how we should teach children to read and the biggest rivals are the phonic and the whole word approaches.
Whole word approach
- Opposed to the phonics approach is the whole word approach.
- The idea of this is for the child to learn (memorise) how each word is pronounced.
Importance of meaning
- In this approach, meaning is at the heart and focuses also on getting children to understand what each word means (starts with common words and works its way up).
- In this sense, it is sometimes nicknamed the ‘look and say’ approach.
Issues
- The issues with this approach are that:
- It doesn’t prepare children to pronounce words that they haven’t learned.
- It assumes that a child will be able to memorise great numbers of words.
The Psycholinguistic Model
An approach which challenges the phonics and whole word approach is the psycholinguistic model.
Environmental cues
- In this approach, the child learns based on the environment from which they live and their interactions with caregivers.
- This works by the child having to think about what a word might mean through the use of clues like other words they have encountered before, pictures and other contextual knowledge.
Decoding meaning
- In this sense, the approach focuses on decoding (when a child phonetically breaks down a word) meaning rather than the symbols.
Issues
- However, the method does not always cover all bases and has the potential of the child not guessing or guessing wrong – it is up to luck as to whether a child learns certain words.
Support
- This model has been supported, however, by the ‘Gray Oral Reading Tests’ (GORTs) which proved that the bottom 5% of adults can understand shapes of graphemes, but generally do not decode them or find meaning.
Real use
- It is worthy of note that often these approaches do not exist in isolation of each other – many caregivers will uses a mixture and combination of all of these models to effectively learn to read – you should state this in your answer to let your examiner know you know about the ‘real’ use of these models.
- In reality, most caregivers use multiple methods.
1Language Levels
1.1Assessment Objectives
1.2Lexis
1.2.1Introduction1.2.2Common, Proper, Abstract & Concrete Nouns1.2.3Collective Nouns1.2.4Adjectives1.2.5Main, Auxiliary & Copular Verbs1.2.6Dynamic & Stative Verbs1.2.7Transitive, Intransitive, Active & Passive Verbs1.2.8Mood of Verbs1.2.9Adverbs1.2.10Personal, Possessive & Reflexive Pronouns1.2.11Relative & Demonstrative Pronouns1.2.12Determiners1.2.13Conjunctions1.2.14Synonyms, Antonyms & Phonological Features1.2.15End of Topic Test - Lexis
1.3Grammar
1.4Semantics & Pragmatics
1.5Discourse Structure, Graphology & Orthography
2Language, The Individual & Society
2.1Children’s Language Development
2.2Children's Language Development - Theories
2.3Literacy Development: Reading
3Language Diversity & Change
3.1The Importance of Gendered Language
3.2Social Groups
3.3Occupational Groups
3.4Accents & Dialects
3.5Language Change
Jump to other topics
1Language Levels
1.1Assessment Objectives
1.2Lexis
1.2.1Introduction1.2.2Common, Proper, Abstract & Concrete Nouns1.2.3Collective Nouns1.2.4Adjectives1.2.5Main, Auxiliary & Copular Verbs1.2.6Dynamic & Stative Verbs1.2.7Transitive, Intransitive, Active & Passive Verbs1.2.8Mood of Verbs1.2.9Adverbs1.2.10Personal, Possessive & Reflexive Pronouns1.2.11Relative & Demonstrative Pronouns1.2.12Determiners1.2.13Conjunctions1.2.14Synonyms, Antonyms & Phonological Features1.2.15End of Topic Test - Lexis
1.3Grammar
1.4Semantics & Pragmatics
1.5Discourse Structure, Graphology & Orthography
2Language, The Individual & Society
2.1Children’s Language Development
2.2Children's Language Development - Theories
2.3Literacy Development: Reading
3Language Diversity & Change
3.1The Importance of Gendered Language
3.2Social Groups
3.3Occupational Groups
3.4Accents & Dialects
3.5Language Change
Practice questions on Phonics vs Whole Word
Can you answer these? Test yourself with free interactive practice on Seneca — used by over 10 million students.
- 1Issues with the phonics approach:Fill in the list
- 2What is phoneme-grapheme correspondence?Multiple choice
- 3The two main approaches to reading education:Fill in the list
- 4What is the nickname of the whole word approach?Multiple choice
- 5Issues of the whole word approach: Fill in the list
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