PHONICS DEBATE: A U.S. Study, despite its tony billing, did not prove that phonics equips students to comprehend print any better than does whole language instruction.
Originally printed in the Toronto Globe and Mail on March 3, 1997.
There's more to reading than phonics. A recent article in The Globe and Mail (Phonics reading mthod best, study finds - Feb. 18, 1997) summarizes a study that seems to settle the whole language-versus-phonics debate once and for all.
In what was described as "the first hard scientific comparison of whole language versus the phnoics method of reading," U.S. educational psychologist Barbara Foorman roudn that children assigned to "pure phonics" classrooms did significantly better after one year on a test of word recognition than students learning in whole language.
However, there are serious difficulties with the Foorman study. For starters, we wonder about the basis on which the University of Houston professor - a longtime advocate of "pure phonics" - determined what a whole-language classroom is. A more serious problem is her use of word recognition as a comprehensive measure of reading ability.
Recognizing words is part of what people do in the process of reading, but current theory and research in reading and reading instruction indicated that they do much more than recognize words. Reading is fundamentally about constructing meaning (i.e., comprehension_ and the Foorman study provides no evidence that the students in her "pure phonics" classrooms were any better at making sense of print than children studying in whole language. In fact, in a soon-to-be published report of this research she reports no differences between the "pure phonics" and whole language classrooms she studied on a measure of reading comprehension.
Despite the Foorman study's billing as the "first hard scientific comparison," there are similar studies on the submect and, as reported in peer-referred journals, they contradict this research. For example, Karin Daht of Ohio State University and Penny Freppon of the University of Cincinnati, in a two-year study of children in skills and whole language, found that those studying in whole language did at least as well on measures of phonics skills as those in phonics classrooms and better on a variety of other measures of reading development.
Overall thereis good reason to question the characterization of the Foorman study as the definitive test of whole language. We have, however, a more serious concern with this study. Prof. Foorman, like almost everyone who has entered the whole language vw. phonics debate, ignores what for us is the fundamental question: What is the role of phonics in reading and reading instruction?
A substantial body of published research indicates that all readers use knowledge about the relationship between speech sounds and written symbols in texts. In other words, all readers use what is popularly known as "phonics" to make sense of print. However, the ability to work out sound-symbol relationships is not a prerequisite for beginning to read. On the contrary, children learn about these relationships as they engage in reading and writing real, continuous texts.
Furthermore, sound-symbol relationships are only part of what is involved in reading. The research makes it clear that readers and writers must also bring to bear what they know about the structure of language and their background knowledge and experience in order to make sense of texts.
In general, children will learn to read by reading, but some children will require explicit help from their teachres to use the range of skills that are required to make sense of texts which is, of course, the point of reading.
So the issue isn't phonics or not phonics, but when and how students learn to use their knowledge of sound-symbol relationships. Phonics instruction isolated from the context of reading continuous texts grossly underestimates the complexity of the reading process and the abilities of learners. In particular, teachres who isolate phonics instruction from the reading of continuous texts deny students the opportunity to learn a variety of skills and knowledge while they are reading. We wonder for example, if children in the Foorman study learned only skills specific to the reading of isolated lists of words, a teask unique to school settings. ON the other hand, teachers who are not attentive to sound-symbol relationships deny (some) students the explicit support they need to becom skilled readers.
Again, the issue is not whether to teach phonics, but the timing of the instruction and the conditions under which these skills are taught. From this perspective, the continued debate about phonics vs. whole language is neither interesting nor enlightening.
David Booth is a professor in the department of curriculum, teaching and learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Curt Dudley-Marling is a professor of education at York University. Sharon Murphey is a n associate professor in the faculty of education at York and is president of the Whole Language Umbrella. Gordon Wells is a professor in the department of curriculum, teaching and learning at OISE.
