Is phonics the best way to teach kids to read? Nick Gibb and Michael Rosen debate

[ElenMumsnetBloggers]

Last month all year one children in England had to take a phonics screening check, and phonics is being rolled out across the country as the way to teach children to read. But is this too prescriptive? We asked children's author Michael Rosen and Education Minister Nick Gibb to debate phonics. Read their debate about phonics as a tool for children to learn to read here and have your say. Do you agree with Nick Gibb or Michael Rosen? Is phonics the most effective way to teach children to read? Should we use several ways of teaching reading, or concentrate on phonics? Join the debate.

I think guessing from context is a load of old crock, too, unless the child is actually really looking at the word in question and all the letters in it and is therefore already not far off the mark. What normally actually happens is the child glances at the word, decides it's too long to cope with and makes up a word beginning with the same letter but otherwise bearing no relationship to reality - at least by the time they get into KS2 they do. In KS1 they can guess from the context because there are so few words they are expected to choose from (eg "Floppy" or "dog"), but with proper books, there are far too many choices.

Oh no !
Guessing from context is a crucial skill for developing readers
IMHO

"Contextual facilitation of word perception is not a usual part of skilled normal reading; in fact it would be a waste of cognitive capacity for good readers who read with ease and in an automatic fashion to even consider using this strategy. (Briggs P., Austin S., & Underwood G., 1984) Contextual facilitation or facilitation of word perception is useful only to poor readers to compensate for their difficulties in decoding."

The one thing I would agree with Michael Rosen on is Ruth Miskin's position. She has a vested interest in flogging her wares.

"when it comes to word recognition, it is the good reader who has less need to use context in order to decide upon a word. The poor reader cannot recognise a word straightaway, and needs context to aid word recognition. This takes up valuable processing capacity, which reduces the capacity for comprehension."

"To many cognitive psychologists, good readers are clearly distinguished from poor readers by more rapid, automatic, context-free and accurate word recognition."

www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000000488.htm

JugglingWithTangentialOranges Thu 12-Jul-12 20:46:30

Oh no !
Guessing from context is a crucial skill for developing readers
IMHO

Oh, God! decoding shmecoding! Decoding is only pronouncing some gibberish according to some rules the teacher gives you. I can decode

llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

but I haven't the faintest clue what it means!

books.google.co.uk/books?id=I_4G7V76ZFcC&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=poor+readers+use+context+more+than+good+readers&source=bl&ots=OhqYM8QFEn&sig=Xe-nnjPhvCLUJjbddPiyzXjToIw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Qyn_T-qiJ8el0QXL3fmMBw&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=poor%20readers%20use%20context%20more%20than%20good%20readers&f=false

Maybe it's also the fact that most of the poor readers are poor at both phonics and guessing from context, so it sticks out a mile that they can't use either technique and favour the easier random guessing over trying to work it out sensibly. However, I do find it glaringly obvious when apparently fluent readers get stuck on a word, can't guess it from the context and then are utterly unable to sound it out, either. As an outsider whose children never had trouble learning to read but who volunteers to read with other children, I find it fascinating to observe and listen to the bizarre guesses some children come up with - clearly, half the time, they have too limited a vocabulary and poor general knowledge, so do not have much on which to draw when trying to make a sensible guess from the context. So I agree that even if they have been taught phonics adequately, they still need an awful lot of time and attention in order to ensure they are understanding what they read - and probably will get more of that once they've stopped stumbling over so many words that just getting them to finish the sentence is painful enough, without then asking them about every word they have just struggled with.

Decoding is only pronouncing gibberish? Really?

Decoding is breaking down the word into sounds so that a child can put the sounds together to read a whole world... so is every word that can be split into sounds gibberish? No

"The idea that good readers use contextual cues to guess words in running text comes from a method of assessment developed by Ken Goodman that he called "miscue analysis. .... In fact, repeated studies have shown that only poor readers depend upon context to try to "guess" words in text"

What is the purpose of 'guessing ahead as you read'?

You'll have to forgive me but I was taught to read long before anybody came up with the reading as a guessing game idea. I like to let the author of the book I am reading tell the story rather than try to second guess them all the time.

Though I think the 'predicting' idea originally propounded by Frank Smith was about predicting upcoming words, not what was going to happen next in the story.

GlassofRose I agree re Ruth Miskin

To be fair to Ruth, OUP actually own her programme (though no doubt she gets royalties and she does training).

UOP are making vast amounts of money by selling good old 'Look & Say' ORT, their own Sounds & Letters phonics programme and RWI. That's a nice lucrative bit of fence sitting...

In 1998 the government could have had Ruth's programme (or at least, something based on the same principles) free....

It's just we all guess the words that might follow in a sentence to aid our fluency with both reading and writing, don't we maizie?

eg. in your sentence ...

"I like to let the author of the X I am Y tell the Z rather than try to second guess them all the time" ( hope you all follow me ! )

Phonics is largely based on guessing sounds as they appear in unfamiliar words. So, what's so wrong with guessing all of a sudden?

beezmum, I think I got you and Throm mixed up earlier. Of course, level 4 readers, being about 60% of children will encompass a fairly wide ability range, and not all of them would have the ability to go on to do A levels. Decoding is effortful if you are trying to read too many new words at once, especially if those words are not even in your spoken vocabulary. But you would need to have phonic knowledge to be able to do it at all, so having been taught phonics would not make it less of an effort. Knowing the phonics makes it possible, it does not necessarily make it quick and effortless. In extreme cases, there are people with poor visual memory who do use phonics to read almost every word as if they were reading it the first time.

Of course, you know your pupils better than I do but it does sound as if many of them are still encountering far too many new words for the first time for this level. So I'm not convinced it is not a vocabulary and practice issue.

In 1998 the government could have had Ruth's programme (or at least, something based on the same principles) free....

Indeed. Can the same be said of any of Michael Rosen''s work? Apparently it's find for poets to make a living our of their work, but not for people who have worked hard to develop effective instructional programmes...

I never randomly guess a sound - it's a limited choice, as particular letter combinations do not have an infinite number of sounds. I do use my knowledge of French and Latin where words appear to be derived from those languages, though, as well as phonics, which helps make it more likely for my choice of sound to be accurate. The context does not help my pronunciation, though.

Both RWI and Ruth Miskin Literacy LTD are included in the matched phonics catalogue Maizie. I can't imagine that she would be so naive not to realise her involvement would leave her open to questions about her motive and give ammunition to Michael Rosen

llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Apparently Welsh spelling is entirely regular and phonetic.

Perhaps we should all just speak Welsh?

I might use context to work out the meaning of an unfamiliar word but never to guess what the word is.

Not just sound, but understanding of the likely meaning of the word, I should say, when it comes to words that look like they have their roots in other languages.

I don't think it is about us as very experienced readers. How often do we really come across a word that we have not already read before? Where context does come in to play is for the more intermediate reader who will still be encountering many new words for the first time, though words in their spoken vocabulary. Context, not as an alternative to phonics but, given the nature of English spelling, to narrow down what a word could say to what it actually does say.

Merry, isn't that my point? We might all be merrily able to pronounce anything. But if we haven't the vaguest clue what it means then what's the point? What if I pronounce ydych chi eisiau byw yn fy mhentref. I don't know what it means, so what have I achieved?