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'm sorry mrz, I thought I was referring to the early stages of reading where cloze procedure and rhyme is an accepted method and illustrations would be a help to the child.
Hickory Dickory Dock
Eg." The xxxxx ran up the xxxxx" Picture of furry character running up a big time piece.
You don't need to decode 'mouse' or 'clock'^

That just sounds a bit daft to me. What if the child (presumably, unfamiliar with the nursery rhyme) can read mouse and clock, but can't read Hickory Dickory; how are the pictures supposed to help. Surely, it is only an unreliable coincidence if the picture just happens to be of the very thing the child is unable to read. Of course, some books are designed to be read by the pictures, but this isn't transferrable to other books - even well illustrated ones. I can see pictures, as part of context, may be an aid to decoding eg not reading bears as beers if there is a picture of some bears, but it is not a reliable alternative to decoding.

That went horribly wrong will try again.

^I'm sorry mrz, I thought I was referring to the early stages of reading where cloze procedure and rhyme is an accepted method and illustrations would be a help to the child.
Hickory Dickory Dock
Eg." The xxxxx ran up the xxxxx" Picture of furry character running up a big time piece.
You don't need to decode 'mouse' or 'clock'^

That just sounds a bit daft to me. What if the child (presumably, unfamiliar with the nursery rhyme) can read 'mouse' and 'clock', but can't read 'Hickory Dickory'; how are the pictures supposed to help. Surely, it is only an unreliable coincidence if the picture just happens to be of the very thing the child is unable to read. Of course, some books are designed to be read by the pictures, but this isn't transferrable to other books - even well illustrated ones. I can see pictures, as part of context, may be an aid to decoding eg not reading 'bears' as 'beers' if there is a picture of some bears, but it is not a reliable alternative to decoding.

Cecily P - are you telling me you could read the writing with the letters jumbled up just as fast as you normally read things in your head? I could certainly read it at a normal talking pace without any difficulty whatsoever, but I can read one hell of a lot faster when the words are spelt correctly, without the letters jumbled up. Or was there absolutely no difference in the speed at which you took that in? (She says totally disbelievingly, unless of course, Cecily P is incapable of reading anything with any great speed and therefore doesn't notice that her brain is having to work harder...).

To be able to do it as fast as usual, you would have to fail to have noticed the letters are all jumbled up...

I would love to watch you read War and Peace with all the letters in the words jumbled up, Cecily P, and see how much you enjoyed it and how quickly you took it all in...

Not sure I would enjoy War and Peace written in normal English. Glancing at the paragraph, I thought it looked weird but starting at the beginning and reading through, I found it surprisingly easy. And no, while it was a bit of fun, I will concede that I really wouldn't want to read an entire book written that way.

I read the first/ last letter parargraph with ease and it is very revealing about how your brain copes with whole words. The only one which didn't make sense was that I read 'slelinpg' as 'sleeping' instead of spelling, but quickly using context sorted that one out. Yes, it was slightly harder to read (I am a naturally 'phonic' reader) but shows that I do use whole word recognition a lot as well.

And no, while it was a bit of fun, I will concede that I really wouldn't want to read an entire book written that way.

Hmm... that's probably how whole word readers feel most of the time!

but shows that I do use whole word recognition a lot as well.

I've seen this thing offered as 'proof' that people read 'whole word' so often that I know it off by heart! The very first time I read it it was like working out a whole series of anagrams (those Rupert Annuals' word puzzles of my youth came in useful ). I concluded that being skilled at anagrams was the key to successfully working it out. 'aulacity' has me beat presented in isolation. If it's meant to be 'actuality' then it's spelled wrong...

Ah, it's been copied wrongly. It's 'aulaclty' - 'actually'. I wonder what this says about CecilyP's attention to the detail within a word?

How can jumbling letters up in a word show that you use whole word recognition? You can't recognise a whole word if it isn't that word any more. You can recognise it has the right letters in the wrong order, of course. And since I am pretty good at picking out spelling mistakes, I would say I'm pretty sensitive to every letter in every word - a glaringly wrong letter in the middle of a word I would notice, not just a wrong letter at the beginning or end of the word. I would, however, recognise it as a spelling mistake, not get confused and think it must be a new word.

CecilyP didn't actually pay much attention to the detail within the word as it was obvious what it said. I suppose it is how we read things with typos and spelling mistakes without getting too stressed. For me it wasn't like anagrams in the paragraph at all, but when I saw 'aulaclty' on its own then it was like an anagram.

You may not get stressed by typos and spelling mistakes, CecilyP, but Michael Gove and a lot of employers do.

I think is shows whole word recognition because, although changing round the letters has distorted the word to some extent, they haven't changed it nearly as much as they are implying in the narrative of the piece. I am normally pretty good at spotting mistakes as well, BTW - especially the minute after I have posted somehting with a mistake in.

I don't think preferring to employ someone who gets things right is quite the same as finding spelling mistakes so stressful that you can't read what is written.

Of course you end up recognising whole words without having to sound them out any more, because you've read all those words countless times before - it doesn't stop the fact that you won't be able to read it if your vocabulary isn't big enough to be aware of the word in the first place (given that it is, in fact, no longer actually spelling that word), and it doesn't show you what would happen if it was a word you had heard said before, but had never seen written down. Would you be just as quick if it was a long word you had never seen in writing, before?

What has finding spelling mistakes stressful got to do with anything? Either it is generally considered important to educate children to spell properly or it isn't. Why bother, if it isn't stressful or important to spell things wrongly? Because as a society we are all up ourselves and like to look down on others? After all, if it doesn't damage communication and lead to misunderstandings, who cares?....

Why bother with accurate grammar, come to that?.... (Oh go on, don't you find it unbelievably irritating that most people on mumsnet seem to think they are grammer schools???....).

especially the minute after I have posted somehting with a mistake in.

Are you blushing, CecilyP

I must say, I do wish Mumsnet had an edit facility...

I suppose it is how we read things with typos and spelling mistakes without getting too stressed.

Typos don't stress me on forums because it's easily done, but spelling mistakes do. Both types of error in printed materials, or things like job applications, really annoy me...

Would you be just as quick if it was a long word you had never seen in writing, before?

No, obviously not.

Oh, Lord, why did I mention stress? Whether we think it important or not, people are human and make mistakes, and we can still read what they are saying. Typos are probably a better example, in that the letters are more likely to be jumbled. Yes, the 'grammer' schools thing is annoying but I think it is a minority who do it.

The mistakes I hate the most are the mistakes I find in children's books - unforgiveable for a professional publishing company to set a bad example for children!

I think is shows whole word recognition because, although changing round the letters has distorted the word to some extent, they haven't changed it nearly as much as they are implying in the narrative of the piece.

The bit of research I posted earlier shows that it is far more difficult (i.e requiring multiple exposures) to learn words as wholes than by decoding and blending. (Even if you need to decode and blend a word every time you see it you'll still 'get' the word but if you just can't remember the whole word you're stuck).

You seem to be agreeing that it really doesn't much matter about the letter order because you are 'reading' the whole word. Imagine how much more difficult it would be for children to learn whole words if they kept changing their internal detail...'because it doesn't much matter what order the letters are in so long as the first and last letter remain the same' [and knocks head against brick wall]

CecilyP didn't actually pay much attention to the detail within the word as it was obvious what it said.

Well, you completely disabled me as a reader by repeating it out of context and wrongly spelled...it immediately became not at all obvious what it said.

nymac Fri 13-Jul-12 10:50:17

^"Mrz During the 20 years you taught Reception, did you never use "rhymes" or
"fill in the missing word" as part of your teaching?"^

Of course we said and sang rhymes nymac but I have never used rhymes in the way you suggest to "read" unknown word with or without pictures to guess from ...

blogs.msdn.com/b/fontblog/archive/2006/05/09/594050.aspx

'aulacity' has me beat presented in isolation. If it's meant to be 'actuality' then it's spelled wrong...

It's not 'actuality', it's 'actually'. You mistook an L for an I. This is what can happen when you try to read each word and your eyesight lets you down, or there is a blot of some sort on your screen or your page.

The point is that the words are not presented in isolation when we read a text, and it is possible to figure them out partly based on context, which allows us to anticipate.

MaizieD, All the research on eye movement suggests very strongly that reading each and every word left to right, taking cognisance of each letter, which you claim to do when you read, simply does not happen, except when readers are at a very basic stage of learning to read. Once reading aloud with correct intonation begins, this stage is left behind.

Again, as I said when I C&P'd the piece, there was no actual research. It was a meme that did the rounds on the net.

'Well, you completely disabled me as a reader by repeating it out of context and wrongly spelled...it immediately became not at all obvious what it said.'

Do you see the implications of what you just said there, MaizieD?