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.

It is very obvious to me that very few people have much knowledge of the long history of reading instruction

It's very obvious to me, too.

and that there would be less blind faith in any one method if people knew that they were treading ground that has already been trodden many times before, with practically no effect on the numbers of children emerging from school literate on the one hand and illiterate on the other.

The ability to read has never before been as crucial as it has been in the last few decades. High levels of illiteracy were tolerated or taken for granted in the past because reading wasn't regarded as vital for all members of society (in fact, the concept of literate lower orders was positively feared by some sections of past elites). Nor has reading been so thoroughly researched, and literacy levels measured, as it has been for the past few decades. Blind faith is no longer necessary, or desirable, when there is concrete evidence that method A is superior to method B.

It is estimated that only 2 or 3% of people are "incapable" of learning to read so if 20% are failing to do so we are failing to reach everyone.

But it's unacceptable - saying the majority learn to read whatever is the equivalent of just shrugging your shoulders. It isn't good enough, and I am baffled at why teachers or armchair researchers on MN like yourself are adamant that it should be accepted, and sneer 'it's anecdotal/snake oil/etc, etc at all mention of anything that some teachers have actually found to change the situation. When I found out there was something better, I was excited, and couldn't wait to put it into practice.

People's attitudes astound me - and I don't know whether it's the teachers' or the armchair commentators that me more.

'The ability to read has never before been as crucial as it has been in the last few decades'

People have said that since the dawn of popular democracy, if not earlier.
The Prussian schoolteacher was credited with winning the battle of Sadowa but it was not the first time the importance of popular education was underlined.

Whether or not people have been saying it or not in the past is irrelevant. From a factual perspective, it is the case that for employment purposes and simply for getting through everyday life, being able to read is more important for more of the population than it ever has been. Even compared to ten years ago, reading ability matters more now. A decade ago a recruit only needed the reading age of a seven year old to join the army, now that is not the case because of the reliance on operating technology. The same will be true for many other jobs - people need to be able to read well. And that is before we even start looking back on times when lots of people were manuring fields or digging canals.

NightLarkWed 11-Jul-12 17:22:42
What do I do when I meet a new word, erm, I don't know!......
I have got more common words (that I've read, but never spoken) wrong for years though - facsimile springs to mind! That was fax-i-mile the first time I tried to say it.

But you must have used phonics to reach that pronunciation NightLark; If you had done it by context alone, you would be calling it something the "sending copies by telephone machine".

If you used whole word recognition you would have pronounced it as a totally group of random sounds, or just "silently" read it in your head with no sound at all.

You seem to have used the phonics rules as follows:
an "F" at the start of a word always sounds like the start of Fox,
"cs" usually sounds "x",
"m" always sounds like the start of "mother"
and you treated "ile" as a split digraph which lengthens the "i" and doesn't sound the "e".

Feenie -- children have been emerging from schools, where the pendulum has swung between whole word methods and phonics, for several centuries, equipped and not equipped in almost constant proportion, to face a world that demands they be literate.

What is unacceptable is to subject yet another generation of children to yet another grand experiment in the teaching of reading, this time using studies conducted on older children in another culture as the so-called scientific foundation for the instruction of 4 year olds in phonics, while at the same time cutting back on libraries, ignoring large class sizes, ignoring the social conditions, the lack of job prospects, the anti-intellectualism of the culture, the poverty, stress, neglect and chaotic family backgrounds that a lot of children return to after their day in the educational bubble.

It isn't an experiment - it's a based on sound, solid research, for once.

while at the same time cutting back on libraries, ignoring large class sizes, ignoring the social conditions, the lack of job prospects, the anti-intellectualism of the culture, the poverty, stress, neglect and chaotic family backgrounds that a lot of children return to after their day in the educational bubble.

None of that is aceptable, everyone agrees - but it has nothing to do with making sure that every child learns to read at school. Stop diverting.

acceptable

What is relevant about it is the fact that though people have been getting high blood pressure from it for centuries, the result of the flapping has always been discarding phonice in favour of whole word methods or vice versa, while the real problems that keep children from achieving in school, the interplay of poverty and stress and abuse and negativity in the home, have been ignored.

Math some of us have been using phonics for two decades with good results we are doing this because it works not because the government have told us to.

As I have said before Feenie, that research was carried out on older children. It was not carried out on the age group that is exposed to phonics in the UK.

And for some of us that's with the interplay of poverty and stress and abuse and negativity in the home.

Listen to what we are saying, math.

The crux of the matter is as Maizie said,
The opaqueness of English orthography means that it takes longer to learn to read it

because learning to read with letters that can have different sounds (an, any, apron) is much more difficult than with ones which don't (keep sleep deep). It also means that learning to read English is impossible with just learning to sound out letters and to blend them (i.e. just with phonics).

Teachers who express passionate support for phonics, in practice also have to go over the tricky words (swan swam) over and over again, until children stop stumbling over them - until they can read them by sight.

It simply is not a matter of either / or, but a mixture of phonics and learning to recognise whole words.

This is (as I have said before) because 69 English graphemes have more than one possible pronunciation:
a: and ? apron, any, father
a-e: came ? camel
ai: wait ? said, plait
al: always ? algebra
-all: tall - shall
are: care - are
au: autumn - laugh, mauve
-ate: to deliberate - a deliberate act
ay: stays - says

cc: success - soccer
ce: centre - celtic
ch: chop ?chorus, choir, chute
cqu: acquire - lacquer 19

e: end ? English
-e: he - the
ea: mean - meant, break
ear: ear ? early, heart, bear
-ee: tree - matinee
e-e: even ? seven, fete
ei: veil - ceiling, eider, their, leisure
eigh: weight - height
eo: people - leopard, leotard
ere: here ? there, were
-et: tablet - chalet
eau: beauty ? beau

• ew: few - sew
• ey: they - monkey

ge: gem - get
gi: ginger - girl
gy: gym ? gynaecologist
ho: house - hour
i: wind ? wind down ski hi-fi

• ine: define ?engine, machine

ie: field - friend, sieve imb: limb ? climb ign: signature - sign mn: amnesia - mnemonic

ost: lost - post
-o: go - do
oa: road - broad
o-e: bone ? done, gone
-oes: toes ? does, shoes
-oll: roll - doll
omb: tombola - bomb, comb, tomb
oo: boot - foot, brooch
-ot: despot - depot
ou: sound - soup, couple
ough: bough - rough, through, trough, though
ought: bought - drought
oul: should - shoulder, mould
our: sour - four, journey
ow: how - low

qu: queen ? bouquet
s: sun ? sure
sc: scent - luscious, molusc
-se: rose - dose
ss: possible - possession
th: this - thing
-ture: picture - mature
u: cup ? push
ui: build ? fruit, ruin
wa: was ? wag
wh: what - who
wo: won - woman, women, womb
wor: word ? worn
x: box - xylophone, anxious

• y-: type - typical
• -y: daddy - apply

z: zip ? azure

I am sure that anyone who bothers to take a look at them can easily imagine how much easier learning to read English would be if they had just the one, first shown sound (as they would if English spelling was like other European writing systems).

Teachers who express passionate support for phonics, in practice also have to go over the tricky words (swan swam) over and over again, until children stop stumbling over them - until they can read them by sight.

Bollocks.

mathanxiety, you are ignoring the fact that modern phonics programmes represent very big improvements on previous versions of "phonetics". They have taken account of the research over the last 40 years in psychology departments and into linguistics and now are much more coherent, thorough, and, particulary importantly, don't just present phoneme correspondences to children but emphasis blending and segmenting, with lots of practice, as well as integrating reading and spelling together, rather than teaching spelling separately at a later stage. In addition, the materials are much better and the methods mmuch more engagin. To say that phonics in its current version is the same as pre-1970s versions is a serious misrepresentation.

Feenie Wed 11-Jul-12 19:00:15

"Teachers who express passionate support for phonics, in practice also have to go over the tricky words (swan swam) over and over again, until children stop stumbling over them - until they can read them by sight."

Bollocks.

I agree Feenie total and utter

"As I have said before Feenie, that research was carried out on older children. It was not carried out on the age group that is exposed to phonics in the UK."

What people reading the various criticisms here of the evidence base supporting SP may not be aware of, is that these critics are employing a double standard. Because there is almost no evidence base at all for the "other methods" that people who are against SP presumably prefer. Those methods were dreamed up in the past by armchari theorists using a model of how reading works that modern psychological research has now disproved. That's why these critics aren't telling us about the non-existent studies that prove how effective their preferred methods are.

I know this is rather off topic, but Feenie and others - do you enjoy teaching reading? Is it rewarding and interesting? It was one of the things that put me off primary teaching - teacher training institutions didn't teach how to do it and I had no idea how it was done.

'mathanxiety, you are ignoring the fact that modern phonics programmes represent very big improvements on previous versions of "phonetics". They have taken account of the research over the last 40 years in psychology departments and into linguistics and now are much more coherent, thorough, and, particulary importantly, don't just present phoneme correspondences to children but emphasis blending and segmenting, with lots of practice, as well as integrating reading and spelling together, rather than teaching spelling separately at a later stage. In addition, the materials are much better and the methods mmuch more engagin. To say that phonics in its current version is the same as pre-1970s versions is a serious misrepresentation.'

Kesstrel, either you have swallowed the sales pitch of some purveyor of a modern phonics programme whole, or you are in the business of selling such a programme...

Feenie, et al, the plural of anecdote is not data.
Data indicates that about a quarter of students emerge with sub par reading skills from school every year and have done so no matter what method they have been exposed to, for as long as records have been gathered

I love teaching children to read! I get a huge buzz every time a child becomes a reader.

Kesstrel, all the methods of reading instruction were dreamed up by armchair theorists, including phonics, as early as the 1500s. The research on phonics came hundreds of years after phonics was first introduced.

Like it or not, that research on sp was conducted on 5 and 6 year olds. It is now being used to support the teaching of sp to 4 year olds.

Well our data courtesy of KS2 SATs says this year 92% of our children are going off to secondary school as readers and writers (the 2 pupils who narrowly missed level 4s have Specific Language Impairment according to SaLT)