Retorts

The Teaching of Reading

In a segment on the teaching of reading in 60 Minutes (11 Oct 1998), schools in California have chosen to alter the teaching of reading skill from the whole method to phonics basics. The former is to teach reading with lots of fun. The words are learnt through recognition and internalisation in a pleasant background of songs and stories. The latter is the basic deciphering method that encodes a word according to the sounds that it is composed of.

The whole reading methodology is said to be the key factor for the high achievement of young New Zealander's reading skill since the 1960s. Currently, countries like USA, Great Britain, and Australia are reported to revert to the basic phonic encoding strategy in teaching reading. There were two positions among the experts in this country. One favouring the existing whole method, the other advocates for the basic phonic strategy. The argument to adhere to the former is that reading is made fun and enjoyable in the whole method otherwise the children are left with the task of decoding-encoding words. Furthermore an example was provided to demonstrate the work of a child who managed to write a few sentences out of the whole method.

It should be cautioned here that the written work of the child who was taught in the whole method was full of spelling errors eg. stik for stick, ul for all, etc. The errors in the work should sound the alarm that the whole method is not a very useful way of teaching reading as the learner ignores the spelling of words and depends on a sound-symbolic comprehension. As a result, spelling errors abound.

One should be aware that the first order of reading is to obtain intelligible pronunciation for both the hearer and speaker. Reading, hence, requires the accurate recognition of each segment of a word. How can one derive the pleasure in reading if the written words could not be decoded into readable sound sequences? As such one must command the phonics and their combinations in words to arrive at intelligible pronunciation. Only when this basic reading skill is achieved then the pleasure of reading may arise.

Jyh Wee Sew, School of Languages, University of Otago