Whole Word Is Nonsense - How We Got Stuck with the Worst Way to Learn to Read

 Rudolph Flesch become a graduate of Teachers College and an expert on both studying and writing. He changed into himself an educator and, you would possibly suppose, an insider. Nonetheless, he spent much of his life in a frustrating quest to persuade his colleagues that they had made a sad mistake by favoring look-say over phonics. His "Why Johnny Can't Read" became a national bestseller in 1956. But the schooling established order vilified him and omitted him.

Flesch waited 25 years and attempted again with "Why Johnny Still Can't Read." Again it become a bestseller. Again the academic status quo snickered; and his earnest, heartfelt attempt couldn't conquer their hostility. He died believing that the scenario is probably hopeless. This tribute will encompass seeking to solution a question: why did Rudolph Flesch should waste so much of his lifestyles defending the plain?

I've read his books and plenty of others coping with the identical topics and I stored asking: what is REALLY taking place here? Phonics must be part of any analyzing software, proper? Isn't it the only way to determine out a word you do not know? Why do his opponents preserve pushing thoughts that do not paintings? All they should do is examine Rudolph Flesch. Two bestsellers! Surely each person has heard of those top notch books.

Flesch discusses British schools, wherein it's miles regular for kids to learn how to examine by way of Christmas in their first grade. Once they draw close the phonetic code, they could read something, at age seven. Children pressured into look-say (or complete phrase) training study English as if every word had been a Chinese ideogram. This technique is sluggish and inefficient. Typically, kids can memorize approximately 800 "sight words" a yr. Even through the 6th grade, so-referred to as A-students might be anticipated to understand simplest 5000 phrases. With this restricted vocabulary, there is no newspaper or cereal box that they can examine even half of, at age twelve. Worse nevertheless, youngsters that age have extra than 30,000 phrases humming around in their heads. They talk most of these words, and recognize they all in verbal exchange. They just can't recognize them in print. Imagine the imprisonment and torture we are describing right here. Your ears and your mind recognize 30,000 phrases, however your eyes recognise handiest 5000. You can get a migraine just considering this. By the stop of high school an tremendous look-say pupil might understand 10,000 phrases on sight, however by way of that time the extent of heard or identified words has possibly grown beyond 50,000. The sufferer of this abuse may be semiliterate for lifestyles. The victim will now not be able to read for pleasure.

It's difficult for an adult to identify with what a baby is going thru in appearance-say. Here are some simple approaches to do that. Go on Google and discover a few pages in a foreign language you don't know. Or turn a page of English upside down and observe it in a mirror. Now consider you're told to memorize all the ones phrases via SHAPE alone. (Note that you'll ultimately need to memorize numerous shapes for each word: "teachings," "Teachings," "TEACHINGS," and variations in hand writing or abnormal typefaces.) In all instances, you must NOT smash words into letters or syllables. You must NOT sound out the words. Just memorize the shapes-- this is, the layout, the appearance, the advent. Feeling dyslexic, are you? Feeling depressed and worrying? ADD coming on? Yes, that takes place lots.

Here is the essential point. Words discovered phonetically will continually re-introduce themselves to you, 1000 instances if essential. Each phrase consists of its personal speech chip, so to speak. The word talks to you, "Here's the way you pronounce me!" But a word learned as an ideogram is static and uncommunicative. Either you've got memorized it or you haven't, much like a house, vehicle or different item seen as you pressure thru a neighborhood. Do you recognize that house or don't you? The house does not say, no longer a peep. It's as much as you to keep in mind the shape of the roof, the shade of the storage, and so forth. (Imagine the nightmare of looking to memorize thousands of homes via name.) For kids caught in appearance-say, English looks as if this: htchfgd fhwtrg dsphw mjl bqv xtpkng... There's thousands upon hundreds of small, peculiar, silent shapes to memorize. And they are coming at you very speedy as you try and examine across the page.

Only the neatest Chinese can learn even 20,000 of their ideograms (that have handiest one form and often comprise a pictographic detail). Even this quantity calls for super memory, high-quality subject, and limitless practice drawing these symbols. Modern educators automatically condemn practice and memorization; how abnormal that they decided on a reading pedagogy that needs each. English now hurtles towards a complete vocabulary of a million phrases. Look-say turned into never a feasible manner to address this Niagara of symbols. Memorizing brief, not unusual phrases (house, forestall, top, however, they, what) may not be too terrible in the beginning. Children might research one or  thousand such phrases and get A's in third and fourth grade analyzing. (Provided, of course, they may be studying books written on this controlled vocabulary--so the A's are pretty cheating.) But development will now come more slowly due to the fact the youngsters will need to move directly to bigger, more visually bulky phrases (toilet, apartment, but, television, someplace). Their brains will conflict to recall the tiny visual differences among, for example, virtue, virtual, go to, vertigo, imaginative and prescient, verse, seen, vista, model, visa, traveling, virgin, visible. (What mnemonic tricks would you use to keep in mind that "virtue" has some thing to do with morality however "digital" has something to do with computers? Would those tricks work a month later? Could you switch those reminiscence tricks to VIRTUE and VIRTUAL?) Still greater bad news: Once kids learn how to sight-study a few thousand phrases, their brains withstand phonics. If those youngsters try and examine a few words phonetically, well, they can not, now not without difficulty. It hurts. Their brains have turn out to be wired for shapes, no longer sounds. These kids will say they hate analyzing. Teachers will start calling them dyslexic.

According to Flesch, we're wired to talk via age 3, write through age five, and study by means of age seven, kind of speakme. These things happen obviously, with time and encouragement. Learning to speak, he notes, is a far more intellectual jump than mastering to study. But what do you understand-- 3-year-olds do it. Similarly, seven-12 months-olds will almost universally learn to study, if you do not placed boundaries of their way. An lack of ability to study is rare among human beings; you will count on to find real mind harm. The evil genius of look-say is that it creates the symptoms of brain damage in healthy youngsters. Here's a grim but in all likelihood correct notion. If our educators had been teaching children to talk, we would have a society overflowing with mutes. As it's miles, we have a society overflowing with "practical illiterates."

Frank Smith, whom many educators regard as a superb professional on reading, did more than every body else to perpetuate the struggle towards phonics and against Rudolph Flesch. Smith states flatly: "Readers do not want the alphabet." He ridicules phonics ("the 166 rules and forty five exceptions," as he places it). Smith likes to pretend that younger children are empty-headed and can be sounding out distinguished phrases they do not know. But that is a phony set-up. Kids in first grade already understand greater than 20,000 phrases. They need assist ASAP in spotting the printed version of these kind of words. Smith himself gave the sport away when he wrote, as a put-down: "Phonics works in case you recognise what a word is likely to be in the first region." Yes, and that can be a big assist--just what the child needs to keep going. Suppose the tale is about a farm; there are chickens, mules, geese, cows, pigs, turkeys, horses and a fowl there. The toddler knows all the ones phrases; with only a trace of the beginning sound, the child reads all the ones phrases. Call phonics one of the terrific innovations of human history. Or call it a code-breaker, a crutch, a trick, a cheat sheet. It lets children examine all those heaps of fairly complicated words they speak in communication by using age 5, however with look-say will not be able to study till they may be in excessive school, if ever. Words along with storm, net, digital, holiday, interstate, Mercedes, crocodile, computing, cheerleader, quarterback, aspirin, battery, janitor, detergent, headquarters, electricity, army, Manhattan, athletic, chemistry, recognize, groceries, religion, Hollywood, and so on., etc.

My guess is that youngsters do not need loads of phonics to get started out. (I say this understanding that Dr. Flesch would disagree. I say this because I one way or the other graduated from college and became an creator with out learning even a unmarried phonics rule. I assume that what occurred was that I was in appearance-say classes but the teacher become coaching some casual phonics at the side! Fortunately. Indeed, it is one in all my preferred theories that a LOT of guerrilla teaching happened in this us of a. Otherwise, the look-say catastrophe could be a great deal worse than it's far.) At maximum (and this is simply my impression), young children want one consonant sound plus the lengthy and brief vowel sounds. But right here's what they definitely need to recognise: the alphabetic concept by using which letters can stand for sounds. And it is this wonderful cultural treasure that appearance-say become designed to maintain all the time hidden. Judging via the whole thing I've read, look-say is the worst possible way to teach studying. Whenever it's used, literacy declines. Weird studying problems proliferate. Look-say (or entire phrase) is arguably a shape of child abuse.

What, by the manner, is the first-rate way to teach analyzing? I suspect it is the equal manner we teach tying shoelaces, cooking, using a laptop, and all of the relaxation. An adult sits by way of the child and helps the child alongside. Children love tales and that they love repetition. So there may be plenty of possibility to factor at letters, syllables and phrases, to copy sounds, to revel in rhyme, and to speak about what a first rate however sometimes whacky thing the English language is. I additionally suspect that poetry--some thing with rhyme, together with nursery rhymes and doggerel--must be primary.

Well, this debate has been played out in many books and throughout the us of a. At this date, twenty years after Dr. Flesch surpassed away, his message largely prevails. The forces of whole word--specifically on account that 1995--are slowly receding, like some dark tide. But we're nevertheless left, ever more intriguingly, with the question: why did this bogus technique come into vogue in the first place? To locate the solution, we have to peer again at the history of education, all the manner to the early a part of the 20 th century and into the past due nineteenth century. Two entirely new fields had been born at that time, Education and Psychology; the equal small group ruled both. What were the motives and dreams of these willful men, those who perpetrated appearance-say and such a lot of other doubtful strategies? For a few years I virtually couldn't figure it out. Why have been American educators so incurably drawn to terrible thoughts? I stored hoping there was a benign clarification. Then I commenced suspecting that these people had been both the most important bunglers in records or massive criminals. But which? And why? For a long term, American academic concept and practice seemed to me like a bizarre mystery story.