The Reading Wars

The Reading War is an argument between people who support phonetic learning of words and people who support whole language learning. Phonetic learning focuses on the sounds of speech and the spelling patterns of written words. Letters sound different according to where they are placed and the letters adjacent to them. The whole language approach focuses more on the meaning of what is read. Students are encouraged to learn a number of site words. Sometimes phonetic material is presented to the students, but most of the emphasis is put on whole words instead of the letters that make up the word.

I learned how to read/spell/write with the phonetic approach. I remember going over every letter and making the sounds at the beginning of every school day from K-1. I thought it was fun! I would go home and my dad would always joke around with my sister and I. We would tell him the silly sounds we learned and we would put them together to make our own words.

Sight words are words that the reader knows automatically without decoding the word's spelling. I believe that we create our own sight words as we develop as readers. As a child, my Grandma read me and my twin the same book every night for a week. At the end of the week, she said we were reading the book to her. If she would have put another book in front of us, we wouldn't have been able to read it. However, since we saw and heard those particular words over and over, we were able to memorize them and read them back to her.

I think symbols play a very important role in literacy learning. One of the first things we learn how to do is to match a name with a picture. For example, many children have some sort of toy that requires them to match the word 'Cat' with a picture of a cat, the word 'dog' with a picture of a dog, and so on. Children learn what the words are by visualizing the meaning. Picture books are very effective for struggling readers because they illustrate the story that the reader is reading about. If the boy kicks a ball, there will be a picture of a boy kicking a ball, and the learner will be able to better understand what the word kick means. I think we are seeing people come around to this idea more. There are a rising number of graphic novels being published that allow more mature readers to still get the joy of seeing the story illustrated. I believe this is a good direction and I hope more people get on board.