Phonics/Reading Issues

Phonics refers to an instructional method whereby children are taught to decode words by linking the sounds of spoken English to individual letters and groups of letters. A variety of different approaches to decoding exist that are called “phonics,” but these methods are not interchangeable. Although used in most primary grade reading programs, how and if phonics should be used has been and remains a sometimes-controversial topic. Some curriculum theorists would term phonics a social efficiency ideology, focusing as it does on achieving a social good (i.e., improved decoding skills), through instruction that is often programmed and standardized. This entry examines the theoretical underpinnings of phonics, the historical controversy with advocates of other approaches, some of the different phonics approaches used in the schools, and its lasting influence today.

Phonics is predicated on the alphabetic principle, where letters, either singly or in combination, are used to represent speech sounds, which are also known as phonemes. Phonics is relatively straightforward in Romance languages, such as Spanish, because of their nearly one-to-one correspondence between sounds and their representative letter patterns. Phonics in English is more complex, however, because the 40 or more phonemes in the spoken language are represented with only 26 letters. To represent certain distinct sounds, two letters are sometimes fused together to form digraphs, such as when “s” and “h” are joined to stand for the sound /sh/. English has absorbed words from other languages, especially Old English, Danish, French, Latin, and Greek, so the same sound can often be spelled in different ways, and identical spellings can represent different sounds. Research suggests that English spelling rules that consider syllable structure, phonetics, and accents are reliable more than 75% of the time.

The complexity and inconsistencies underlying English phonics have generated many criticisms of it as a method of instruction for young children. The controversy related to the value of phonics instruction is not of recent origin, and educators such as Horace Mann criticized the technique as “soul-deadening” more than a century and a half ago. Over the decades, alternative teaching methods have been developed and promoted that emphasize engaging with all aspects of the language rather than phonics' perceived emphasis on part-to-whole. Influential alternatives to a phonics-based approach have included the “look-say” or [Page 646]“whole word” methods, popularized by the Dick and Jane basal readers, and the whole language movement of the 1980s. These substitute reading programs had critics of their own. Disagreements about the best practices in literacy instruction have been termed the “reading wars,” with researchers, educators, parents, and others all weighing in on the relative merits of different approaches. The disagreements about the role of phonics have sometimes been emotional, contentious, and bitter. The dispute centers on the question of focus in the early grades: Some favor more emphasis on decoding, whereas others stress the meaning of language. These disputes have sometimes spilled into the political arena, with legislation regarding the teaching of phonics being considered and sometimes passed at the state and federal level, including No Child Left Behind. Proponents of phonics are sometimes painted as favoring a more traditional, authoritarian type of instruction. Although today most reading experts agree that phonics instruction has value, the precise role, and form, of that instruction can vary greatly.

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