# Whole language vs phonics - is it really this vicious a debate? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 25, 2017, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125 "2017-01-25T07:00:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/21 "2017-01-26T02:51:15Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Absolutists in either camp are simply zealots. So true. I got drawn into a county school debate about this over 20 years ago and was blow away by the passion on both sides. My son was a slow reader so got some special attention that used whole language. It really helped. The teacher asked us to attend this meeting, hoping we would defend whole language I guess. Apparently ‘a little of both’ doesn’t do it for some. Whole language steals food from our children’s mouths and phonics crippled a woman’s child forever. The only thing they could agree on is that there can be only one! ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/22 "2017-01-26T03:26:32Z")
Spelling in English is just rote memorization, while phonics is useful and I have no real issues with either I do want to point out that for the most part Grammar and Spelling are purely the result of people who idealized Latin and forced inapplicable rules onto English despite incompatibilities. Add in complexities, shortcuts and odd due to typography to prescriptive grammar and spelling that doesn’t change despite usage changes and it may as well be pictographs. Unfortunately as most people are not native speakers or do not have issues with learning through rote memorization this does not impact a lot of users particularly those who teach it tend to be a population that does not have these challenges. I also think that the simplified spelling and grammar movements are blocked because of a general lack of understanding that these professionals are reading highly edited and corrected works from classic authors. While we do not have the original writings of Shakespeare we do have the “First Folio” which was compiled before the prescriptive grammarians and spelling rules were established. Take for an example this passage unedited except for replacing the long S which is a barrier for many individuals. Outside of the u vs v it is quite readable and even that difference is not an issue once you get a few pages in. > [@](#): > > How now? what nose is that? > Oh heate drie up my Braines, teares seaen times salt, > Burne out the sence and Vertue of mine eye. > By Heauen, thy madensse shall be payed by waight, > Till our Scale curnes the beame. Oh Rose of May, > Deere Maid, kinde Sister, sweet Ophelia; But most parents, teachers etc… are use to this version. > [@](#): > > How now? What noise is that? > O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt, > Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye! > By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, > Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May, > Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! And that drives a belief that the rules of grammar and spelling have been universal and unchanging for most of time. I do find it funny that even the modern editors keep enough of the historical “mistakes” to keep it feeling _old timey_ while ignoring the reasons why. Or worse added to them like replacing “Oh” for “O” to emulate the human tendency to drop the h when possible. Lots of the rants about vulgar Latin were due to people dropping the h, and the only reason his and hers have its as a neuter third option (and complicate the contraction) is because the h was dropped form “hit” But yes, for practical reasons spelling in English is not that much different from pictographs. (I really do wonder about the editors that induced modern spelling errors in the above examples) ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/23 "2017-01-26T03:34:33Z")
I should also note that they replaced words too in the above examples “Curnes” which meant to corn, kernel was replaced with “turns” which destroys the play on words. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/24 "2017-01-26T04:01:55Z")
OK, to explain the wordplay before the spelling and grammar prescriptivists _waight_ in. > [@](#): > > By Heauen, thy madensse shall be **payed by waight,** Weight was commonly defined by grains at the time, which was originally seeds. > [@](#): > > Till our Scale **curnes** the beame. Oh Rose of May, “Curnes” which meant to “corn, kernel” is a close homonym to Kern or a small group of soldier. So the “seeds/soldiers” tipped the balance (scale) to madness and Ophelia is the Rose the grew out of this in the Spring. (Yes I know rose bulbs/cuttings but…) Not a complete explanation but hopefully enough to derail a possible topic derailment. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/25 "2017-01-26T06:53:14Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > “Curnes” which meant to “corn, kernel” is a close homonym to Kern or a small group of soldier. So the “seeds/soldiers” tipped the balance (scale) to madness and Ophelia is the Rose the grew out of this in the Spring. (Yes I know rose bulbs/cuttings but…) > > Not a complete explanation but hopefully enough to derail a possible topic derailment. To derail it further. Kern comes from old french _charne_, which means to hinge, pivot. Compare german Scharnier, hinge. The only use of it in a military sense, I have ever heard of, is the name for an Irish warrior/soldier. Not used as a unit but as a type of soldier. So ‘curnes the beame’ would rather just mean ‘moves the beam of the scale’. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2017, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/26 "2017-01-27T22:32:40Z")
Worked with a guy whose mom, a Chicago public schools teacher, apparently taught him See and Say. He owned a Pontiac Parisienne, but he didn’t recognize Parisienne. The closest to it in his visual memory was Parseghian, so that’s what he called it when talking to mechanics. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the only Notre Dame football coach to get a car named after him was Knute Rockne. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/27 "2017-01-28T20:47:40Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > The problem with phonics is that it doesn’t work as an “end system” or actually as soon as you go beyond the very simplest of examples. > > Phonics attempts to teach English spelling by establishing a relationship between how you pronounce something and how you write it. This works well with those languages where such a relationship is generally straightforward: German, Spanish, Italian… but not with English, where any given sound may be spelled in a multitude of ways, any letter or group can represent multiple sounds, and the variation of sounds from dialect to dialect is very large. If you insist on hammering English into that model, you end up getting more exceptions than rules. > > It’s a case of trying to apply to something (in this case, English) a rule or property it really does not have (unambiguous correspondence between phoneme and morpheme). Makes as much sense as trying to use saxon genitives in French. Why is “having more exceptions than rules” a good argument against having rules at all? The basic rules of English spelling fail very very often, but they’re still at least somewhat informative, they’re just not perfectly informative. English pronounciation is not totally random after all. (They aren’t perfectly informative in any language, though of course Spanish would be better than English in that regard). As long as the rules are at least somewhat informative, they should be taught. Learning words by spelling them out (and then being corrected if that word is an exception to the rule) seems to me to be just the _obvious_ way to learn English, and the “whole language” concept is so hard for me to get my mind around that it seems just flatly delusional. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/28 "2017-01-28T20:51:29Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Nitpick, these aren’t pictographs, they’re logographs. That is, the character represents a word, and is not a picture of the thing it represents. I knew that he really mean logograph. 😉 I don’t get why “word sighting” has to be taught. Don’t most people just automatically convert at some point? I know I did. Now, if there is some learning disability where some people have trouble doing this, then I guess we can make accommodations from that. But that should be the exception, not the rule. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/29 "2017-01-28T21:47:22Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > English has traditionally been taught phonetically, because it makes more sense to teach phonetically. Chinese has traditionally been taught whole-word, because it makes more sense to teach it that way. But, frankly, pictographs are worse than a sound-based writing system. You gain just as much guessing room from a pictograph as you do from shared etymologies, and the ability to guess meaning without knowing a word is the only thing that pictographs have going for them (other than caligraphy). Were it not for the relatively continuous history of China, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chinese writing system would have long since been abandoned for something else. Yet, the Chinese have been immensely successful with their written language. Probably because Chinese characters are not just arbitrary scribbles but logical constructs. And Chinese dictionaries are in fact practical, because characters are clearly composed of individual elements (“radicals”) that can be indexed to the characters. Lead or base radicals infuse each character with a broader sense of meaning, which may be clarified by the adjacent radicals. And a significant fraction of the more complex characters are quasi-phonetic, using one of the radicals as a pronunciation hint. Which is to say, learning to read Chinese is not a matter of rote memorization of the tens of thousands of symbols. A reasonably well educated Chinese person can often look at a new character for the first time and instinctively know what it is, and very possibly infer its pronunciation. The Chinese writing system persists not because of tradition but because it is logical and practical and it has successfully united a disparate array of dialects that are not mutually intelligible to the ear. It is not any quirkier or less sensible than English or Greek or Urdu. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2017, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/30 "2017-01-28T22:26:04Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > When I read reports about that debate in the US my impression was that whole language/phonics wasn’t considered politically neutral but had somehow also become a left/right issue (with conservatives promoting phonics). Is there something to that? Yes, though as far as I can tell it doesn’t have anything to do with the different systems per se, but more that the Whole Language approach gained momentum with people who were attending college to be teachers in the 1960s, and Chomsky was a fan. Phonics was “the establishment.”. I think both sides have moderated since the 1970s. ---
**Author:** ![Monimonika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@Monimonika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monimonika)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2017, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/31 "2017-01-29T20:31:11Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Yet, the Chinese have been immensely successful with their written language. Probably because Chinese characters are not just arbitrary scribbles but logical constructs. And Chinese dictionaries are in fact practical, because characters are clearly composed of individual elements (“radicals”) that can be indexed to the characters. Lead or base radicals infuse each character with a broader sense of meaning, which may be clarified by the adjacent radicals. And a significant fraction of the more complex characters are quasi-phonetic, using one of the radicals as a pronunciation hint. There’s also that Chinese characters in Chinese (hanzi) mostly have only one reading (or one commonly-used reading) per character. In Japanese, though, the Chinese characters (kanji) could each have several different readings depending on context and combination with other kanji (the frequently-used kanji for “life/raw/birth” 「生」 has about 12-19 or more(?) readings/pronunciations!). I agree with Sage Rat that reading kanji in Japanese is a pain to learn, as the only efficient way to learn to read kanji is to learn the whole words that the kanji are used in, and recognize patterns and exceptions in when to use which reading. For kanji combinations that I encounter for the first time (and do not have a dictionary on hand), I dig through my memory of other words that feature those kanji and combine the sounds/meanings together. Armed with my self-created pronunciation & meaning, I then move on with the rest of what I was reading. I also read the surrounding sentence and guess based off my spoken vocabulary. Obviously, this has left me with the wrong idea of how some Japanese words are supposed to be read. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/32 "2017-01-31T11:19:24Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Why is “having more exceptions than rules” a good argument against having rules at all? > > The basic rules of English spelling fail very very often, but they’re still at least somewhat informative, they’re just not perfectly informative. English pronounciation is not totally random after all. (They aren’t perfectly informative in any language, though of course Spanish would be better than English in that regard). As long as the rules are at least somewhat informative, they should be taught. If you have more exceptions than rules, a possible cause is that your rules have been expressed inaccurately. English spelling derives from a long and complicated history: by coming up with rules which ignore that background, what’s invented is a bloody mess. The rules that people are taught in phonics do not, IME, teach “the group ph may represent several sounds”; they are taught “ph represents /f/”. That information is incomplete. I’ve had to correct mid-Atlantic Americans on the pronunciation of my lastname many times, as they always guess at the ch being a /k/; they’re usually surprised that it represents /tʃ/. Do they eat kokolate from Kina? No, but their mental rule is oversimplified. Those speakers who are conscious that ch can represent several sounds may ask which pronunciation is the right one or take a guess, but they are not surprised. Allow me another example, this one from Spanish: there are several spelling rules which work, not at the phoneme level, but at the syllable level (you need to take into account the consonant+vowel combo, not just the consonant). Learn them at the syllable level and you’ll have no problem; learn them at the “letter” level and you’ll fuck up half… well, actually, 40 to 60% of the time. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/33 "2017-01-31T11:51:41Z")
Is your last name an English word? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/34 "2017-01-31T12:11:23Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I don’t get why “word sighting” has to be taught. Don’t most people just automatically convert at some point? I know I did. Now, if there is some learning disability where some people have trouble doing this, then I guess we can make accommodations from that. But that should be the exception, not the rule. Reading instruction is most vital for kids who don’t pick such things up automatically. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/35 "2017-01-31T12:12:24Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Is your last name an English word? Nope, Basque. But the one bit people have problems with is the ch, and only a specific group of English speakers. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/36 "2017-01-31T14:26:47Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Nope, Basque. But the one bit people have problems with is the ch, and only a specific group of English speakers. But it shouldn’t be a negative for English rules that they don’t tell people how to pronounce non-English words. **LHoD** : I’m not sure if you’re agreeing with me or disagreeing. My observation (and I could be wrong) is that the vast majority of people learn to read “whole words” without being taught to. In fact, I suspect most (like me, in the note above) aren’t even aware they are doing it. So, yeah, help the few who need help, but no need to preemptively put the entire class in remedial reading, so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/37 "2017-01-31T15:25:24Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > But it shouldn’t be a negative for English rules that they don’t tell people how to pronounce non-English words. It’s a case when phonics work when the people trying to use them are conscious of the whole rule, not when they are not. It’s a negative for teaching partial, oversimplified rules. English speakers who know that ch may represent /k/ or /tʃ/ realize there is a “problem point”; those who only think of ch as representing a single sound don’t realize it. Those who assume it’s going to be /tʃ/ happen to get it right only by happenstance, really. If you prefer English examples, my SCA-like group used to have huge troubles trying to figure out how to pronounce chastity; in that case, the majority went with /tʃ/ (we were in Florida). I suggested asking a priest, which apparently was a strange thought to have. ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/38 "2017-01-31T15:40:17Z")
Well, _any type of teaching_ will work with many/most pupils. However, for about 30-40%, whole language just doesn’t work, and this sometimes has terrible consequences. The problem is very acute in the English language because of some structure oddities I cannot now remember. The problem seemingly is information overflow. Most kids will hit a wall at 1000 words with pattern-matching pure visual learning. Now most of them are able to dissociate words into syllables by themselves at this point and break the impasse; however many can’t without help. This book:[“Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading”](https://www.amazon.com/Children-Cant-Read-What-About/dp/0684853566) is an eye-opener. It claims that both whole language _and_ phonics are faulty methods. Somehow they both are fads, resulting from theories based on very little actual science. As long as the teaching of reading was empiric based on traditions that mostly worked, then it seems that the vast majority of kids could read. When “modern” methods based on cognitive models that were ridiculous in hindsight started to be used, then success rate plummeted. It probably did not help that the ridiculous theories were pushed by “modernists” that were naturally left-wing radicals as well. The result being that similarly ridiculous theories were pushed by the conservatives. This is another fight trying to force the human nature and capabilities into a theoretically pleasing form. ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/39 "2017-01-31T15:56:30Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I knew that he really mean logograph. 😉 > > I don’t get why “word sighting” has to be taught. Don’t most people just automatically convert at some point? I know I did. Now, if there is some learning disability where some people have trouble doing this, then I guess we can make accommodations from that. But that should be the exception, not the rule. Well, don’t feel bad, most people don’t get it, not in the least some old pillars of wisdom in Linguistics. Try to imagine\* now \*how difficult it was to learn riding a bicycle. The connection between visual form and word is perfected much later in the learning process (and is necessary for fast reading). The beginning though, goes via the auditive language cortex. Learning to read is _very_ different compared with learning to talk and is a very difficult acquired skill. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125/40 "2017-01-31T16:08:29Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Reading is done by whole word recognition (unless you are really, really good, with excelent eyesight, in which case you can do whole sentence recognition). People who learn to read, learn to read whole words. If personal experience is any indication, reading _unfamiliar words or names_ is done by sounding them out phonetically; but once the word or name becomes familiar, it is recognized as a unit. > [@Latro](#): > > Hear hear. > Your spelling system is broken. > Until it is fixed there can be no better ways to learn reading it than just memorising all the different variants and exceptions. > [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Spelling in English is just rote memorization, while phonics is useful and I have no real issues with either I do want to point out that for the most part Grammar and Spelling are purely the result of people who idealized Latin and forced inapplicable rules onto English despite incompatibilities. These statements are, at best, an oversimplification. English spelling isn’t really a broken system, or purely random—its a mixture of multiple systems that have evolved over the years. Knowing something about word origins and history can help with spelling, and vice versa. Anyone who’s really interested should check out [Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B22ASRU/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title) by David Crystal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whole-language-vs-phonics-is-it-really-this-vicious-a-debate/778125.md?page=3)