Phonics_And_Whole_Language

Phonics And Whole Language A great debate whether the phonetic approach or whole language approach should be used in the classroom has been occurring since the early nineteen thirties, and there has not been a definite decision on which approach should be used to teach in the classroom. To understand this debate, one must first understand the differences between whole language and phonics learning. The Definition of Phonics Many people are confused by the term phonics, because the term can literally have two meanings. As Miriam Balmuth explains, “in the historically earlier sense, the phonics of written language are the letters and spelling patterns of that language’s alphabet and the speech sounds they represent—put very simply, the sounds that the letters make (Balmuth, 1982). This explains the fact that many different written languages have different phonics systems. Some letters are used the same in different languages, but the letters are assigned different speech sounds. The second definition of the term phonics is what most people attribute to the word. The historically more recent definition of phonics refers to a technique of reading instruction (Balmuth, 1982). According to Charles Fries, “Phonics in this sense means the practices in the teaching of reading that have aimed children, phonics, language, whole, child, learning, read, letter, reading, approach, word, letters, words, sounds, should, out, about, learn, time, make, system, new, help, excited, different, together, systems, spelling, schools, school, need, ideas, believe, written, work, incorrect