The Pros And Cons Of Reading Instruction

In the United States, we have astronauts walking on the moon and scientists cloning animals. However, there are still people in this country unable to read. This illiteracy poses a huge problem for the individuals as well as for society in general. “Yet, this very basic of skills taught at an early age, proves to be difficult for so many students” (National Assessment of Education Progress, 2015). Blame has been placed in many directions including teachers, parents, students, administrators and the government. Therein brings the decade’s old debate of what is the best method for teaching reading? If this perfect method existed, society believes that teachers would simply teach the program and the problems of literacy would be solved. Researcher Deborah Fox (1986) said that two approaches to beginning reading instruction that have been hotly debated are whole language learning versus systematic phonics instruction. This debate continues today among educators. Several studies of successful self- professed whole language and phonics based learning teachers have been done to try to determine the best of these methods for teaching reading to young children. The purpose of this review is to examine …show more content…
“A major advantage is that whole language is attuned to the individual child” (Gunderson, 1988). Teachers often work with one student. Writing is a major part of the whole language process. In one study, (Gunderson, 1988), stated that “students who could not or would not write at the beginning of the school year were involved in copying what the teacher wrote for them. Within two to four weeks, they progressed from copying to producing text with invented spellings, spacing, and sentence-like forms.” There are disadvantages to the whole language approach as well; inadequate training for teachers, parental concern, and assessment – how will a teacher know if all necessary skills have been