Phonics vs. Whole Language

Widely debated back and forth for years has been the phonics, or breaking words up into sounds versus the whole language approach, or reading words as a whole.

I've seen many students through the years come through my classroom doors as excellent readers. I've also seen my fair share of students that have great difficulty reading when they come to my room. Naturally this happens because of many different reasons.

Whole language, also known as "look-say" or "sight" reading, is the most widely used method of teaching reading in the U.S. and other countries. Researchers have determined that experienced readers grasp the meaning of entire words at a time. When children talk they use whole words, without conscious thought about the sounds that make up these words. The founders of whole language felt the same way about reading, that children can be taught from the beginning to read whole words.

Whole language also presumes that after seeing words enough times, children will recognize the words and understand the meaning.

Phonics relies on drill and practice, which is said to get boring. However, it also teaches children to sound out words, and thus are able to read words they've never encountered before.

Which is what I really noticed when I taught junior high language arts. I had students that had not encountered many words. Some of them had phonics, either while at home, or somewhere in their background. Some had whole language the whole way through. I could easily tell the students that were able to sound out these new words. It made things a lot easier for them. The ones who had whole language could not sound out the words, and I had to tell them the word. I wouldn't guess they'd remember it the very next day, but it would take multiple times of seeing the word before it made the connection.

The comparison between the two has been debated for years. I've kind of sided with the phonics, even though the drill and practice approach can get tiring. Phonics worked for me...

As another author put it, in comparing the two:
A friend once complained to me that she didn't want to teach using phonics because the memorization necessary to learn phonetic rules for English is so repetitive and boring. It struck me then that whole language is nothing more than rote memorization of every word in the English language.

You be the judge of which method is more compassionate.

As far as I'm concerned, both have proven to work. It just seems that one takes more drill and practice, and one is on-going for years to come. Phonics takes skill-building, to be able to sound out the words. Whole language is kind of a never ending process, because there seem to be words coming up all the time that are unknown.

What do you think?