There are, for instance, 17 spellings for the long o sound (as in “open”), 16 for the long a sound (“age”), 7 for the sh sound, [29 for the u sound in rule]. By the time these inconsistencies are encoded in words, written English has become at least 82 times as hard to learn as it needs to be. Children and foreigners have trouble with our alphabet because our alphabet has troubles. Imagine our system of Arabic numbers if any of the numbers could randomly take on several other values. 

We can get out of the mess by doing something as simple as adopting a totally phonetic alphabet: 40 characters for the 40 sounds, one and only one character for each sound. Spanish, Italian, German and Finnish are close to that ideal. There are two phonetic alphabets now being used in experimental reading programs: the Initial Teaching Alphabet developed by Sir James Pitman and the unifon alphabet developed by John R. Malone of Chicago. 

I recently visited the Howalton Day School in Chicago, which was established seven years ago by black parents. For the last three years, the first graders achieved the highest reading scores of all first grade students in the greater Chicago area, urban and suburban, public and private. 

The students, taking the standard Stanford reading tests using the traditional alphabet, scored at well beyond the third grade level. Some had read as many as 20 books. Mr. Malone supplied the alphabet; Dr. Margaret Ratz provided the pedagogy and training; Mrs. Elizabeth Jones did the teaching. 

Students had mastered the unifon system by October, were reading and writing by December and had transferred these skills to conventional English by April. Similar results have occurred with extensive experiments involving unifon and the Initial Teaching Alphabet with thousands of students. It works because the children's first experience with print is positive. They become readers and writers simultaneously. They work with their own lively words and they are reading from the first day of the school year. The phonetic alphabet makes sense to the children of the media age. Those verbal monsters through, though and tough are nicely tamed to: 
 

Unifon unigraphic Traditional digraphic Spanglish digraphic .TrU .through .thru .DO .though .tho .tuf .tough .tuff

A phonemic alphabet is much more space efficient because there are no silent letters. A phonemic unigraphic writing system saves additional space by eliminating digraphs or two letter combinations to represent a sound. through though tough thru tho tuff TrU DO tuf TrU DO tuf  will dispay in unifon when font is installed

The implications are twofold: 

1. We can use a phonetic alphabet to facilitate learning of reading. 

2.  We can install a phonetic alphabet as our official alphabet. (It has been done before in Russia, Japan, Turkey and Yugoslavia. Two years ago one region of China adopted a 50 character Romanized alphabet to handle the 50,000 characters of the ideographic- written Chinese language.) 

The latter prospect scares most people. It exhilarates me. It would open the world of competent, confident and joyous reading not only to our American children but to those in the 90 other nations for whom English is a required course. English is, in fact, the lingua franca of the modern world. 

Nothing terrifies like success. The opponents of both of these reforms have been around for a while and they have a long litany of difficulties, problems and obstacles, almost all of a practical nature, and few based on what is best for the child. Sure it looks funny at first, but that's just habit. And, of course, no system is meant to be teacher-proof. All that is being suggested is that we are trying to teach pole-vaulting to people with knapsacks full of bricks on their backs. It's time to check the knapsacks. 

This is of course too brief an introduction to an important and complicated topic. The arguments for and against alphabet reform are complex. 

At a time, however, when there is so much legitimate concern about reading competency we cannot ignore something as basic as the alphabet. We have focused so much attention on the printed word that we have often been unaware of the disharmony between our spoken and written codes. Today's child comes to school with a vocabulary of between 12,000 and 25,000 words. In 1900, by contrast, it was less than 1,000 words. Ten years ago it was 6,000­12,000 words. The children are not stupid; the alphabet is stupid. The International Year of the Child will be 1979. It seems like the right time to get alphabet reform on our national agenda. 

           John M. Culkin was the director of the graduate programs 
           in media studies at the  New School for Social Research. 

L I N K S

According to Mark Twain, Noah Webster, and Benjamin Franklin, the first step in rationalizating the English writing system is the restoration of a [phono-graphic] alphabet.  If spelling is to be a reliable guide to pronunciatioin, there has to be a more fixed relationship between symbols and sounds. With 14 pure vowels and only 6 vowel letters, digraphs and redefined capital letters provide the easiest ways to add phonograms on a conventional keyboard. Franklin proposed an augmented alphabet.    If the 1000 year old  Saxon alphabet [above] is used as the model, most English words can be pronounced as written and understood.  The pronunciation will be strange, something like Middle English but most words will not be beyond recognition. [see the 500 most frequently used words].

Jone's 14 pure vowels + 7 combinations

The Case for Investment in Improving Our Alfubet 

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Geroge Bernerd Shaw developed a similar article in his preface to a 1941 book.

Shaw's preface turned out to be more historically significant than Wilson's entire book. Starting on page 22 in this preface, Shaw explains the problems with the traditional orthography and suggests a solution: a new alphabet for English. He then develops his concept of a new 42 character non-Roman phonemic alphabet for English. Shaw later published a few short commentaries in the London Times on the same topic which are reprinted in Tauber's Shaw on Language.

Shaw begins by describing a "...hopelessly inadequate alphabet devised centuries before the English language existed to record another and very different language. Even this alphabet is reduced to absurdity by a foolish orthography based on the notion that the business of spelling is to represent the origin and history of a word instead of its sound and meaning.

Shaw's rationale for the new script is utilitarian - adopting a new alphabet would save time and effort. "The waste of time in spelling imaginary sounds and their history (or etymology as it is called) is monstrous in English and French." p. 28  It typically takes over 500 letters to indicate less than 400 sounds, so a unigraphic system would save 20% off the top. Cut spelling, by removing superfluous words, achieves a similar savings.  [shaw alphabet]

Later after documenting problems with pronunciation caused by the lack of unigraphic sound signs ["..we cannot note down the diphthongal pronunciation until we have a separate single letter for every vowel"], Shaw reiterates, "My concern here, however, is not with pronunciation but with the saving of time wasted. "We try to extend our alphabet by writing two letters instead of one; but we make a mess of this device. "With reckless inconsistency we write sweat and sweet, and then write whet and wheat, just the contrary." p. 35

According to Shaw, "Our present spelling is incapable of indicating the sounds of our words and does not pretend to; but the new spelling would prescribe an official pronunciation." p. 45

Shaw believes that English has 42 distinctive sounds (18 vowels, 24 consonants) and calls for a new alphabet with one letter for each sound. Shaw thinks that most of the work has been completed, "What remains to be done is to make the stroke and hooks and curves and circles look nice." p. 43  The new alphabet must be so different that no one could possibly mistake the new [42 character] alphabet for the old. p.39
 
 

Why Johnny Can't Read:  http://www.ocpathink.org/Pages/Perspective0200.htm
Douglas Wilson, 1991 Recovering the lost tools of learning www.credenda.org/issues/vol6/ruin6-3.htm
 

Why Anti-Phonics Persists
by Patrick Goff, Professor Emeritus, Sandiego St. University

The present discussion reveals the deep-seated resistance within California's education establishment toward phonics instruction and, conversely, the continuing loyalty to WL [whole language]. 
approach to this instruction. Numerous academic surveys of the relevant empirical findings on this issue, including the recently published report of the U.S National Reading Panel, concur that the fastest and most economical way to develop students' phonics knowledge is DISEC instruction. Despite the overwhelming preponderance of pertinent information, objections continue to be voiced in California's teaching community against that kind of instruction.  DISEC {Direct Instruction ...
 

There are several reasons why this reckless attitude persists:

1. Once educators establish loyalty to an instructional innovation, they are loath to admit that it contains fatal flaws. Admission by educators that they have held erroneous views on teaching reading appears to be too painful for many of them to confess.

2. The myth persists in educational circles that DISEC teaching of phonics knowledge is inevitably inhumane. It regularly is dismissed as "drill and kill" teaching, meaning it is harsh and severe animal-like training that destroys students' motivation to learn. 

3. Educators commonly congratulate themselves as being progressive, modernistic, on the cutting edge, ahead of the curve, etc., in their instructional practices. Since DISEC teaching of phonics information has a historical record, while WL is relatively new, the former is rejected on that score.

4. The leadership of the WL movement is charismatic, dedicated, vigorous, diligent, clever, self-assured, and not reluctant to use traditional propagandistic techniques (e.g., the "bandwagon" appeal) in its promotion of its version of reading teaching. The kingpins of the WL movement have also captured America's influential reading-education periodicals which repeatedly proclaim the superiority of WL.

5. WL proposes that only teachers, and not standardized tests, can properly measure how well students have learned to read. This dogma is especially attractive to educators who understandably dislike being held directly responsible for their performance by external assessments. 

6. The apparent simplicity of WL holds allure for teachers. As noted, the governing WL theory is that children best learn to read simply "by reading." Therefore, WL teachers do not have to master any intricate, specialized, technical knowledge about reading instruction.

7. Some educators may be attracted to WL by its radical social, economic, political, and cultural agenda. They would find attractive WL's proclamation that the ultimate purpose of WL teaching is to drastically change the status quo of the present capitalistic society, one that is said to be hopelessly stratified by gender, class, race, and a variety of other unworthy divisions. 

Conclusions

The California scene illustrates how a democratic society's desire, as expressed through its elected representatives, to give its children phonics instruction in tax-supported schools in a DISEC manner can be readily circumvented by people hired to carry out the law. The California case thus is an object lesson in the need for elected representatives to install mechanisms to ensure that educational laws will be obeyed by educators. 

People in democratic nations assume that educators employed to implement education laws have the scruples to do so. The recent events in California, however, are a warning to parents, taxpayers, and the general public that the powerful ideological commitment by educators to WL can override their personal integrity in this respect.

The lessons for the simplified spelling movement are clear. Even if the spelling of words is reformed in order to make it less difficult for children to learn to read, this progressive step toward facilitating students' literacy may be obstructed by the reluctance of educators to teach reformed sound correspondences in a DISEC manner. Before teachers subscribe to the principles of simplified spellings, they will have to concede the current scientific findings about how reading should be taught. 

Comment
see Phonics

If people knew two codes, it would be much easier to
write in pronunciation guide spelling and be
understood -- something that no one does today.

if pEpL nU tU cOdz, it wCd bE muK EzEcr tu rIt in 
prcnunsEAScn gId speliN and bE undcrsCd -- sumTiN Dat
nO wcn duz tUdE.

> if pEpL nu tu cOdz, it wVd bE mXC EzEcr tu rIt in
prcnxnsEAScn gId speliN and bE xndcrstVd -- sxmTiN Dat
nO wcn dcz tudE. [Unifon II]

> If piepl nu tu coadz, it wud bi mach iezyer tu rait in
> pranunnciashan gaid speling and bi unnderstud --
> samthing thaet no wan duzz tudey

Harold Orton  100 years old in 1998.  Professor at Leeds. 
Edited the 1940 edition of New Spelling, authored by Archer

1998 sees the centenary of the birth of Harold Orton, co-founder of
the Survey of English Dialects, and the half-centenary of the
establishment of the Survey itself.

Should students learn to read by matching sounds with the letters that spell them?
One could develop experiments to support either side in the WL DISEC controversy.
The reason is that only half of the words are spelled alphabetically or phonemically.
This makes it possible to show the efficacy of whole language but selecting words that defy phonic analysis. Among the most common 100 words, the number of irregular spellings tends to be quite high.

Clearly, everyone should be quizzed on their abiity to match sounds and spellings.  
There should be some systematic way to assess mastery of the basics before social advancement.
I advocate a full mastery model be used but the key features of the mastery approach can be applied to conventionally taught students.  

The vigorously fought battle between reading-instruction experts continues.

On one side are the reading-development specialists who recommend teaching be firmly based on the findings of pertinent experimental
research findings.

On the other side are those who advocate the Whole Language (WL) approach to teaching reading. The guiding principle of WL is that students
best learn to read in the same informal, natural manner in which they previously acquired speaking ability.

The advocates of WL cite evidence from qualitative (anecdotal, nonnumerical, subjective, unscientific, nonreplicable) research to defend the
merit of their instructional innovation. On this basis they conclude that direct, intensive, systematic, early, and comprehensive (DISEC) teaching,
of a sequence of prearranged reading skills, is unnecessary.

Unfortunately, a recent editorial column in the Tulsa World (“Word War,” Dec. 5, 1999, available at
http://search.tulsaworld.com/archivesearchdefault.asp?WCI=DisplayStory&ID=991204_Op_g1
delco) did readers a great disservice. Editorial writer Julie DelCour informed readers that the experts say “flexibility” is the key to learning to
read. Unfortunately, hers is an unreliable account of this issue.

It is true, as DelCour notes, that “look-say” reading instruction was dominant in America from 1930 to 1960. Proponents of “look-say” teaching
insisted that the proper way for children to learn to read was simply for them to look at words repeatedly, while saying their names. It thus was
held that the far more complicated DISEC teaching of phonics rules (the generalizations about how letters regularly are used to represent
speech sounds) need not be conducted.

However, DelCour misrepresents much of the history of the ongoing controversy between the look-say/WL defenders and those who argue that
teaching must be based on experimental findings. For one thing, the issue is not, as she claims, “one of politics.” Quite to the contrary, the
quarrel centers on whether experimental data about how children best gain reading proficiency are trustworthy, or whether qualitative evidence
on this matter is preferable.

Everyone concerned that children learn to read proficiently, including parents and school boards, must make a forced choice between these two
competing sources of information. That choice is necessary because the findings of the experimental research and the findings of the qualitative
research consistently contradict each other. For example, it has been discovered that none of the unique principles nor novel practices of WL is
corroborated by experimental studies on children’s beginning reading development.

DelCour nevertheless remains convinced “that there are advantages to both [WL and DISEC reading instruction] and that a balanced approach
combining the different teaching methods may be the best course of action.” As a prime source of support for this view DelCour quotes the
opinions of University of Tulsa education professor Diane Beals.

It is Beals’ unconvincing contention that WL teaching is justifiable because some children are “coming into kindergarten with as many as 10,000
words in their [speaking-listening] vocabulary.” However, in this regard Beals makes a fundamental misjudgment as to how children acquire
speaking/listening abilities, as versus how they learn to read.

The former is accomplished by children in an effortless, unconscious, instinctual manner. By contrast, learning to read demands young children’s
intense, overt, and consistent attention to the dual goals of (1) becoming consciously aware of the separate speech sounds in spoken words,
and (2) learning phonics rules, i.e., how an arbitrary set of letters represents speech sounds.

Beals also misinterprets the experimental facts as to how many children benefit from DISEC teaching of phonics rules. She blithely asserts that
only “some kids” do so, alleging that “it all depends on how the [child’s] brain is organized.” In truth, there is no reputable evidence that supports
her assumption that children inherit or develop brain structures that preclude their learning phonics rules from DISEC teaching.

In that regard, the WL proposition that most children of school age have acquired “learning styles” that are incompatible with DISEC reading
teaching has been empirically refuted, and in a compelling manner. Moreover, an overwhelming preponderance of experimental research
findings indicate that DISEC teaching of phonics rules is superior to the “top-down approach” to this end (WL instruction) that Beals
recommends.

Therefore, the “flexibility and balance” in teaching that both DelCour and Beals believe is necessary for effective reading instruction turns out to
be dangerous whimsy. If children are to be afforded complete opportunity to learn to read, teachers cannot be allowed the “flexibility” to reject
experimental findings on reading instruction. Then, as noted above, the notion that experimental and qualitative findings on how students learn to
read can be “balanced” is nonsensical since the two sets of information commonly are irreconcilable.

The present great debate over reading teaching thus is not, as DelCour claims, about an irrational “pushing phonics – to the exclusion of other
methods” (i.e., look-say and WL) by “conservative lawmakers.” It therefore is unfair for her to accuse state legislators who insist that public
schools conduct DISEC instruction of phonics skills of simply acting on political impulses. Instead, they should be complimented for advancing
the reasonable conclusion that early reading instruction must conform to experimental research findings.

Nonetheless, DelCour denounces any such decision-making by lawmakers as a poisonously “prescriptive mandate.” It inevitably will “limit their
[teachers’] options on how to teach the most basic, and the most important, of skills,” those of reading words in an accurate and rapid fashion,
she warns. In this respect, teachers “are in the best position to decide what would work best for each child,” DelCour envisions. 

But this is simply wishful thinking. California is a prime example of the principle that today’s teachers often are not in the “best position” to
exclusively determine how their pupils can learn to read most competently. By 1995, WL reading instruction was found to be more popular
among teachers in this state than in any other. As a result, California children had devolved into the least competent readers their age in the
nation.

After comprehensive hearings, including ample testimony from both WL advocates and reading-instruction specialists who favor relevant
experimental research findings, this state’s legislature then passed several bills mandating DISEC teaching of reading skills in its public
schools. In short, these elected officials realized that they must intervene against so-called “flexible and balanced” reading teaching if children
were to be spared the ignominy that results from failure to learn to read proficiently.

In a final effort to convince her readers that what she calls “flexible and balanced” reading teaching is superior to that which experimental
research indicated should be conducted, DelCour quotes from directions to teachers found in McGuffey’s First Eclectic Reader of 1879: First
“teach the pupil to identify at sight the words placed at the head of reading exercises.”

However, the assumption that young students initially should learn to read words “at sight,” i.e., that they do not need to apply phonics rules when
recognizing words, has been thoroughly discredited. There are few faulty presumptions about reading teaching more profoundly invalidated than
this one. Nonetheless, DelCour insists that it is “a fairly progressive approach” for fostering children’s accurate written word recognition.
 
 

Scrambled or Fried? “To teach a child to read properly is not difficult,” writes classical-education expert Douglas Wilson, author of the 1991
book Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. “Local education professionals have made it seem difficult, and the entire process has been
shrouded with arcane professional terminology. But the only term that concerned parents need to know and understand is phonics. ... In schools
that teach phonics, no illiterates come out of first grade. In the government schools, hundreds of thousands of graduates from the twelfth grade
cannot read their own diplomas.... 

“There should be no mistake about it; not only is the whole language approach a horrible method of teaching, it is also subtle and deceitful. No
one will come to a parent and ask for permission to scramble their children’s brains. But that is what happens.”

Wilson’s essay “Whole Language” is available at www.credenda.org/issues/vol6/ruin6-3.htm. 

– BD
 
 

If by “progressive” reading instruction DelCour refers to that which is reformist, enlightening, or up-to-date in terms of its coherence to modern
scientific facts, her favorable reactions toward the 1879 comments on sight words are unwarranted. As much so as they would be if made in
1979, or in 2079. DelCour fails to understand here, as elsewhere in her column, that recommendations for teaching reading found “in a popular
primer used by tens of thousands of children” can be untrustworthy.

In fact, there is much documented evidence that popular reading instruction textbooks (primers and other grade-level books), now and in the
past, are full of violations of how experimental research findings say children should be taught to read. The editorial writer thus misleads the
public in declaring otherwise. By acting as a cheerleader, rather than as a scientific-minded critic of fashionable reading teaching practices, the
newspaper defaults on its vital media responsibility to help ensure that students in Tulsa and its environs receive full opportunity to learn to read. 
 

Dr. Groff is professor of education emeritus at San Diego State University. He has over 325 publications in his academic specialty, children’s literacy development. A former
elementary school teacher, Dr. Groff has observed literacy teaching in over 800 elementary school classrooms, has been a speaker at the meetings of major literacy
organizations, and has been a consultant with the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice.

Critical Digest of Louisa C. Moats (2000)
Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction 
Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. (Available at 1-888-823-7474, or online at www.edexcellence.net/library/wholelang/moats.html) 

by Dr. Patrick Groff
NRRF Board Member & Senior Advisor

Dr. Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus San Diego State University, has published over 325 books, monographs, and journal articles and is a
nationally known expert in the field of reading instruction. 
 
 

Louisa C. Moats earned a doctorate in reading education at Harvard University, under the guidance of the renowned education professor Jeanne Chall. Chall is best
known for her 1967 book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, and its 1983 update. 

Here, Chall reports that experimental findings up to those dates corroborate that direct, intensive, systematic, early, and comprehensive (DISEC) instruction, of a
prearranged hierarchy of discrete reading skills (particularly, how to apply phonics information to recognize written words), is the most effective beginning reading
tuition. Chall's books confirm prior conclusions to that effect by Rudolf Flesch in his 1955 best seller, Why Johnny Can't Read. 

At present, Moats is director of a multiyear study, at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), as to what constitutes the most
effectual early reading instruction. Her past work includes service as a consultant on reading instruction with schools and state agencies, and as a college professor of
reading education. Moats also has written numerous books, book chapters, and journal articles on that topic. 

It is notable that in 2000 the NICHD published the Report of the National Reading Panel (RNRP). The 14-member Panel considered the findings of over 100,000
relevant experimental investigations in its determination of how reading instruction is conducted in the most time-effective manner possible. None of the unique
principles nor novel practices of the Whole Language (WL) approach to the development of children's reading ability is corroborated by the RNRP. 

Despite this shortcoming, WL reading teaching "lives on," Moats explains. She observes that WL reading teaching remains popular despite the documented evidence
that its non DISEC approach to reading teaching is a cardinal reason why public school students' standardized reading test scores remain at a deplorably low level.
Larger and larger amounts of funds allocated in the past decade to improve these scores have not been successful in doing so. 

Moats acknowledges that one aspect in WL advocates' systematic denial of full opportunity to students to learn to read is obvious. It is public schools' refusal to
"utilize 'best practices' [in reading instruction] that are supported by scientific research." The result of this irrational stubbornness by government schools is a huge
waste of public funds squandered on WL reading teaching, and "millions of children needlessly classified as [reading] disabled." 

Public schools' obstinacy in this regard is encouraged by "a pervasive lack of rigor in university education departments" as to what legitimately constitutes reading
research, what are proper courses and textbooks for future reading teachers, and what are appropriate state reading teacher licensing requirements. Also, education
journals such as those of the International Reading Association, and the National Council of Teachers of English, are filled with complimentary articles on WL
teaching. Worse yet, "many state standards and curricular frameworks still reflect whole-language ideas." 

Beyond this, "incarnations [of WL] such as Reading Recovery" (RR) stimulate the continuance of favor for WL by schools. These imitators of WL "covertly embody
whole-language ideas." This helps explain why disinterested studies of the relative effectiveness of the highly-costly tutoring scheme called RR "did not produce
accelerated reading performance." It even is found that RR students exhibit "more classroom behavior problems" than do students not assigned to it. 

Once the distressing failures of WL reading teaching were repeatedly exposed by the mass media, leaders of the WL movement conveniently disguised their
instructional innovation by calling it balanced reading teaching. Moats notes that balanced reading tutelage implies that "worthy ideas and practices from both
whole-language and code-emphasis [DISEC phonics instruction] approaches have been successfully integrated." 

That is an impossible amalgamation to enact, Moats rightly concludes, since every novel "premise advanced by whole language about how reading is learned has
been contradicted by scientific investigations." Thus, "a marriage" of "reading science and whole-language ideology" probably "cannot and should not be"
consummated, Moats sagely maintains. That being the case, to be logical, teachers must make a forced-choice between the unique principles and novel practices of
WL reading pedagogy, and those based on experimental findings. 

In sum, Moats does a masterful job in describing in detail "what whole language is," even though she grants that WL at one time "defied definition by those who
attempted to study it objectively." She also aptly describes how WL is "contradicted by scientific studies, and how it continues in education." 

She is not as successful, however, in specifically delineating why classroom teachers, their educators in universities, public school officials, and state departments of
education were so easily seduced by WL mavens to abandon or ignore what experimental studies reveal is the most effective manner in which to teach students to
read. To this effect, Moats does observe that the WL theory is "readily embraced by progressive educators." Long before the advent of WL they expressed faith in
the WL principles about child-centered classrooms, and the "discovery" (indirect, unsystematic) method of teaching. 

Moats implies that a large number of educators were besmitten by progressive education ideals before the appearance of WL in the 1970s. Why else was it that
educators since the 1970s have "rushed to embrace" WL? It is "a set of [scientifically] unfounded ideas and practices, without any evidence [on hand] that children
would learn to read better, earlier, or in greater numbers" through it than before. In their "love affair with whole language," progressive educators unsurprisingly "were
easily persuaded" that scientific data "had little to offer them" regarding reading instruction. As a result, reading "skill building and skill instruction" were readily cast
aside by progressive-minded teachers as "boring, isolated, meaningless, and dreadful" practices. 

It appears Moats suggests that teachers, education professors, school officials, and state departments of education largely remain progressive in their outlook on
reading instruction, i.e., are opposed ideologically to DISEC reading teaching. Assuming that is true, the "sufficient attention" to "righting reading instruction" in the
nation, that Moats calls for, may not be forthcoming. It thus remains an empirical question whether every state will: 

   1.Set reading performance standards "explicitly based on [experimental] findings"; 
   2.Conduct assessments of reading ability "calibrated to show the effects of reading instruction"; 
   3.Provide "meaningful and effective remediation" for students who read below grade-level, and "disband" schools that fail to teach students to read; 
   4.Eliminate test items that favor WL reading teaching from teacher licensing examinations; 
   5.Establish reading teacher education programs at universities that do not promote WL instruction; 
   6.Abolish tenure for professors of reading education, while assigning them as "partners" with other departments at universities; 
   7.Adopt only reading instruction textbooks that are closely aligned with relevant experimental evidence; and 
   8.Encourage journalists and policymakers to "closely examine" the so-called "balanced reading" programs in public schools so as to inform the public of their
     nature. 

source: http://www.nrrf.org/review_moats_5-01.htm

Whole Language: Emancipatory Pedagogy or Socialist Nonsense?

                              by Patrick Groff

The "whole language" method of reading instruction is a highly popular, yet experimentally discredited
 teaching innovation. The educational principle that governs it falsely states that students best learn to
 read in the same informal, natural manner they previously learned to speak as preschoolers. The WL
 doctrine also erroneously insists that children be empowered to add, omit, and substitute meanings and
 words in written material - as they individually see fit.

 Critics of WL note its appeals to educators to abandon direct, intensive, systematic, early, and
 comprehensive (DISEC) instruction in a hierarchy of prearranged discrete reading skills. The WL
 movement protests that DISEC teaching of reading is inhumane; a violation of each child's unique,
 immutable "learning style"; stifling of teachers' creativity by disempowering them; not "progressive"
 enough; too technical and mechanical; and hostile to the culture of low-income families.

 But WL is misunderstood if it is seen as just a method of reading instruction.

 In 1991 education professor Kenneth Goodman, co-founder of the whole language (WL) literacy
 development movement, edited the Whole Language Catalog.1 It includes chapters written by leading
 WL economic/political theorists, who sought to convince educators and other audiences of the validity
 of the political, social, economic, and cultural agenda of WL. The writers made clear that the WL
 "philosophy," as it is dubbed, views teaching students to read as a prime means to bring about
 definitive political, social, economic, and cultural changes - of a radically left-wing nature.

www.ingliz.com

Links

• Index of Spelling
• spellingsociety.org
• Spelling Improvement [Rules]
• Phonics Quiz
• Spelling Demons
• Spelling Tests
• Source of some of the traditional rules above [Glendale CC]
• 50 Sounds of English 
• Sounds of English
• Saxon-Spanglish
• Logographic Experiment
• Code Switch Experiment  red blue green
• WhoWhere Link Page, 
• Index of Spelling Related Pages
• Site Map at FC
• Oxford Guide to Writing

 

 
 




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fonetic keyboard. symbols for phonemes Why 24 vowels 36 phonemes