WHOLE LANGUAGE FAILS IN AUSTRALIA Date sent: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 09:02:33 +1000 From: Dr Kevin Donnelly Send reply to: kevind@netspace.net.au Organization: Education Strategies To: education-consumers@tricon.net Subject: the literacy debate in Australia I have followed with much interest the debate in the US about literacy and whole language versus phonics. In Australia, a recent national sample test in literacy showed that 27% of year 3 children and 29% of year 5 children were below the required standard in reading and writing. There has been a significant national debate about the failure of the new orthodoxy in English teaching and the fact that the education establishment has failed generations of students. Below is an article I wrote which was puiblished in the national paper, The Australian, and which gives a personal account of the failure of whole language. Berst wishes from 'down under'. LITERACY As every parent knows, the debate about literacy is more than just academic. Being able to read and write is an essential part of any child’s education and one of the greatest pleasures a parent can experience is when a child finishes reading his or her first book. Certainly this was the case for our first child, James. Even when he was still in the cot both Julia and I read to him and made up stories about the day’s events. Whether it was an imaginary trip to Mars, a Dr Seuss rhyme or simply naming objects in his room, we both knew that he had to be surrounded by language. We accepted that parents have a vital role to play if their child is to become literate. Too much watching television and playing video games would be counterproductive. Equally, we knew that once he went to school it was the teacher who was responsible for ensuring that he learned how to read and write. Learning the alphabet, knowing that letters and combinations of letters produce certain sounds and being able to recognise syllables are an essential aspect of this process. While playing with language was important, we hoped that James would master the structure of the language and that he would understand that he could not always guess or make things up. Luckily, this was the literacy training that James received. Over the early years of primary school he became a confident and independent reader. Gradually, he moved on from picture books to stories about myths and fables and he began to read to us as we had once read to him. Once a week he came home with a spelling list and he began to understand that using a full stop or a comma was not simply a matter of putting it in when you needed to take a breath. More importantly, he realised that the English sentence is constructed to certain rules and that different parts of speech have a particular function. Our second child, on the other hand, was not as fortunate. As with James, Julia and I spent time talking and reading to Amelia. Once again, we plodded through picture stories, books like the Magic Faraway Tree and the nonsense rhymes of Edmund Lear. Once again, we pointed out the names of everyday objects and corrected her when she made a mistake. At first, all appeared to be going well. Amelia spent time reading books at home and her writing, while not as neat or correct as James’ writing at the same stage, was developing from relatively simple ideas to more abstract concepts. We only found out that she could not read at the start of Year 4 when I asked her to read aloud a book she had brought home from school. Those words that she knew well she could read and understand. Unfortunately, those words that she had not encountered before she found impossible to decipher. Like trying to read a foreign language without a key Amelia was forced to guess what words might be and what they might mean. At times, she could guess correctly because of the accompanying picture or because she knew what might happen next. Most of the time, she was lost. Why hadn’t we realised that Amelia could not read before Year 4? Firstly, like many children of her age Amelia had taught herself how to disguise her reading problem. Secondly, at parent - teacher interviews we had been told that, yes, she was behind the other children in her year level, but don’t be concerned. The teacher assured us that reading is a ‘developmental process’ and that children learn at different rates. Rather than being overly anxious, which might harm Amelia’s self-esteem, we were assured that she would eventually ‘grow’ into literacy when she was ready. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Over the year we realised that Amelia was not progressing and that, unlike her brother, reading was something that she increasingly saw as a chore. The reality was that the ‘look and guess’ approach associated with ‘whole language’ failed to give our daughter the skills and understanding so vital for literacy success. Luckily, as we were both teachers we were able to help. The solution was to teach Amelia that words are made up of letter sounds and combinations of letter sounds. An unknown word can be broken into syllables and an educated guess can be made as to how it should be pronounced. In practice, this meant that we no longer allowed Amelia to simply ‘look and guess’ when she came across an unknown word. Hours were spent reading with her and correcting her when she made a mistake. Over time her confidence grew as she realised that she had the word attack skills so necessary for independent reading. The change to our daughter was immediate. Amelia realised that her inability to read was not her fault and that she was actually capable of achieving a good deal. Whether it was sitting in the bath, lying in bed or curled up with a book on the couch, reading became exciting and challenging and a whole new world of fables, adventures and characters was opened up. James and Amelia are now at secondary school and both, by anyone’s definition, are literate. James has mastered the arcane rites of Latin declension and Amelia recently finished reading Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Dr Kevin Donnelly has been an English teacher in secondary schools and university. His Masters and Ph’D studies dealt with developments in English teaching over the last 30 years. EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE