Background: In the context of the ongoing crisis in early reading literacy in South Africa, this article gives insight into teacher practices which reduce learners' opportunities to read continuous text for meaning. Aim: This ethnographic study investigated the microcosm of teacher practices in well-resourced environments. Setting: A purposive…

There have been few areas in England over the last 50 years where government has drawn more heavily on research to inform policy and practice than in the area of teaching reading. The focus of this article is an analysis of the research and evidence on early reading, in particular the role of phonics, on which government policy in England and the…

There is a widespread consensus in the research community that reading instruction in English should first focus on teaching letter (grapheme) to sound (phoneme) correspondences rather than adopt meaning-based reading approaches such as whole language instruction. That is, initial reading instruction should emphasize systematic phonics. In this…

New Zealand's approach to literacy instruction is predominantly whole language. Explicit code-orientated literacy instruction is not favoured, however, most teachers are believed to include phonics in their literacy lessons. No study has been reported on phonics use in New Zealand schools. Survey responses on the use of phonics instruction from…

Much attention has been given to the impact of cooperative teachers on the pedagogical behaviour of student teachers. In many cases, however, cooperating teachers gain as much from the student teacher as the student teacher acquires from them. This study was designed to elicit answers to the following two questions: (1) What are the perspectives…

The dichotomisation of literacy instruction into phonics instruction versus a whole language approach fails to realise a fundamental tenet of providing equitable educational opportunities to diverse groups of children. Diversity becomes a problem to solve through "inoculation programmes" or "special" education expertise.…

This article discusses whole language and phonics approaches to teaching L1 reading. It argues to bring these two perspectives together under an integrated approach to better teach second language reading. The article offers an integrated lesson plan with adaptable activities and techniques that show how to apply the integrated approach.

This paper examines the media and political landscapes within which "whole language" is currently constituted in Australia. Through surveying the themes and rhetoric deployed in media texts over recent years, we consider how "whole language" has been taken up as part of a wider media campaign around education generally. We…

In Turkey, the Ministry of National Education (MONE) changed the reading instruction method in elementary schools from whole language approach to phonics emphasis in 2005. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of phonics method on reading acquisition in a Turkish sample; to understand what elementary school teachers…

Reviews the typical approach (synthetic phonics) to teaching reading in Finland. Suggests that teachers in English-speaking countries can learn from problems Finnish teachers face and vice versa. Finds that, despite a highly regular writing system, Finnish teachers find that a heavy phonics emphasis does not solve their reading instruction…

Discusses the author's varied experiences in teaching reading, including teaching seventh grade pupils in the West Bank of Jordan, taking graduate courses in reading, and being an elementary school principal and a university professor. Suggests the need for a rational balance between whole language and phonics. (RS)

Describes LETTERLAND, a unique teaching model that blends a structured phonics approach with whole-language teaching and is widely used in British classrooms as an initial approach to literacy as well as in special needs contexts. (HTH)

Many Canadians are concerned about the quality of reading instruction in Canadian schools. Recent newspaper articles, research reviews, and newsletter articles reflect the nature of these concerns. The official instructional policy in a number of provinces as well as in a number of local school districts is based on a whole-language philosophy.…

Various word-recognition tasks were completed by 54 second-grade students from classrooms where reading instruction followed the whole-language approach or the phonics/skill-based approach. A task involving a cloze procedure favored the whole-language approach, but there were no other significant differences between groups. Contains 30 references.…

Increasingly, foreign nationals living in Japan are sending their children to Japanese elementary schools. This requires that the children's native language be taught outside of school, most often at home. While teaching oral language is not difficult for parents, teaching reading requires different skills. Some difficulties in this process are…