[NLA] Advocacy--Phonemic awareness v. whole language

Tue Sep 10 09:19:22 EDT 2002

“Dr. Krashen blasted the findings of the Bush
administration's National Reading Panel.”  

This is a quote from the recent NJTESOL/NJBE ESL
miniconference.  I present an NRP summary below and a
summary of quotes of his remarks.  I totally disagree
with Krashen.  English spelling is more regular than
irregular, although not as regular as we would like. 
Phonetic teaching methods are best.  I hope the NLA
rallies behind the national reading panel.

Dr Steve Krashen, Professor Emeritus at the University
of Southern California, criticized  "The Report of the
National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read," 
at the NJTESOL/NJBE annual spring conference May
16-17, 2002.  The NRP convened in 1997 and issued a
findings report on the best teaching methods for
reading on April 13, 2000.  

I’ll clip a summary of what the NRP found as taken
from
http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/Publications/summary.htm
According to the NRP report….
The initial literature search for studies relevant to
PA instruction and training identified 1,962
citations. Following initial review, the Panel
identified and further reviewed 78 studies that met
the general NRP research methodology criteria.
However, on detailed examination, only 52 studies
satisfied the more specific NRP research methodology
criteria. From these 52 studies, 96 comparisons of
treatment and control groups were derived. Data from
these comparisons were then entered into a
meta-analysis to determine treatment effect sizes. 
Findings and Determinations The results of the
meta-analysis were impressive. Overall, the findings
showed that teaching children to manipulate phonemes
in words was highly effective under a variety of
teaching conditions with a variety of learners across
a range of grade and age levels and that teaching
phonemic awareness to children significantly improves
their reading more than instruction that lacks any
attention to PA.  Systematic synthetic phonics
instruction (Synthetic Phonics—Teaching students
explicitly to convert letters into sounds (phonemes)
and then blend the sounds to form recognizable words.)
had a positive and significant effect on disabled
readers’ reading skills. These children improved
substantially in their ability to read words and
showed significant, albeit small, gains in their
ability to process text as a result of systematic
synthetic phonics instruction. This type of phonics
instruction benefits both students with learning
disabilities and low-achieving students who are not
disabled. Moreover, systematic synthetic phonics
instruction was significantly more effective in
improving low socioeconomic status (SES) children’s
alphabetic knowledge and word reading skills than
instructional approaches that were less focused on
these initial reading skills.  Across all grade
levels, systematic phonics instruction improved the
ability of good readers to spell. The impact was
strongest for kindergartners and decreased in later
grades. For poor readers, the impact of phonics
instruction on spelling was small, perhaps reflecting
the consistent finding that disabled readers have
trouble learning to spell.  Although conventional
wisdom has suggested that kindergarten students might
not be ready for phonics instruction, this assumption
was not supported by the data.  The effects of
systematic early phonics instruction were significant
and substantial in kindergarten and the 1st grade,
indicating that systematic phonics programs should be
implemented at those age and grade levels.  With
regard to the efficacy of having students engage in
independent silent reading with minimal guidance or
feedback, the Panel was unable to find a positive
relationship between programs and instruction that
encourage large amounts of independent reading and
improvements in reading achievement, including
fluency. In other words, even though encouraging
students to read more is intuitively appealing, there
is still not sufficient research evidence obtained
from studies of high methodological quality to support
the idea that such efforts reliably increase how much
students read or that such programs result in improved
reading skills. Given the extensive use of these
techniques, it is important that such research be
conducted

I’ll clip quotes from the report on Krashen’s talk as
given in
http://www.eslminiconf.net/may/njtesolnjbe.html from
NJTESOL/NJBE.

1.  He attacked the panel makeup – “Dr. Krashen
blasted the findings of the Bush administration's
National Reading Panel, a committee composed of, in
his words, "a chief executive officer of a
corporation, a physician, a physicist, about six
educational psychologists...and one legitimate
educator, Joanne Yatvin, who wrote the minority
report."

2.   Dr. Krashen. "You cannot get federal money for
anything in education unless you show that your work
is consistent with the results of the National Reading
Panel," he explained, "and it is seriously flawed."  

2.  The panel has recommended activities to build
"phonemic awareness," the ability to segment and blend
phonemes, as a precursor to learning to read,
according to Dr. Krashen, who showed that this
recommendation--with broad implications for American
public education--was based on a single study done
with 15 Israeli children learning to read Hebrew as a
first language. He reminded the audience that Hebrew
is phonetically regular, while English is not.

3.Dr. Krashen said that, based on his analysis of the
research studies cited by the panel for this
conclusion, if whole language is defined as teaching
which "includes a lot of reading," the evidence really
shows whole language is better. "Children in whole
language classes read better," said Dr. Krashen. "They
like reading more, they do more reading on their own
and they do better on tests of telling stories." In
addition, on tests of pure phonics, there is no
difference between children in whole language and
those receiving phonics instruction. "So, there's
nothing lost," he concluded.
4.  Dr. Krashen was flabbergasted that the National
Reading Panel devoted 60 pages in its 600 page study
to phonemic awareness, 60 more pages trying to
demonstrate the superiority of phonics over whole
language and just six pages to sustained silent
reading, with the conclusion that "we are unable to
determine from the research whether reading silently
to oneself helps you learn to read." Does reading for
pleasure help children learn to read?, asked Dr.
Krashen. "The federal government says it doesn't
know." 
5.  The reason this point is so important, explained
Dr. Krashen, is that the National Reading Panel
findings are diverting federal money into phonics and
phonemic awareness instruction and away from school
libraries, which could offer more books for students
to read for pleasure, or "recreational reading." 
6.  The first urban legend, according to Dr. Krashen,
is that when California introduced whole language in
1987, test scores plummeted. This legend has grown out
of a 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) test on which California's fourth-graders
ranked last in the country, explained Dr. Krashen.
"But was there a drop?," he asked. "This is a scandal
ten times as outrageous as Watergate. They never
looked." According to Dr. Krashen, 1992 was the first
time the NAEP scores were analyzed by states, so there
was no pre-test. "They assumed that things must have
been much better in California before, but they never
looked."  One of Dr. Krashen's doctoral students at
USC, Jeff McQuillan, has looked at another test that
was used in California from 1984 to 1990, the CAP
test. According to his data, the scores over that
period of time, stretching from before whole language
was recommended by a committee (including Dr. Krashen)
in 1987 to several years later, did not change. "We
had nothing to do with test scores rising or falling,"
said Dr. Krashen. "They were low well before." 
7.  McQuillan's research strongly suggests that the
reasons for California's entrenched low ranking on
tests of educational achievement are related to the
extremely limited access to reading material for
children there.  "In 1990, we were dead last in the
country with 13 books per child

8.  Public libraries in California also underserve the
children of the state, said Dr. Krashen, who noted
that library budgets have been slashed 30 percent
since 1987, with children's services hit the hardest

9.  Lastly Kashen made some points against eliminating
bilingual education in California despite the "urban
legend" which everyone believes is true, that test
scores skyrocketed in California after Proposition
227, the Ron Unz initiative to abolish bilingual
education.”  But this is another topic.

--- AWilder106 at aol.com wrote:
> Colleagues,
> 
> There is an article at
> www.eslminiconf.net/may/njtesolnjbe.html about a 
> recent ESL conference, in which  opinions about the
> phonemic awareness 
> movement and whole language were discussed by Dr.
> Krashen and others.  This 
> is a duel of research findings and a critique of
> advocacy based on the 
> findings.  While the conference was about ESL, it
> involves research and 
> studies we have talked about here and provides a
> complimentary view of 
> political issues we have hashed over.
> 
> Andrea
> _______________________________________________
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> LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and
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