Scary Phonics and Windows of Opportunity, Essay Example

Because programs like Hooked on Phonics market their materials to a younger audience, the audience often assumes that phonics mastery includes simplistic processes. However, as Freeman and Freeman point out, phonic processing requires that knowledge of the names of letters, the sound that each letter or letter group makes, the way that these sounds link together to make certain words, and how letters and sounds link together to form the whole word (2004, p. 130). Each of these basic components must be developed for word comprehension.

In the past, I watched spelling bee competitors on the TV, and I have to say that the ruthlessness of the advanced words makes watching it feel like a blood sport with egos to kill. How do these children memorize thousands of words within a year and deliver- despite the pressures of such a public humiliation? According to the authors, these competitors must also overcome the universal reading habit of fixating on only sixty to eighty percent of the words in a given text, a gap which requires the speller to focus their attention over and over on those words which do not fall within their foveal and parafoveal range (p. 136). They do not memorize—they learn. Freeman and Freeman (2004) write that the teaching of phonics follows six different methodologies- each focusing on various approaches and aspects of word formation, phonics, and sound-letter correspondence. The authors argue that any effective study of phonics must be both explicit and systematic (p. 131). Since so many different methodologies for phonics instruction exist, it seems likely that a student’s yearly transition into new Reading or English courses interferes with the systematic review and transfer of the prior teacher’s specific methods. This consistency becomes most important in the first years of reading and phonics instruction, bridges social and economics gaps, develops comprehension, and proves crucial for struggling students (p. 133).

In the early discussions of phonics in this chapter, the authors forget to mention that an understanding of the sounds in phonics requires the ability to form them. Sounds like p, b, v, n, and m require extra care and effort both in production and reception in English (pp. 140-141). Personally, my years of high school instruction in the Spanish language proved liberating because these sounds-  which seemed harder for me to produce than for other students- often merged and blended in ways that seemed natural to me. The ‘b’ and ‘v’ sounds in the middle of a Spanish word might not be distinguishable from one another, but English depends upon the separation of similar, difficult phonological sounds, ‘bet’ versus ‘vet’. As discovered in the reading, these similar and confusing sounds are often the variations of coarticulation, two or more sounds produced in the same area of the mouth (p. 140). The tongue or air might decide the actual sound produced. As the sections on phonemic rules and vowel usage explain, these studies form templates for comprehension, but the exceptions to the rules of phonics prove as important as the rule itself (pp. 142-147). For this reason, phonics comprehension provides more benefit to students than continued drilling and practice.

Conclusion

Reading includes large subsets like phonics, decoding, and grammar among others. Within each of these extremely complicated areas, there exists a multitude of individual building blocks of reading comprehension and just as many methodologies which different groups of theorists and teachers swear by. A phonic instructional method must work for the teacher, work for the student, work with the student already knows, and must be rushed to build the foundation for all areas of academic instruction. Once that window of opportunity closes, it is time to move on to comprehension. It should scare any mindful educator, because teachers get one shot before they begin damage control.

References

Freeman, D. E., & Freeman, Y.S. (2004). ” A Linguistic Perspectives on Phonics” . Essential linguistics: 130-164. Print.