10 Responses to “Whole word method - harmful for kids development?”

1. ANMB Says:
   February 25, 2009 at 12:01 pm

   Dear Child & Me,

   In reference to France prohibiting teaching the whole word method - there is no source cited. It is well known that the French fiercely protect their language from any “foreign” invasion, including prohibiting allowing “foreign” words to be included in the dictionaries!

   Below is the source:
   FRENCH LANGUAGE AND SPELLING

   The major French problem is the number of silent letters. Some of these were never pronounced, but were introduced for supposedly scholarly reasons. French has also had many dropped syllables and fused vowels from language changes, comparable to the changes in English speech through the Great Vowel Shift and dropped inflections.

   The French led the way for the modern world in both spelling reform and violent social change. The great French spelling reform of 1762 was part of the social upheaval that built up to the French Revolution. In this reform, the French Academy put out a radical third edition of their Dictionary that changed the spelling of around 5000 words - about a quarter of the current vocabulary. However, like Johnson’s English dictionary seven years earlier, it tried to base spelling stability on the etymological principle, since it would have been too contentious to select out any one of the contemporary spoken versions of French to be the single standard. The result is a French spelling system with consistent principles that make it easy to deduce the spoken language from the written, but the reverse is difficult - it is hard to work out the written forms from the spoken language. English, however, is unpredictable both ways.

   Since then, France has seen a long history of movements seeking to remove some of the superfluous diacritics and silent letters - that were often introduced by this early revision. Recently, pressure groups such as the the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques (C.N.R.S.) and a reform journal, Néos, with the motto ‘Not a single useless letter’ have been opposed by self-proclaimed patriots and the Academie Française, which also leads nationalist resistance to the import of Franglais or ‘International English. Government decrees, such as the 1975 Bas-Lauriol French Language Law have tried to ban Franglais and prohibited 1,105 foreign words with support from vigilantes such as the Association Generale des Usagers de la Langue Française. A commission on terminology attempts to find French replacements, which are usually longer, for words like data bank, software, hardware, batch, and processing. At the time of writing, some silent letters and accents are in process of removal by the Academie - racing ahead of any English reforms. However, the style of arguments and controversies over spelling reform in English and French continue to have much in common.
   http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/wrintprob.htm#French

   It is a cultural issue - not an education issue with the French!

2. Alenka Says:
   February 25, 2009 at 3:04 pm

   Thank you for clarifying - this is completely new to me and incredibly interesting! But I am just curious: doesn’t it make a whole word method a better candidate for learning to read in French - just to remember how the word looks like?

3. ANMB Says:
   February 26, 2009 at 8:17 am

   Another point that is VERY misleading is the use of the term “dyslexia”. There is NO medical evidence for “induced dyslexia”:

   http://www.induceddyslexia.com/

   http://www.prohighwayhealthcare.com/Article.aspx?ID=0000000272

   She has taken a coined term from a teacher that had difficulties in learning to read, and developed a system for phonics based reading - and incorrectly interpreted the term it to be a medical condition:

   http://www.educationaldyslexia.com/

   It simply does NOT exist! It is more than clear that whole words and phonics teaching go hand in hand and you cannot seperate the two in reality; as it is constantly done in theoretical debates without the proper context of the basis for it.

4. ANMB Says:
   February 26, 2009 at 8:45 am

   Another point is the Einstein book that is cited:

   http://www.udel.edu/ILP/einstein/book.html

   Anyone who glances over the descriptions and back cover can clearly see that it actually supports the Doman/flashcard method. What the authors premise is that the element of play should be incorporated since it has been almost eliminated from schools, as well as parents needing to relax in creating “baby einsteins” since it has become a multi-million dollar industry.

   It is also clear that the authors support everyday interactions as the basis of learning for children, which are complimentary to the Doman method and others similar to it, only differing in the details.

   It seems to also touch ongoing debate of rote learning vs. play learning that is part of the history in American education - that is implicitly undrstood by those who understand the subtleties of the English language and American culture. It is also clear that “play” is the whole basis of the Doman method, and that the Einstein book appears to support it. I will know more after actually reading it and I encourage everyone to do the same and let us see if we draw the same conclusions

   However, out of curiosity, I phoned the language lab of Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Palek at Temple University and asked some basic questions about the Einstein book and if they were familiar with Mr. Doman to which language lab associate (not Dr. Hirsh-Palek) replied yes with a tone of mild dislike. Further into the discussion, I learned that the language lab theories are different because of the discipline/methodologies of infant linguistics, and they had never read the books/visited the IAHP in Philadelphia and actually seemed to have the wrong assumptions of the program.

   I think that people assume the Doman method takes hours upon hours like a school settting - when in fact, it is a few minutes a day. When I explained to the lab assistant that it is a few minutes a day of flashcards - and the children delight in in and actually cry when it is stopped - she said that it is not a problem as long as it is short.

   I will email them YBCR research and a description of the Doman reading method as described here - because they have “sometimes” reviewed disciplines outside their own when doing research, which is in the field of infant linguistics/psychology, and they are not reading specialists which is an educational discipline. Linguistics covers whole language acquisition whereas reading is a small part of it.

   http://www.infantlearning.com/robert.html
   http://infantlearning.com/research.html

   Will post more soon.

5. Art Says:
   February 26, 2009 at 11:01 am

   Thank you, ANMB for the link to “EINSTEIN NEVER USED FLASHCARDS”. The name itself makes a lot of sense. An argument can also be made that “the wheel inventor never used an abacus either”. In other words, people who make life-changing discoveries are always ahead of the crowd. That is why we call them geniuses. But how about the rest of us who are not?

6. eMommy Says:
   February 27, 2009 at 8:14 pm

   I agree: all the children learn better by playing. That’s one of the reasons the institutes (IAHP) are encouraging homeschooling: they believe that parents are the best at understanding their kids, that parents are the best at playing with their kids, that parents are the best at teaching them! Thanks for bringing this book up: I’ll definitely look it up.

7. Alenka Says:
   February 27, 2009 at 8:47 pm

   I haven’t read this book, but I’ve heard about it. As far as I know, this book takes a great stand against ALL flash card systems. Just as you pointed out, they are not familiar with Doman’s system in detail. Usually, as soon as anybody hears the word flashcard, they imagine a bored child who is forced to look at meaningless piece of paper instead of “enjoying their childhood”… they miss the major points of Doman’s system: “Stop before your baby wants to stop” and “If either you or your baby are not HAVING FUN - STOP.”

   I find the title of this book misleading. Many parents use this slogan to defy early learning systems altogether. And that is actually a topic for another article. See it here: Einstein never used flashcards - is early development really necessary?

   Once you actually read the book, please share your opinion of it: I’d be truly curious if it is a worthy reading material after all! Thanks - your comments are so insightful and so interesting!!! Looking forward to hear more!

8. ANMB Says:
   March 4, 2009 at 5:08 pm

   Dear Alenka and All,

   Please find below the article (in Spanish) about France banning whole-words in 2006:

   Spanish Article
   http://tinyurl.com/ao4wo4

   Yahoo Babel Fish Translation to English
   http://tinyurl.com/bkeh4x

   Again, I still believe at this time, that it is a cultural issue for the French because the Minister is stating an OPINION - not scientific facts that whole words create “dyslexia”.

   I will post more as I find it.
   ANMB

9. MattD Says:
   March 22, 2009 at 9:57 pm

   I agree with ANMB’s comment a few posts back, that phonics and whole word are inseperable. It seems to me like using a hammer and using a wrench.

   Both methods certainly work in their own right and sometimes one is more suited to the task at hand.

   I can recall learning both ways as a child depending on the situation. It seems to make sense to me, that usually when I would read a word for the first time I would use Phonics if the word was completely unfamiliar and the whole word methd if it was one I’d heard or seen before but never read myself.

   I’m not a researcher in the field, that’s just my gut reaction as someone who has learned to read (long time ago now ha ha) and who is currently teaching my own child to read.

10. Alenka Says:
    March 23, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    I really like your comparison! It’s true - both methods are just tools that work differently in different situations and for different kids.

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