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Research Indicates Using Phonics is the Best Way to Teach and Learn Reading

Elementary-school teachers who make phonics the major component to reading education are using the best approach to helping their students become skilled, independent readers, according to a research report issued by the American Psychological Society. The report also says that whole-language instruction should be used as an adjunct to phonics, making the learning experience more meaningful.

"Reading seems so natural to the literate adult that one could easily imagine that it must rank among the simplest skills for a child to acquire," the authors wrote in the report. "Yet nothing could be further from the truth."

For many, learning to read is an extremely effortful task. Even though it is essential to functioning in society, the effortless literacy of a skilled reader is an ability that eludes a significant number of people.

The report appears in the APS journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The report authors are: Keith Rayner, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Barbara R. Forman, Department of Pediatrics and the Center for Academic and Reading Skills, University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center; Charles Perfetti, Department of Psychology and the Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh; David Pesetsky, Department of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Mark S. Seidenberg, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin.

The authors provide an overview of writing systems and summarize research from developmental psychology on children's language competency when they enter school and on the nature of early reading development. They reviewed theories of learning to read, characteristics of children who do not learn to read, research from cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience on skilled reading, and connectionist models of learning to read.

In their analysis, the authors sought to answer three questions in order to better understand the source of difficulty many have in learning to read and how to overcome that difficulty:

• What must a child be able to do in order to learn to read effectively?
• What happens when a person goes from being a nonreader to a reader?
• What does skilled reading - the end point of the learning process - look like?

After answering these questions, the authors identified two things essential to reading education. Mastering the alphabetic principle is essential to becoming a proficient reader and instructional techniques, such as phonics, that teach this principle directly are more effective than those that do not.

"Using whole-language activities to supplement phonics instruction does help make reading fun and meaningful for children, but ultimately, phonics instruction is critically important because it helps beginning readers understand the alphabetic principle and learn new words," wrote the authors.

Whole-language training can help teachers move beyond practice "to ensure that application of alphabetic principles to reading clearly support the process of learning to read." In addition, the authors assert that the absence of phonics instruction may increase the risk of children becoming poor spellers; whole-language instruction often tolerates incorrect spelling, they reported.

APS represents scientific psychology, promoting the "giving away" of psychology in the public interest. The journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest explores important topics of public interest in areas where psychological science may have the potential to inform and improve public policy.

For additional information, contact Rayner at rayner@psych.umass.edu or Brian Weaver at the information above.