A LITERATURE REVIEW COMPARING THE TEACHING METHODOLOGIES OF PHONICS AND WHOLE LANGUAGE ALONG WITH DETERMINING THE OPTIMUM AGE FOR BEGINNING READING

UNIVERSITY OF LA VERNE
OJAI, CALIFORNIA


A LITERATURE REVIEW COMPARING THE TEACHING METHODOLOGIES OF PHONICS AND WHOLE LANGUAGE ALONG WITH DETERMINING THE OPTIMUM AGE FOR BEGINNING READING


A Paper Prepared for the Graduate Seminar in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Education


Kathryn Schurmer
March 2001







ABSTRACT

Dating back to the early Greek and Latin alphabets, phonics has been an integral tool in the teaching of reading. In the last two centuries whole language, as a methodology for teaching reading, emerged as an adversarial technique to phonics. For decades the pendulum has swung to the one and then to the other.

The purpose of this literature review is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches to the learning of reading to arrive at some conclusions as to which technique is more effective or if an integration of both is indicated. As a corollary of this research, some inference as to the opti...