The principal approach to initial reading in countries where English is the mother tongue of the majority of children generally involves one, or a combination of the phonic, whole word, whole sentence or "language experience" approaches. A brief characterisation of these terms follows:
Phonic
This method proceeds from the conventionalised "sound values" of letters - the letter "C" being given the value "kuh", for example, and the word "cot" being analysed to "kuh" "oh" "tuh" and then synthesised to "cot". The main advantage of this approach is that it enables learners to "build up" by sounding out, and hopefully recognising, words that they have not met previously in printed form. It is sometimes referred to as the "phonetic" method, although phonetic symbols are not used with the learners.
One obvious disadvantage of the method is the lack of consistent letter-sound relationships in English spelling. Another disadvantage is that there is often a difference between the pronunciation of letters in isolation and the sounds represented by the same letters in a word. Thus in the previous example, neither "c" nor "t" are pronounced in the same way in isolation as they are in the word "cot". In order to make an appropriate synthesis, native speakers of English who are learning to read will be helped by already knowing the word "cot". Thus clues gained from the "sounding out" of "kuh" "oh" "tuh" can help learner readers to identify the written word with the item "cot" which is part of their linguistic competence, and whose meaning they will already know.
Clearly if the reader does not know the word, arriving at an appropriate synthesis of the "sounded out" letters will be difficult. Even if the synthesis is appropriate however, this alone will not help the reader to understand the word.
Whole Word and Whole Sentence
Here learners are presented with the written versions of whole words, phrases or sentences, which are read aloud by the teacher, often through the use of flash cards or words written on the blackboard. Pupils are expected to memorise them through repetition, and recognise them as wholes. The claimed advantage of this is that it facilitates rapid recognition of whole units, rather than depending on a laborious letter-by-letter strategy, and as such, that it approximates more closely to the fluent reading of a proficient reader. The disadvantage is that it does not help learners to work out for themselves words that they have not already met in print.
A further point to note is that for native speaker readers attention to meaning will not normally be crucial, or even necessary, since such learners will by definition understand what they are repeating. In a second/foreign language situation however, there is a clear danger that learners will simply repeat without understanding.
The method is sometimes referred to as the "look-and-say" method, or the "global" method.
The Language Experience Method
This is an integrated approach to both reading and writing which exists in different versions, of which the best known in the UK is Breakthrough to Literacy (Mackay et al, 1979) which has been adapted for use with indigenous languages in various Southern African countries. The basic components, however, are that the learner tells the teacher what he or she wants to say (often only one sentence). The teacher writes this down and the child reads it - facilitated, of course, by the fact that the child created the sentence in the first place. The child then copies the sentence. Both the phonic and whole word methods may be incorporated into this approach.
The advantage of this method is that the child will immediately be able to attribute meaning to what he or she says. The disadvantage is that the approach may be cumbersome to use with a large class, although it can be adapted to such situations. The method assumes the child knows enough language to be able to express itself, as would normally be the case with native speakers for whom the approach was developed.
A Note on Pre-Reading Experience
A further point concerning initial reading, is research evidence (eg Bradley and Bryant 1983) that appreciation of the phonemic structure of spoken words is a causal factor in learning to read. In crude terms this means that initial readers are helped if they already have an idea that words are made of sounds. Such appreciation is probably fostered by rhymes, songs and word play which through minimal pairs (eg shells, bells) or contrastive addition (eg row/grow) alert learners to the phonemic system. Thus, irrespective of the language concerned, the development of initial reading skill is partly a function of pre-reading experiences, not connected with written language. (One may hypothesise, again in crude terms, that knowing that spoken words are made up of different sounds, helps learners to appreciate that letters in written words represent sounds.)
