Why did France prohibit the "whole word" teaching method in 2006?

[Ayesha Nicole]

Dear All,

I was recently told that France prohibited using the whole word teaching method in 2006 - and without a source.  This is as opposed to phonics being the method of teaching.  Does anyone know why this is so in France?

Logic tells me that it is a cultural identity/language protection issue and not necessarily an educational issue.  Anyone familiar with French culture, knows 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 only thing I have been able to find, which seems to support whole word approach, like the Dolch words method taught in America that is based on not being able to sound out the word and you have to memorize the pronunciation:


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


What are the real reasons that whole word teaching method was banned in France?

Thank you.
Ayesha

[DadDude]

Ayesha, I don't know, but if I had to guess, it would be because study after study has shown that the whole word method fails many children, while phonics is far more consistent, leads to better readers and better spellers.  Since the 1950s, and before that actually, whenever the methods were tested using well-designed scientific studies, in virtually every case, phonics has come out looking better.

The whole word method appeals to something within people.  It seems more "natural" and more "holistic," and more "right brained," so people who pride themselves on being natural, holistic, and right-brained are drawn to it.  But the sad fact is that it doesn't work.  It fails too many of the kids who try it.  They just never figure out the phonetic code, as they need to do in order to become good readers.  The solution, of course, is to teach the phonetic code directly or systematically.

This doesn't mean that we should just scrap Doman altogether.  He just happened to be wrong about the whole word aspect.  As far as I can tell from discussions here on these boards, the Doman method of teaching little kids doesn't always work for all kids.  I have sometimes wondered if this is because the kids never do actually get the phonetic code.  Well, then, teach it to them.  All you have to do is change the order in which words are presented, so that kids can more easily grasp the phonetic rules.  See http://www.mediafire.com/fleschcards for some help here.  Call it "Doman with phonics," if you like.  Purists won't like it...well, it worked for us, anyway.

[KL]

Hi Ayesha,

Yep, this is the "Whole Words vs Phonics" debate. 

Like so many of the myths and criticisms of early learning, it doesn't have to be EITHER/OR (the other common one being that people think all we do is to try to teach our children to read and not play!).  We certainly recommend BOTH.

For our in-depth view on this, please read this article:

http://www.brillbaby.com/teach-baby/reading-whole-language-phonics.php

In a nutshell, phonics is VERY VERY important and CANNOT be left out.  Having said that, we firmly believe that we can start by teaching whole words at very early ages because it's much more difficult to teach phonics at those early ages.

What we would recommend is this, esp for very young children:

1. Start by showing whole words.  Expose your child to words, and foster the love of reading.

2. Slowly introduce whole words in such a way as to help them intuit phonics rules (eg., cat, bat, hat, fat).  The "B words" Category in LR is also designed to do that.

3. When your child can speak reasonably well, shift more emphasis to phonetic teaching.

Unfortunately, due to the irregular/inconsistent nature of the English language, we cannot wholly escape the whole word method, hence there will always be words that need to be memorized, like "one". And that's also a reason why it cannot just be the phonics method.

[Kyles Mom]

Daddude,
I am not able to download the first set of Phonics.....phonics01.doc...tried many times...
can u pls help?

[Tanikit]

If anyone can get hold of this book: Reading and Writing before school by Felicity Hughes, I would advise them to look at it. It was written in the 1970s by a woman who used Doman to teach her two year old children to read and she incorporated phonics as well and sets out a very good system for teaching the phonics.

It seems a bit silly to scrap the whole word appraoch in France (or any country) as phonics is usually taught using whole words. No one will care to say c-a-t til they know that cat is cat. I really do not understand why there is still an argument about phonics vs whole words when it is so clear that both have merits and should be used together.

The phonics approach though is based on being able to say the sounds and while babies are still learning to speak it is best to go with only the whole word approach. Phonics can and has been introduced to children usually from about two years + (Apparently Robert Titzer's daughter could show she understood phonics at 18 months)

I don't know why France would ban the whole word method.

[patreiche]

When I was taught phonics, I am pretty certain it didn't start till second grade. In first grade we were taught whole words if I am not mistaken until we could do basic reading then taught phonics.

I feel this is a bunch of teachers who refuse to give up on what they believe or have been taught in college like it is gospel or the only way to learn. My cousin, who is a teacher, looked at me like I had three eyes when I told here I was teaching him to read.

I guess ask them to present the child that has been taught this way that can't read or doesn't know phonics. I am really tired of the skeptics when it obviously works. I think it like telling the teachers the world is round. They have been brain washed into it has to be phonics at such and age etc and listen to nothing else. She actually believes teaching is a science instead of an art. I feel teaching is an art and there are many possibilities of how to accomplish teaching. Teaching is far from a science since no one really understands how the brain works. When they figure out the brain then maybe they can call teaching science.

I will add phonics when he is old enough to understand it. But at this age whole words is the approach. But as DADDUDE suggest you can combine the two by how you introduce words which will cause them to learn phoncis the same unexplainable way they are learning language. We don't teach them how to construct sentences or other things about language they just learn it . So I think they are quite capable of learning phonics with a whole word approach.

[DadDude]

Daddude,
I am not able to download the first set of Phonics.....phonics01.doc...tried many times...
can u pls help?

Go to http://www.mediafire.com/FleschCards

Click on any of the files there.  You will come to another page, where you have to click "Click here to start download" in a little yellow box.  Click that, and the download should start.  I had no trouble downloading phonics01.doc just now.

[DadDude]

KL says, "In a nutshell, phonics is VERY VERY important and CANNOT be left out.  Having said that, we firmly believe that we can start by teaching whole words at very early ages because it's much more difficult to teach phonics at those early ages."

Let me try to understand: it cannot be left out, except when it can, namely at "early ages"?  Then it looks like you're actually coming out against the teaching of phonics at an early age, KL, because you think it's too hard.  But it's not too hard!  I've explained how.  It's simply a matter of teaching words in phonetic groupings (e.g., my "Fleschcards," named after Rudolph Flesch, begin with a bunch of short-A words) rather than in subject groupings.

In the U.S. public school system at least, frequently lip service is given to phonics, and people, trying to sound reasonable, say we should "do both."  They've been saying so since the 1970s or 80s, when it began to be clear just how solid the case for phonics was.  The "do both" suggestion is called "balanced literacy."  It sounds very reasonable.  But in practice, it usually means whole word/whole language teaching, with a few scattered lessons about specific rules.

Now, nobody doubts that there are many words that simply must be learned by sight.  So, as far as I'm concerned, there's no question that some "whole word" teaching is appropriate.  Of course it is.  As far as I can tell, the "phonics wars" all come down to one very basic question: when you initially teach children to read, do you do it by teaching phonics directly and systematically--or don't you?  There are many ways to teach phonics "directly and systematically," but what that phrase basically implies is that you let the beginning reader practice decoding words phonetically, you teach the decoding rules one by one, and you systematically go through all the rules until they've mastered all of them.  That's what phonics teaching is.  If you don't support that, you don't actually support phonics.

My boy hasn't mastered all of them, but we're getting close to the end.  And he can, at age 2, decode an impressive number of words.

[DadDude]

Let me elaborate one point.  I say it's not too hard for small children to learn phonics systematically.  Let me explain why I say this.  All that Doman would have you do is learn a lot of words in whatever order you like (as I understand it), typically grouped by subject.  This is supposed to result in reading toddlers (though, from what I gather, it doesn't always work).

Well, if that works, then presenting words in phonetic groupings instead of subject groupings should work, too.  After all, they are the same words presented the same way; they're just reordered so that it becomes clearer to the child what the phonetic rules are.  Again, for an example of what I mean, see http://www.mediafire.com/fleschcards

That's an example of a way to teach small children phonics.  Why not organize and present your "bits" in this way??

[Ayesha Nicole]

Dear KL & All,

Here is an article reporting a scientific study (versus the opinions of educationalists - which is a completely different discipline/methodology/approach than the fields of linguistics and field of the psychology of education) supporting the integration of the various methods:


Science News

Phonics, Whole-word And Whole-language Processes Add Up To Determine Reading Speed, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2007) — Reading specialists have often pitted phonics against holistic word recognition and whole language approaches in the war over how to teach children to read. However, a new study by researchers at New York University shows that the three reading processes do not conflict, but, rather, work together to determine speed.

The NYU study, by professor of psychology and neural science Denis Pelli and research scientist Katharine Tillman, measured the reading rates of 11 adult readers. It examined how three reading processes contribute to reading speed:

1) phonics, in which words are decoded letter by letter;

2) holistic word recognition, in which words are recognized by their shape; and

3) whole language, in which words are recognized by the context of the sentences.

Readers in the study read passages from a Mary Higgins Clark novel. The text was manipulated to selectively knock out each process in turn while retaining the others. Whole word shape was removed by alternating case: "sHe LoOkEd OvEr hEr ShOuLdEr." To knock out the whole language process, the order of the words was shuffled. To knock out phonics, some of the letters were replaced with others.

Pelli and Tillman's results show that letter-by-letter decoding, or phonics, is the dominant reading process, accounting for 62 percent of reading speed. However, both holistic word recognition (16 percent) and whole-language processes (22 percent) do contribute substantially to reading speed. Remarkably, the results show that the contributions of these three processes to reading speed are additive. The contribution of each process to reading speed is the same whether the other processes are working or not.

"The contributions made by phonics, holistic word recognition, and whole-language processes are not redundant," explained Pelli. "These three processes are not working on the same words and, in fact, make contributions to reading speed exclusive of one another."

"The fact that letters, words, and sentences are all involved in reading is nothing new," Pelli added. "But finding that their contributions to reading speed are additive is startling."

The findings appear in the Aug. 1 issue of PLoS One, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. The paper is entitiled "Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation."

Adapted from materials provided by New York University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801091500.htm

[DadDude]

Ayesha, interesting and no doubt valid findings, but that doesn't have any immediate implications for how reading should be taught.  Indeed, adults read many words (and even whole phrases) as "whole units," and part of what it means to be educated is to recognize and process more and more of them quickly.  But one of the most basic fallacies of the whole word method is to assume that since adults read whole words, we should teach reading by teaching kids to recognize whole words.

The more relevant studies are those that compare (1) teaching phonics to kids systematically, versus (2) any other method that does not involve teaching phonics to kids systematically.  I won't dig them up (just Google "phonics studies" or look at this link http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/Phonics/Summary.htm ), but trust me--(1) always comes out on top in terms of superior reading tests for kids.  Yes, whole word/whole language works for a lot of kids, but that's because they happen to figure out the phonetic code by induction.  But some kids, including some smart kids, don't happen to figure it out.  It needs to be explained (or shown) more carefully and systematically to them.  Phonics, by contrast, works pretty much whenever it is tried, and it doesn't have to be terribly complicated or dull.

[KL]

Hi Daddude!

We actually don't disagree at all! I guess it's a matter of definition.  What I meant by phonetic teaching is where you start by teaching the alphabet, then the pronunciation of each letter, and then how you would piece the different parts together to sound out a word.  Yes, I would NOT start by teaching a baby that!

I WOULD absolutely show a child word groups which help show the phonics rules in action, and that can be at very young ages.  My personal preference would be start the learning process by showing more 'enjoyable' material, like animals (with all the pictures, videos, etc.) to get the child interested in the entire reading process, and then gradually introduce phonics sets, and then as soon as a child can start enunciating, to move on to the type of phonics lessons I mentioned at the beginning.

And no one is saying whether one way is superior to the other or not. I personally think that if one were to choose one from the other, I would certainly choose phonics. But thankfully, it's not an either/or situation we have!

Thanks for that interesting article, Ayesha!

[Ayesha Nicole]

Dear All,

The person that told me this gave me the source of her statement and my original question - an article from a Spanish magazine:

http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=46&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=337153&idseccio_PK=1021&h=

I tried to use YahooBabel to translate and it is not the best:

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elperiodico.com%2Fdefault.asp%3Fidpublicacio_PK%3D46%26idioma%3DCAS%26idnoticia_PK%3D337153%26idseccio_PK%3D1021%26h%3D&lp=es_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

Please share your thoughts!
- Ayesha

[Tanikit]

I do not speak French so have had to read the translation and it is very hard to understand however one quote did bother me:

"Wettstein-Badour is sorry that the decree of the Government is not stricter in the imposition of the syllabic method, that she denominates alphabetical to consider that she is based on the phonemes and not on the syllables."

Phonemes, basic phonics and syllables are not the same thing at all. c-a-t (basic phonics) vs t-r-ai-n (including the phoneme ai) and syllables (where I imagine cat would be taught as a whole word while number would be taught as num-ber) - never heard of anyone teaching a syllable method of reading... is this just a translation error and do they mean that syllables are phonemes?

[Ayesha Nicole]

Dear Tanikit and All,

The original article is written in Spanish and the English translation is not exact.

I will be contacting the French Embassy in America to speak with the Attache of the Education Department to get a better explanation from a more direct source to the issue.   She is traveling now and will be back in next week.

Will post more later.
- Ayesha

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