Two Basic Approaches to Teaching Reading Skills - Phonics and Sight Reading

Reading is the fundamental academic skill for a student to master in order to be educationally successful. Because the mastery of reading is so important to a good learning foundation,educators need to be aware of the basic approaches to teaching students how to read.

Throughout the years, educators have debated the significance of the rote learning of phonetic sounds in the process of learning to read. This system usually begins with the short vowel sounds, and then moves to the long vowel sounds. After these are mastered, blends are formed by combining the vowel sounds with various consonants. In a typical phonics learning program, the sounds are learned at first in isolation from actual words.
As the learner memorizes the sounds, then they are introduced in words that are familiar to the emerging reader's listening vocabulary.

The proponents of phonics-based reading point out that the decoding of unfamiliar words becomes easier by using a structured system such as phonics. It can be argued that with all the thousands of words in the English language, it would be impossible for a person to memorize every word, and therefore a system for figuring out the word is beneficial.

Those in opposition to the phonics system see it as repetitious drill that is outside the realm of "real" reading. These educators propose learning to read by introducing actual words in context. Rhyming words are often used to reinforce specific phonetic sounds.

Having taught in systems which use both methods, I can appreciate the benefits of each one. The students who have a strong phonics foundation typically can figure out word pronunciations more quickly, which contributes to fluent oral reading. On the other hand, students who learned via sight-reading techniques often seem to have better comprehension skills.

The solution to the debate between phonics and sight-based reading: a combination of both systems. Provide the pupils with interesting on-level reading material. As they read, instruct them in the fundamentals of phonics and how the rules apply to words in the stories being read. This will provide emerging readers with the abilities to decipher words while reading them in context and building comprehension skills.