I read the second article you linked. It is ironic that the author uses the same wordage I do: a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But, she states that this teaching method is wrong. She has a very forceful manner of writing and it could be easy to agree with her but for the fact that there are many articles out there with just as much evidence contradicting what she writes. I am always very wary of anyone who claims that they have all the answers. No one has all the answers for all children.
Here are the major claims of that article:
1. Reading is not a natural process. It is not a natural process for all children but it is a natural process for some children. Children come into the act of learning to read with a very developed verbal vocabulary and an already ingrained sense of the rules of language. For some, it is difficult to translate that to the written word. Symbology is not easy for very young children to relate to and for some it must be taught systematically. Particularly with struggling readers, a systematic approach can work best. But, that should always include exposure to "whole language" meaning the written word in the context of literature. The goal of teaching reading is to foster a joy of reading and reading independence. These goals cannot be met solely by teaching phonics. Phonics and phonemic awareness must be combined with reading for understanding.
2. The alphabetic system can not be learned simply by exposure to print. Well, duh. That should be a given to all teachers. If it is not, then something is wrong. All teachers should be teaching children how to read from the basis of how the alphabet is used. Very young readers learn word families and rhymes. They learn one letter at a time immersing themselves into a study of that letter and its use in the beginning, end, and middle of words. They learn sound families. Children do need to learn and use word recognition and pronunciation skills in order to develop fluency. But, fluency can never occur if skills are only taught in isolation. Skills must be translated into reading whole bodies of text. This is best done by teaching skills in conjunction with spelling and writing and then reading for context after words have been mastered.
3. Spoken and written language are very different and require different skills. Well, again, duh. If there are teachers not doing this they are teaching reading and writing the wrong way. Skills should not be taught in isolation, however, because we do not use them in isolation as adults. Again, teaching phonics and phonemic awareness in conjunction with spelling and writing and then teaching reading with whole bodies of texts, after word mastery has occurred, is the best way to do this.
4. The most important reading skill is not context but to be able to read single words completely. I am sorry but we adults do not often read every word individually. We read for context and often skip words in our mind but still understand the passage. Most published individual reading tests understand this. You sit with the teacher and read a passage out loud. The teacher listens and makes notes of how reading is done: how long does it take to pronounce a new word, how many words are skipped, how many words are changed, does this word change affect context. If the word change does not affect context, the reader is not scored down for that change. After the passage has been read aloud, the teacher asks comprehension and vocabularly question. If the reader changed a word here and there but context remained, then that reader will be able to accurately answer comprehension questions. Comprehension is the goal of reading.
5. Context is not the primary factor in word recognition. It is both pronunciation skills and context that affect comprehension. For example, if you read a word like bear/bare. You need to use context skills to determine in your mind which bear/bare is being used. But, you had to start with being able to pronounce the word.
So, basically, a little bit of this and a little bit of that is necessary to learn to read. You cannot teach reading only with phonics and you cannot teach reading only with whole language. You must ascertain what kind of reader you have and what skills they need to learn and give them a balanced approach to mastering all the skills involved. For some children, this will involve little phonics and for others it will involve a lot of phonics. But it should never involve only phonics or only whole language. We do children a grave disservice to limit their skills to just one.
I personally think teachers are doing children a terrible disservice if they are skipping over phonics.
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