AQA A level English Language A* model answer to 'Evaluate the idea that reading should be broken into component parts'
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Learning to read - CLA
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AQA
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There are two key schools of thought in regard to whether reading should be broken up. Some linguists argue that children should learn phonics, phoneme-grapheme correspondence between individuals and groups of letters and how the...
evaluate the idea that reading should be broken in
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Learning to read - CLA
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Evaluate the idea that reading should be broken into component parts
There are two key schools of thought in regard to whether reading should be broken up.
Some linguists argue that children should learn phonics, phoneme-grapheme
correspondence between individuals and groups of letters and how they sound, first so they
can apply such rules to all words. However, some linguists argue that reading should
definitely not be broken up and children should memorise the orthography of whole words.
Linguists may argue that it is more important for children to learn phonics since it means
they will be able to decode almost any word into its aural equivalent as long as they have
learnt a productive list of phonics. Synthetic phonics refers to breaking up such words into
phonics which allows the learner to develop such skills. Due to advancements of technology
in the 21st century, there are more apps with flashcards and aural recordings in a range of
accents which allow children to learn phonetics. This is important since once they have this
ability, they will be able to pronounce almost any word before them. However, there are
critics of this approach who argue that semantics is not related to phonetics, so after children
learn and put strings of phonemes together, they may be unable to decipher the meaning of
words. In addition some words have no phoneme grapheme correspondence so if children
try to pronounce ‘hour’ using the monophthong ‘3:’ instead of knowing the ‘h’ is silent, they
may be misunderstood. Therefore some linguists would propose the whole word approach in
which children learn how written symbols correspond to sounds to create meaning. Frank
Smith argues that reading must not be broken down into component parts since it allows
children to learn the meaning of words. This means understanding semantics is at the heart
of this approach. However, this approach assumes that children can memorise a whole list of
words and the reality is that many children learn to read at around 4 years old and storing
whole words in an internal lexicon may not be possible. In addition, the phonetics approach
means children can learn to pronounce almost any word, whereas if children have only
learned a particular set of words, when they encounter an unfamiliar word they will not have
the tools to decipher. However, actually a mix of both approaches is used, phonetics is used
to teach children common diphthongs such as the schwa sound but children also learn how
these are used in words and their meaning. Therefore we can conclude that reading should
be broken up into component parts initially, but once key concepts are understood, rules
should be applied to whole words.
It could be considered that children should learn phonetics through breaking words into
corresponding parts instead of individually on flashcards. For example, Dole notes how texts
have perfect opportunities for children to learn since they can break words down into parts
which allow them to practise phonetics in real situations and understand semantics. Nuncan
notes that this is done through decoding sections of words into their aural equivalents.
However, this approach assumes that all children have had access to equal literary
opportunities growing up when in reality this depends on social and cultural contexts. S.B
Heath found that children who were growing up in lower class black households often were
nurtured with songs and aural storytelling whereas middle class children were brought up by
being read to them. Therefore it could be argued that learning to read should be broken up
into component parts for all learners to allow equal opportunities. It is however important to
note that this research took place in the 80s so may not still apply but I believe that it is a
fair assumption that people grow up with different opportunities so explicit phonetic teaching
to all is necessary. However, Rumelhart would argue that reading requires cognitive building
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