The Whole Word Method

The method of teaching students to read the language by learning each word creates an absurd situation in which they feel that every word, sentence, and paragraph can be translated to an equivalent in their local language. All issues then have the same weight and importance.

Of course, this is not the case. There are no issues which are more or less important. This is a problem when reading an article. Articles have major issues and minor issues. Some issues are developed as examples to be rejected, while other issues that are presented in only a few words may form the focus for the entire article.

The author checked this assumption with the following experiment:

A class of 35 women college students was taught a series of articles about general issues relating to education. These students were enrolled in various major courses of study, including Special Education, Early Childhood Education, Speech Pathology, and Guidance and Counseling.

We read one section out loud, but the students read the entire article - including those sections - and did exercises and took tests. A larger test showed their comprehension of the entire collection of articles.

Each selection related to compensation or overcompensation.

The very first article included the word compensation and it showed that students do compensate for their disabilities. Subsequent articles had only minor references to compensation, and the last articles had no references to compensation at all. However, I chose selections that could relate to compensation with a sufficient stretch of the imagination.

My initial class showed that people could partially compensate for nearly any disability.

All of the quizzes, exercises, and larger tests for the articles related to the issue of compensation. Because of the first article, students expected to find the same information in all subsequent articles. Class discussions did indeed show that all of the articles were about the positive effects of compensation. No students challenged this assumption, even when the articles related to the subject only tangentially.

Obviously, no harm was done by explaining that people can overcome disabilities with the proper amount of effort, assistance, therapy, support, and encouragement.

However, at the end of the experiment I showed that many articles had limited or no references to compensation. I showed that some aspects of the story have greater weight than others.

This lesson in critical reading demonstrated the importance of distinguishing between minor and major issues, values, issues, topics, and ideas in a story.