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Writer's pictureBrian Vieira

The fatal flaw in balanced literacy




The critical flaw in all unsystematic whole-language approaches to early literacy is the misconception that learning to read is as instinctive as learning to speak. This belief suggests that reading is an innate, intuitive process that children can master without the guidance of structured phonetic literacy instruction.


For decades, teacher's colleges inculcated the following doctrine: "We don't have to teach kids to read because we don't have to teach them to speak." Kids learn to speak by listening to speech, and they will learn to read by listening to reading. Babies "pick up" speech because we surround them with speech, and kids will "pick up" reading if we surround them with reading.


Since these colleges taught teachers that reading is a natural process that "happens" just like speaking, many educators came to believe that the best way to help kids "activate" their innate reading powers was to expose them to lots of reading. Surround them with speech, and they will learn to speak; surround them with reading, and they will learn to read.

Now, while science shows that learning to speak is a natural process and that reading immersion accelerates literacy skills, the groundbreaking work of cognitive neuroscientists and reading researchers has proven that learning to read is NOT a natural process.


This fact may seem counterintuitive, given the prevalence of the whole-language approach, but research has consistently shown that reading must be taught, or it will never be caught.


Why is reading NOT a natural process? What does the science say about using a structured approach to literacy? These are the questions I will be addressing in my next post.

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