A great debate whether the phonetic approach or whole language approach should be used in the classroom has been occurring since the early nineteen thirties, and there has not been a definite decision on which approach should be used to teach in the classroom. To understand this debate, one must first understand the differences between whole language and phonics learning. The Definition of Phonics Many people are confused by the term phonics, because the term can literally have two meanings. As Miriam Balmuth explains, "in the historically earlier sense, the phonics of written language are the letters and spelling patterns of that language's alphabet and the speech sounds they represent "put very simply, the sounds that the letters make (Balmuth, 1982). This explains the fact that many different written languages have different phonics systems. Some letters are used the same in different languages, but the letters are assigned different speech sounds. The second definition of the term phonics is what most people attribute to the word. The historically more recent definition of phonics refers to a technique of reading instruction (Balmuth, 1982). According to Charles Fries, "Phonics in this sense means the practices in the teaching of reading that have aimed at matching individual letters of the alphabet with specific sounds of English pronunciation (Fries, 1963). The first definition might date back further than the second, but both are used in the instructional reading techniques today. The Definition of Whole Language The whole word approach has been often referred to as the "look and say- approach, and has dated back to the eighteen hundreds. Balmuth defines the whole word approach as "an approach that consists of first presenting a block of written language, rather than single letters, and then breaking down the clock into its components (Balmuth, 1982). Whole language is a process that teaches children to guess at words by looking at pictures on a page, memorizing a few words, and skipping over words that are not familiar.
