Balanced Reading Theory

For example, balanced, or integrative reading theory is posited as a more satisfactory interpretation of how students learn to read than either whole language or phonemic based theories. This case is succinctly made by Purcell-Gates (1997), who argues, "most reading theorists...have abandoned such all or nothing approaches and embrace some form of interactive theory of the reading process, while prioritizing different parts of it" (p. 5). Whole language theorists emphasize the importance of learning how to read via an unconscious process of assimilation combined with regular practice in reading "real texts" over time, which taps into the motivational dynamics of students. Phonemic-based methodologies are not rejected, but are contextualized as but one crucial cueing system that may or may not be salient in any given learning situation. A core assumption of whole language advocates is that learning to read is as natural as learning how to speak (Smith, 1985).

Those emphasizing the priority of phonemic-based instruction argue that a mastery of the sight-sound connection (the alphabetic principle) is the foundational baseline upon which success in independent reading depends. This requires the processing of individual phonemes (letter sounds and digraphs - e.g., "sh," "ch") and syllable units, typically in a sequential format based on the logic of what should be learned first according to the precepts of the alphabetic principle. As explained by Purcell-Gates, on this assumption, "the reading process is linear, with letters being recognized first feature-by-feature by a visual system and then transferred to a sound (phonemic) system for recognition and held [however briefly] until the next letter is processed in the same way" (p. 5). Thus, on the phonemic-based theory, the processing of every letter is critical.

This represents the very opposite of the whole language assumption, based on a schema theory of learning, which places more emphasis on the brain in which letters and sounds operating as partial cues, (i.e., mental representations) interact with other cues, including meaning-based ones in providing the needed information to read a given text. In whole language approaches, educated guesses are encouraged as an important intellectual process of inference making and internalization, while that approach is rejected categorically in phonemic-based theories. While in the whole language approach, making sense of the text is the primary objective; in the phonemic approach accurate reading of the words is central, without which comprehension is impossible.