Research Critique of Benefits of Systematic Phonics Instruction

The purpose of this study or major research question â€Å"was to find if children taught with systematic phonics programs outperformed children in nonsystematic phonics or non phonics programs. † (Graaff, Bosman, Hasselman, &Verhoeven, 2009) The authors do list a major research question, but the problem statement was not as clear as it could have been. The reader has to read in depth of the entire article to really bring conclusion to what is being researched. It is not very defined with clarity, but you are able to figure out what is being researched and tested. The problem is significant and relevant because the researchers are looking at two approaches using a control group of children enrolling them in five types of programs: Basal reading programs, regular curriculum, whole language, whole word, and miscellaneous programs. In whole language approaches, it is believed that children will learn language (oral and written) best if it is learned for authentic purposes (Stahl, 1999). The author states the computer-based experiment permitted us to compare the differences and effectiveness of a systematic and a nonsystematic phonics approach, because in both programs the same 10 grapheme-phoneme correspondences were taught. Hypothesis The authors open their article with, â€Å"systematic phonics instruction appears to be more effective than non systematic instruction for teaching reading. † (Graaff, Bosman, Hasselman, &Verhoeven, 2009) In the present study, a systematic phonics approach was directly compared with a non-systematic phonics approach for kindergarten children. Feature Article  Country School  Allen Curnow The authors clearly state what they feel will happen in their research but do not go into much detail other than one or two reviews from other authors of why they support the research in the pre testing of it the way that they do. The author explains on the measures of phonemic awareness, spelling, and reading, the systematic phonics group made more progress than the nonsystematic phonics group and the control group. Results The results of the test in the productive letter sound test at pretest were . 13. The performance showed to be no difference between the two training conditions in this section. The free sound isolation test at pretest was 0. The performance on the free sound- isolation test of children in both the unsystematic phonics training and in the control condition was found to have no difference. The measurement of the Reading Test found no difference between the phonics training and the same measure and outcome was found with the spelling test. The results of the testing procedures were hard to read and understand. The process used by Intra Class Correlation was the measurement used at the pretest. It never discusses the ICC during the posttest. Whether the ICC was used it never refers to it after the pretest discussion.