1. Perspective in English
language studies
Literacy

2. Question:
Describe some of the more recent
approaches to literacy education.
Explain and analyse the main features,
concepts and implications for society
as a whole.

3. What is literacy education?
Literacy services designed to enable an
individual to increase his functional abilities
through the acquisition of listening, oral
expression, reading, writing and arithmetic skills
based on his everyday activities and needs and
when applicable to make it possible for him to
pursue further studies.
(Ministry of Education of Quebec, 1994)

4. Approaches to literacy education
• Traditional approaches
– The Skills/Phonics Approach
– The Whole Language Approach
– The Balanced Approach
• Recent approaches

5. Skills/Phonics Approach Whole Language Approach
Concept Technical skills Language as whole Not fragmented skills
Belief Need only functional literacy Need for naturalness, real purposes, meaningful
communication, pleasure
Approach ‘Bottom-up’ ‘Top-down’
Teaching Language rules are taught Taught in an integrated fun environment
systematically & explicitly incorporating all skills
Emphasis Precision & Correctness Meaning & Understanding
Comprehension Superficial level & Simplified Relevant & Real
contrived language
Eg. of text Decodable texts via phonics Predicable texts w/ or w/o phonics via context
skills clues
Implications Build better pronunciation & Develop aesthetic appreciation & interpersonal
word recognition sensitivity
Phonics formulas can be Stimulate thinking skills, thus trigger creative
applied again & again imagination

6. The Approach

7. Finding A Balance

8. Recent Approaches to
Literacy Education
Expansion of the definition of literacy in the 21st
century
Development of approaches to literacy
education
• 3 recent approaches
– The Construction of Meaning Approach
– The Sociocultural Literacy Approach
– The Critical Literacy Approach