Whole-word and phonic decoding differences!

Whole language advocates consider that all children will learn to read naturally, just as they learn to talk and walk; that simply immersing children in good books is all that is necessary to produce fluent and skilled readers. Phonics advocates, on the other hand, believe that all a child needs to become a fluent reader is a healthy dose of phonics in kindergarten and/or 1st grade, that is, exposure to a chronological and explicit phonics program that teaches the alphabetic code and how it works to represent speech.