|
And few would
disagree with the prediction that the gap between the U.S.
workforce's current literacy levels and the level required
by technological advances will increase dramatically in the
next decade.
The real crisis
in these statistics is the disproportionate representation
by minority children. In the NAEP data just presented, the
percentages of African-American and Hispanic 4th
graders reading below the basic level are 69% and 64%, respectively.
Nationwide, these percentages translate into approximately
4.5 million African-American and 3.3 million Hispanic students
reading very poorly in grade 41.
To not be alarmed by these numbers is to abrogate responsibility
for public education's role in providing the most basic skill
of all-the skill of learning to read so that reading to learn
is an option to enhance one's opportunities in life. For children
from low print environments, every minute of effective reading
instruction in school counts. But what constitutes "effective"
reading instruction in this era of bitterly fought reading
wars over phonics and whole language instruction? We will
address this question in a tutorial, Q & A format. Then
we will propose a rapprochement between the extremists in
the whole language and phonics camps so that we can indeed
provide a "nation of readers"2.
Effective
Reading Instruction
Q: What is
effective early reading instruction?
A: Effective
early reading instruction is instruction that promotes reading
success, specifically success in identifying words and understanding
text.
Q: Is phonics
or whole language more effective in teaching children to read?
A: It's
not a question of either phonics or whole language. Both play
an important role in helping children learn to read.
Q: But how
can you have both phonics and whole language? Doesn't
phonics stress the rules for relating letters to sounds, while
whole language stresses the process of extracting meaning
from written language? Aren't these views incompatible because
one emphasizes going from part to whole and the other emphasizes
whole to part?
A: Yes,
phonics and whole language approaches are incompatible when
viewed as exclusive instructional approaches to beginning
reading. That is why advocates of both approaches to beginning
reading need to look at research on how children learn to
read.
Q: How do children
learn to read? Isn't learning to read much like learning to
talk? That is, doesn't reading emerge naturally out of interaction
with parents and other adults in a print-rich environment,
just as language emerges naturally out of interaction with
parents and other adults?
A: No.
There are important differences between learning to read and
learning to talk. Learning to talk is natural in that children
grow up learning to talk like the adults around them without
someone trying to teach them to talk. Reading, on the other
hand, requires explicit instruction, and that's why there
are cultures with spoken but no written languages.
Q: So what
needs to be explicitly taught so that children learn to read?
A: An
early necessary step for children is to become aware of the
sounds of language-of the words within sentences, of the syllables
within words, and of the units within syllables called phonemes.
Q: Why are
phonemes important?
A: They
are important because they are the segments of sounds that
the letters of the alphabet represent. For example "cat" has
3 phonemes--/c/, /a/, and /t/--and these 3 phonemes are represented
by the letters c, a, and t.
Q: Is that
why it's important to teach children the ABC's?
A: Yes,
knowing the names and sounds of the letters of the alphabet,
along with awareness of phonemes in spoken language, are the
skills most predictive of reading success.
Q: Does this
mean that children in kindergarten and grade 1 can be taught
phonemic awareness and alphabetic skills and consequently
become successful readers?
A: Yes,
for the majority of children that is the case. Above all,
children need the opportunity to apply their phonological
and alphabetic skills to the reading of connected text.
Q: But doesn't
English contain many irregular words that must be memorized?
A: Approximately
13% of English words are highly unpredictable in their letter-sound
relations, such as the au in the word laugh.
In contrast, 50% of words are very predictable. The remaining
37% consist of complex spelling that can be taught (as the
au in taught and caught is likely to
be introduced).
Q: So is this
where phonics comes in-with the 50% of word that are predictable
and the 37% of words with complex spelling patterns?
A: Yes,
phonics rules are letter-sound correspondence rules. The names
and sounds of the alphabet are phonics rules. Beyond the single
letter-sound correspondences for consonants and vowels, phonics
instruction typically covers long vowel correspondences such
as ay and "magic -e for long "a," digraphs such
as sh in ship, initial consonant blends such
as sl in slap, and final consonant digraphs
such as ck in back.
Q: But I've
heard that it would take over 2,000 phonics rules to program
a computer to read English. Having children memorize lists
of phonics rules would stifle the joy of reading, wouldn't
it?
A: Research
indicates that programs focusing on the most frequent spelling
patterns for the approximately 44 phonemes of English can
bring children at risk for reading failure to national average
in decoding words.
Q: But won't
good phonics programs simply create good decoders-"word callers"-and
not good comprehenders?
A: Remember,
good reading programs are not simply phonics programs. Good
reading programs allow children to practice the letter-sound
correspondences taught in decodable text and in good literature.
In addition, good programs and teachers enable children to
develop efficient word recognition strategies so that attention
and memory resources are more available for comprehension.
Good reading programs always provide access to good literature
and encourage children to read as much as possible material
with which they are comfortable.
Q: There's
so much jargon in education. Now you're switching from "decoding"
to "word recognition strategies". Are these the same thing?
A: In
a strict sense, the word "decoding" emphasizes the letter-to-sound
rules that even skilled readers use when they come to an unknown
word (e.g. cacaphony). "Word recognition", on the other
hand, is a term that emphasizes the role of groups of letters
(e.g. eight has the "long a" sound) or meaningful units
such as prefixes and suffixes and inflectional endings (e.g.,
plural, past tense).
Q: Isn't that
really spelling instruction?
A: Yes,
traditionally it is through spelling instruction that students
go beyond phonics to learn about word meaning and writing
conventions, such as q is always followed by u,
and when to double the final consonant when adding inflections
(e.g., running versus writing). Spelling skill
is not only relevant to writing, it is also important to the
rapid recognition of words required for comprehension.
Q: What about
vocabulary? Isn't it important to reading and spelling?
A: Absolutely.
It's hard to read or spell a word when you don't know its
meaning. And vocabulary needs to be taught, along with listening
comprehension, right from the beginning of school.
Q: What about
comprehension?
A: The
goal of learning to read is understanding printed material.
Efficient word recognition skills is a necessary but not sufficient
component of good comprehension. As children get older, comprehension
strategies should be taught. From an early age, children need
to enjoy reading, which can be facilitated by shared and guided
reading, discussions of literature, and other practices that
help children appreciate reading as a tool for understanding
and learning.
Q: But what
about the most important part of learning to read-the teacher?
A: Parents
and teachers are crucially important to a child's success
in learning to read. Teacher training needs to provide generic
information about how children learn to read and spell and
how to use instructional materials effectively.
Q: Should classroom
teachers know how to identify and teach children with dyslexia
to read?
A: Classroom
teachers need to determine whether children are learning the
reading skills being taught. For children who fall behind
in those skills, additional help by a teacher or tutor may
be necessary.
Q: Is there
a particular tutorial approach that works best?
A: Research
supports the benefit of 30 minutes of daily one-to-one tutoring
by a tutor, knowledgeable in the components of learning to
read-phonemic awareness, alphabetic decoding, word recognition
strategies, spelling, and comprehension. The best programs
provide ample opportunities to read and discuss literature.
Q: But doesn't
intervention need to be tailored to the learning styles of
children?
A: People
mean a lot of different things by "learning styles." Instead,
the focus should be on learner characteristics that predict
reading success. For example, beginning levels of phonemic
awareness, vocabulary, and reading skills will determine how
to intervene and for how long.
Q: Can all
children learn to read?
A: All
but a very small percent of children can become successful
readers and writers if our goal is to deliver effective
reading instruction right from the start.
Confusion
of Process with Product
So why is there
so much conflict about beginning reading instruction if learning
to read is a process of a) accessing the meaning of the word
by becoming aware that spoken language consists of segments
(phonemic awareness) onto which letters of the alphabet map
(the alphabetic principle) and b) accessing the meaning of
sentences by fluently decoding the words so that memory and
attention are freed to construct the author's message? According
to the "simple view of reading"3,
reading comprehension is the product of decoding and listening
comprehension skills. Word recognition and language comprehension
skills are both crucially important to the process
of learning to read. Who could disagree?
Disagreement-actually,
misunderstanding-comes from educators and policy makers who
translate discussions regarding processes of learning
to read into products that demonstrate reading mastery.
Thus, if researchers point to the importance to reading comprehension
of skill in phonemic awareness, decoding, and spelling in
learning to read, then educators conclude that instruction
should focus first on phonemic awareness, then on alphabetic
coding through decodable books of phonetically regular words,
and finally on spelling of all orthographic patterns.
Such bottom-up,
discrete skill instruction leads to production of separate
commercial kits. Many of the basal series in the late 1990's
are the literature-based programs of the early 1990's with
add-on kits. The teacher editions provide little guidance
to the teachers as to how to integrate these kits into the
literature selection. Thus, the basals become unwieldy and
the decision of what skills to integrate into the literature,
how to integrate them, and for how long are left up to the
teacher. Given such a smorgasbord of literacy and skill-based
activities, it is not surprising that time spent on actual
literacy instruction is limited4,
or that disproportionate amounts of time are spent on less
relevant activities. Furthermore, given the reality of one
teacher and 25 or so children in the primary grades and the
taboos against "ability" grouping and Round Robin reading,
it is not surprising that the basals assume whole-class instruction.
Finally, given that the design of the curriculum is orchestrated
by individual teachers teaching whole classrooms of students,
it is not surprising that curriculum-based assessment of individual
children is not characteristic of current basals. A common
expectation is that teachers will master techniques for "kid-watching"5
and for analyzing reading errors in real books (referred to
as "running records"6,
or "miscue analysis"7)
and individualize instruction as needed. The reality is that
these "best practices" are exhibited by a relatively small
proportion of the nation's teachers who have had highly specialized
master's level training in diagnostic techniques. Unfortunately,
these diagnostic techniques are available only in expensive
one-on-one tutorials after the student has fallen behind in
reading. Training classroom teachers in these diagnostic techniques
requires massive amounts of staff development and complex
interpretation of how running records or miscue analyses relate
to the next day's lesson plan.
Stop! How can
our discussion of effective reading instruction that prevents
reading failure have disintegrated into a lament about poor
products that evoke bad practice? The answer is that the research
on how children learn to read has been largely ignored or
misapplied by developers of commercial curriculum programs.
For example, key to the phonological awareness training programs
developed by researchers8,
9 is the idea of
manipulating syllables and phonemes in speech. But
speech sounds-being auditory stimuli-have no place in a pupil
edition and so they are omitted or changed into picture or
letter writing worksheets. Phonics instruction, often accomplished
by researchers through word building activities10
that require manipulation of a subset of vowels and consonants,
becomes translated into worksheets. And spelling research
which lays out the organizing principles of English orthography11,
12 is
translated into endless spelling lists.
So what's the
solution? Forget doing research so that vendors won't distort
research findings into commercial profit? No, particularly
since there is an extraordinarily rich body of data on how
children learn to read13.
The answer is to support accurate translation of research
to practice and to support empirical tests of efficacy, where
the multi-way interactions of processes and products are addressed
by asking: Which students need what, when, for how long, with
what type of instruction, and in what type of setting?
The good news
is that there are classroom reading programs where sound pedagogy
has been shown to have empirical efficacy. Prominent examples
are Success for All14,
Open Court Reading15,
16, and SRA Reading
Mastery17,
18.The latter has
added a literature component so that all three of these programs
can be described as balanced and comprehensive. Many more
programs are currently being developed but they too will need
to withstand the test of efficacy.
Rapprochement
It is clearly
possible for research on how children learn to read to inform
instructional practice and curriculum products. But the biggest
challenge of all may be to confront the bias that these are
not all our children. How many times have we heard the comment,
"But these approaches work only for learning disabled (LD),
at-risk (Title 1), or English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students."
Conceptually sound and empirically-based instructional approaches
work for all children. However, some children will
need more opportunity to practice what they are taught. All
children benefit from instruction rich in oral and written
language activities. All children benefit from listening to
intellectually challenging text and reading from text at their
instructional and independent level. All pre-readers will
benefit from attending to and manipulating sound units in
oral language and then writing down graphic representations
for these sound units, through phonetic spellings. All beginning
readers will benefit from decodable and believable text, along
with other books that may be narratives or expository text,
poetry, or fairy tales. All beginning writers will benefit
from information about the orthographic principles of English
spelling.
Teachers of
regular education and teachers of special education, Title
1, and ESL need to unite forces and work towards preventing
reading difficulties. Reading skills fall on a continuum and
where categorical slices are made in the distribution for
the purpose of identification for special services is arbitrary.
Reading problems after age 8 are refractory to treatment19,
20. The time to
assist children is before they accumulate sufficient
failure to qualify for special services or retention. This
is every teacher's job-indeed, every educator's job.
There can be rapprochement between whole language and
phonics extremists and it is summed up by one word: Prevention.
Most reading problems can be prevented through effective
classroom instruction in kindergarten and early elementary
school. The key is to translate and implement what we know
from research into the classroom21.
Endnotes
1.
Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing
reading difficulties in young children. National Academy Press:
Washington, D.C.
2.
Anderson, R.C., Hiebert, E.H., Scott, J.A., & Wilkinson,
I.A.G. (1985). Becoming a nation of readers. Champaign, IL:
Center for the Study of Reading.
3.
Gough, P.B., & Tunmer, W.E. (1986). Decoding, reading
and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7,
6-10.
4.
Allington, R.L. (1991). Children who find learning to read
difficult: School responses to diversity. In E.H. Hiebert
(Ed.), Literacy for a diverse society (pp. 237-252). NY: Teachers
College Press.
5.
Goodman, K., Goodman, Y., & Hood, W.J. (1989). The whole
language evaluation book. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
6.
Clay, M. (1993). An observation survey. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
7.
Goodman, K.S. (1965). A linguistic study of cues and miscues
in reading. Elementary English, 42, 639-643.
8.
Adams, M.J., Foorman, B.R., Lundberg, I., & Beeler, T.
(1998). Phonemic awareness in young children: A classroom
curriculum. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
9.
Ball, E.W., & Blachman, B.A. (1991). Does phoneme awareness
training in kindergarten make a difference in early word recognition
and developmental spelling? Reading Research Quarterly, 26,
49-66.
10.
Beck, I.L., & Juel, C. (Summer, 1995). The role of decoding
in learning to read. American Educator, 8-42.
11.
Moats, L.C.. (1995). Teaching spelling: Development, disability,
and instruction. Baltimore, MD: York Press.
12.
Henderson, E. (1990). Teaching spelling (2nd ed.). Boston,
MA: Houghton Mifflin.
13.
Stanovich, K.E. (December, 1997). Twenty-five years of research
on the reading process: The grand synthesis and what it means
for our field. Oscar S. Causey Research Award Address presented
at the National Reading Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona.
14.
Slavin, R.E., Madden, N.A., Dolan, L.J., Wasik, B.A., Smith,
L., & Dianda, M. (1996). Success for All: A summary of
research. Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk,
1, 41-76.
15.
Open Court Reading. (1995). Collections for young scholars.
Chicago and Peru, IL: SRA/McGraw-Hill.
16.
Foorman, B.R., Francis, D.J., Fletcher, J.M., Schatschneider,
C., & Mehta, P. (1998). The role of instruction in learning
to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children. Journal
of Educational Psychology, 90, 37-55.
17.
Englemann, S., & Bruner, E.C. (1995). SRA Reading Mastery
Rainbow Edition. Chicago, IL: SRA/McGraw-Hill.
18.
Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing
reading difficulties in young children. National Academy Press:
Washington, D.C.
19.
Francis, D.J., Shaywitz, S.E., Stuebing, K.K., Shaywitz, B.A.,
& Fletcher, J.M. (1996). Developmental lag versus deficit
models of reading disability: A
longitudinal,
individual growth curves analysis. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 88, 3-17.
20.
Torgesen, J.K. (1997). The prevention and remediation of reading
disabilities: Evaluating what we know from research. Journal
of Academic Language Therapy, 1, 11-47.
21.
Stanovich, K.E. (December, 1997). Twenty-five years of research
on the reading process: The grand synthesis and what it means
for our field. Oscar S. Causey Research Award Address presented
at the National Reading Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona.
|