A discussion in Australia, about how to teach children to read, seems to link into poetry.

Phonics and reading

Janet

It doesn't seem to link so I'll post extracts below:
Phonics has a phoney role in the literacy wars


Sydney Morning Herald

August 16, 2005


"Children do not need to sound out words to read them, writes Mem Fox.




Phonics is the ability to break up the words on a page into sounds - for example, seeing the word "cat" and being able to say its individual sounds: kuh-a-tuh. Making the right sounds is phonics, but phonics is not reading. Reading is making sense from the page, not sounds...

...Parents often make the understandable mistake of believing that phonically sounding out words is reading. But we do most of our reading in silence: the meaning is on the page, not in the sound. That's why we can read and understand the following, whereas sounding it out would be chaotic and meaningless:


Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteers are in the rghit pclae: you can raed it wouthit a porbelm bcuseae we don't raed ervey lteter but the word as a wlohe.

So, hey, waht does this say abuot the improtnace of phnoics in raeidng? Prorbalby that phonics ins't very imoptrnat at all. How apcoltapyic is that, in the cuerrnt licetary wars?

Only 50 per cent of English is phonically simple. In the following sentences, "ough" is pronounced in eight ways: "I thought I'd thoroughly worked through the expenses for the furlough I'd been granted by the borough office (in a tough drought year), but actually it wrought havoc with my budget. I had to cough up so much more that I nearly choked on a doughnut and hiccoughed for ages afterwards."

Is it necessary to have a grasp of phonics in order to be able to read? Broadly speaking, the astonishing and contentious answer is no, otherwise we wouldn't be able to read silently; neither would it be possible for the billions of people in China and Japan to learn to read when no phonics exists in their written language - it's displayed instead in pictographs. Children in China are told what a word is, then they learn to recognise and memorise it.

... Teaching children to read through a phonics-only program is asking them to break reading into tiny pieces and then put it together again. It's difficult, confusing and unnecessary...

...Phonics comes into its own as soon as children begin to learn to write. Josie (who read at three years) is now courageously struggling to write. She has to match the sounds of language to the letters she scrawls across a page. During the complex battle between her brain and her hand she's now coming to grips with phonics and spelling...


Mem Fox was an academic in literacy studies for 24 years. She is the author of Reading Magic: how your child can learn to read before school - and other read-aloud miracles."




[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 15, 2005).]

Thanks Janet. I would love the correct link, or a citation to the research study if you have it. I am a teacher and early literacy is one of my areas. I love Mem Fox, and the study sounds facinating and important. Please post whatever other information is in the article. Meanwhile, I'll hope it is in the next issue of Reading Research Quarterly.

David R.

David,
I'll PM the complete text to you. There are fierce copyright laws in Australia.

Janet

Janet & David--

Click on Janet's link and, after scrolling down to the website's search box, type in "phonics" . . . voila! . . . the article is one of several on the subject.

Our daughter learned to read before she was four years old, thanks to roadsigns, headlines, Dr. Seuss and her very own bookclub membership. Before starting to grade school, she had outgrown the good Dr. and was more interested in reading 2nd grade level storybooks. So, when her first-grade teacher raised hell with me because phonics was the <u>only</u> way to teach a child how to read and reading comprehension was, for all intents and purposes, immaterial to learning--??!!--well, let's just say that I'm glad our daughter never lost her love for books <u>despite</u> learning phonics as an afterthought. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/wink.gif

Honestly, I think phonics is useful as one more trick in the bag.

I remember when I was learning to read, since I had a much larger verbal vocabulary than I did a written one. Phonics allows a child with such to parse a word they've never read before but have heard, though there are still some problems. In particular, I remembered having to read a story about "busy chick" to my 1st grade teacher and saying "bussy" only to be corrected and told it was pronounced "bizzy." Suddenly the story about the hyperactive chick made much more sense, though my teacher was not able to offer any explanation of why "bus" was pronounced "biz" in "busy" and "business."

I was also mispronouncing "automaton" for years because I'd read it many times before I heard anyone actually say it.

Kids learn phonics as a way to make sense of written words, but also quickly learn that it's not universal tool, and you realize that "busy" and such are not pronounced as they should be.

I was also pronouncing the "h" in "herbal" for years until corrected to the illogical American pronunciation, which now annoys me when I hear Brits get to pronounce the h. Unless they're Cockney, which is I think where the American's got the h-dropping from.

Patricia,
Thanks for that. Also you can click on "Commentary" and the article is linked there.
Janet

Kevin, the Australian accent is supposed to be a descendent of the cockney, and yet we have no truck with 'erbs.

It's hhhhherbs all the way down here.

It sounds weird to us when we hear 'erbs on tv or the movies.

------------------
Mark Allinson

Patricia's daughter's first grade teacher was a hack if she truly thought comprehension was immaterial. But it probably was not entirely her fault -- she was most likely trained by true hacks who actually thought such things.

Of course phonics (or more broadly grapho-phonemic cueing -- the process of correlating graphic symbols to speech sounds) has a role in reading development. But what this research shows is precisely that it doesn't hold a primary role, and specifically that phonics -- the ability to isolate and recognize individual phonemes in a text -- is of relatively minor importance in learning to read. This is directly contrary to the current politically favored view that mastery of phonemic awareness is a necessary pre-requisite to reading, and that phonics is the primary skill in reading development.

The wider professional view is, and always has been that the most effective curricula take a balanced approach incorporating skill and strategy development in all three of the key cueing systems: grapho-phonemic, syntactic, and semantic. When we read, all of these things are working together. If you are just using "phonics," you aren't reading, you're decoding. I can decode a submarine technical manual, but my understanding of it would be very limited. The recent phonics craze here in the USA is producing fourth and fifth graders who may be proficient decoders, but don't know what they're "reading." In the biz, we call it "word calling." Very sad and maddening. I could rant a long time about the National Reading Panel report and No Child Left Behind and how they are destroying public education, but I am too tired right now.

But I will recall the thread of an argument by literacy researcher James Cunningham (not the poet). One thing he points out is that the "pendulum" in the reading wars is unlike a real pendulum in that it spends all of its time at one or another of the extremes and never passes through the middle (aide -- there is similar pendulum in literary and cultural criticism, IMO). He also points out that as long as we let legislators and the political process control curriculum we are doomed. We need to take teaching seriously as a profession and let that profession establish its best practices. He asks, "why don't we hold an election to vote on what is the best treatment for, say, lung cancer?"

I thought said I was too tired to rant. Better stop now.

David R.



[This message has been edited by David Rosenthal (edited August 16, 2005).]

Presumably it's an attempt to use the 'correct', i.e. French pronunciation. Like the American tendency to say 'fillay' for fillet.

I have to disagree with the logic of this -- that silent reading precludes sounds -- and since Robert Graves says it better than I can, I'll let him to the talking. From The Common Asphodel

Best,
Marcia

I'm not certain why the concept is so hard to grasp: Some people read differently than others. Some people go across the page reading the words not as the associated sounds, but as the concepts linked to those sounds. Deaf people do this by default. Others read along and either inwardly vocalize or silently read along, sometimes even with their lips moving silently over a particularly delicious passage--and even when they're not making any noise, a tongue twister on the page will gag them.

As a writer, you need to learn to appeal to all your readers, not just the ones who read the same way you do.

*sigh*

The Scorched-Earth war between Phonics people and Whole Word people has a lot of casualties among actual early readers and probably millions of pages have been expended in the battles, so why add a few more?

But I'm going to, because this particular study, which is often quoted, is deeply annoying to me.

The first thing to recognize, I think, is that there is no such thing as truly silent reading. All of us subvocalize -- as a matter of fact, reading fluency and comprehension go down significantly if you just hold your tongue while you read. Our subvocalizations are the same as speech; they're more like a kind of short-tongue (analogous to short-hand) that would sound like mumbo-jumbo if it were vocalized, but nonetheless, it's important to even the most literate people, and much more so to children who are just learning to read. It's not so much the sound of the letters, as the act of vocalizing them that makes a difference. In that respect, when we read the example paragraph, we're subvocalizing the words we *think* we're reading, rather than the "words" we're actually reading.

Second, is that that example is pretty misleading. If only the first and last letters matter, the following:

Aoiecrcng to reaecrsh* at an Esglnih ustvrniiey, it dnsoe't mteatr in waht oedrr the ltrtees in a wrod are

should be just as easy to read as the example. But as a matter of fact, it's definitely harder, because the words in the example aren't randomly scrambled. They're scrambled in such a way to leave important aspects of the word (double-letters, ending sounds) intact. The words in the example are badly spelled, but they're not just random, and that makes all the difference.

If the example proves anything, it proves that readers can disambiguate the meanings of many words by reference to context, which depends on neither whole words, nor on phonics directly. This is particularly true because conjunctions, pronouns etc. are generally short, and so we get all of our ifs, ands and buts unscrambled. But if the context isn't so clear, we might be in more trouble.

Like, can anyone tell me what this is, or read it anything like fluently?

Rrvttaeeeesnips and drciet Texas slahl be aootrineppd aonmg the sarveel Stteas wchih may be iuecnldd whtiin tihs Uionn, anodrcicg to tiher rivesecpte Nbrmeus, wichh slhal be drneieermtd by andidg to the wlohe Nuebmr of fere Porness, ildicnnug toshe bnuod to Scerive for a Trem of Yares, and encludixg Iiannds not txead, there fhftis of all ohetr Psneros.

When it comes down to it, easy reading is just that: easy. When we read some ridiculous study in a newspaper maybe a couple of letters mixed up isn't a big deal. After all, newspapers are made to be readable. Under those circumstances we probably employ the least number of resources available to us -- and probably make mistakes, such as substituting a word for its synonym or for a related word, which we cover up so well that we don't even notice (a problem for proofreaders everywhere).

It's what we do when the text is *difficult* for us that matters. It's resources we have at our disposal under those circumstances that should be of interest to teachers, because it is only by encountering difficult texts that students improve rather than merely prove their literacy.

Both whole-word and phonics-based programs have a place here, though to my mind, the importance of context is drastically understated. Probably that's because the only way of improving a student's ability to contextually understand reading material is to give him or her a lot of reading and writing assignments, which is neither "efficient" enough for overworked school systems and parents, nor profitable enough for today's educational companies.

What a crazy idea: maybe the best way to learn to read is...to read a lot.

Nah. It'll never fly.

-Dan

*Did anyone notice that the fourth word in the example is "researchch"?? Maybe adding extra letters doesn't matter either! Or maybe the study is bunk. Perhaps we should ask the researchchers at "an English university" (which one? The University of Made-Up-on-Avon?) to clarify.



[This message has been edited by Daniel Pereira (edited August 16, 2005).]

Eye kood awlsoe "proov" thaat fawnix r mor impawrtent thaan hole wurdh reedin. Ann Inglesh younihvercity sez soe.

Or maybe the fact that you can _____ this sentence without any ________ means that neither words nor sounds are important!

-Dan

Daniel Pereira isn't the author of any books on reading, so he has no financial motivation for pretending his point of view is the right one.

[This message has been edited by Daniel Pereira (edited August 16, 2005).]

Kevin,
I'm pretty sure that the olde English "erbs" was general throughout the country and not just the property of Cockneys. It is still used in parts of Britain outside London.

The Australians seriously pronounce the letter "aitch H" as "Haitch" which the New Zealanders never do--except some of Irish Catholic descent. The Haitch is said to have been learned in schools taught by Irish nuns. The most surprising people use that pronunciation in Australia. They would call the Record company HMV--Haitch MV. Only comedians did that in my youth, or upper class actresses playing Cockneys.
Janet

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within the Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.

There. Though I will admit that I read the string "and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within the Union, according to their respective numbers" and then just typed it into a search engine to find the rest of the text.

Though I will also admit I'm used to reading 18th C prose, including legalese, so there is an edge there.

Marcia,
I agree that silent reading is as involved in sounds as vocal reading. That was not my own opinion that you quoted. Incidentally, all of my poems are really meant to be read aloud in one's head. They can be read aloud but I prefer them to be absorbed through the skin ;)

My own early education was based on the Montessori method and I simply read like I walked or breathed. It was utterly painless and rapidly became second nature. I'm sure the main part of the teaching was phonics.
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 16, 2005).]

Kevin,

Plus you've been up to your eyeballs in taxes stuff in the other thread.

But really, did you read it fluently? How long did it take to decode that? Is the study correct?

-Dan

All,

This doesn't answer anything but I thought I'd bring up an intrisically interesting anecdote from the annals of reading. If we're to believe St. Augustine, reading silently may be datable to the 4th century A.D. Or maybe Augustine's observation of St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, reading "with silent tongue and voice," is just the earliest mention of silent reading in the west (The Confessions, Book V).

As the proud papa of kindergaartener who is reading at a clip, I believe in "the hundred languages of children." That is, kids possess multiple means and strategies for learning and literacy. Early education teachers who are artists--something that our education policies and funding priorities discourage as much as possible--are capable of fostering the development of each child along unique paths according to the child's innate strengths and problem-solving styles.

By the way Janet and Dan, I've been led to believe that New Zealand is ground zero for some of the most interesing early literacy education in the world: Whole Language pedagogy, Mari Clay, Reading Recovery, etc. I don't know much about it, but it sounds fascinating. I've also been led to believe that these advances would not have been possible without the inherent challenges of teaching literacy in a bilingual Maori-English environment.

If anyone has further insight, I'd be captive.

John

Thanks for posting that Janet. We have a 1 year old, so we're both very keen to instill an interest in talking and reading. I was a late reader myself (as far as I can recall) and was still reading E Blyton till about 13, when I suddenly realised how silly her stories were.

[quote]John wrote:
By the way Janet and Dan, I've been led to believe that New Zealand is ground zero for some of the most interesing early literacy education in the world: Whole Language pedagogy, Mari Clay, Reading Recovery, etc. I don't know much about it, but it sounds fascinating. I've also been led to believe that these advances would not have been possible without the inherent challenges of teaching literacy in a bilingual Maori-English environment.

If anyone has further insight, I'd be captive.

John

John, Sylvia Ashton Warner, teacher and writer, is celebrated for her advances in the field of teaching Maori children to read:
Sylvia Ashton Warner

I had an aunt who was born towards the end of the 19th century, who had an international reputation for her children's verse-speaking choirs. She was a teacher and even had a poem published in an anthology which included Robert Frost. Her New Zealand school verse-speaking choirs were broadcast regularly on the BBC during WW2. Recordings which were shipped to London! Keeping up the spirits of the British Empire I suppose. She was my father's oldest sibling. My father was born in 1900 and she was a great deal older.

I recently received a gift from a friend of hers. My aunt wrote a book about poetic meter for children. I had no idea. It wouldn't have interested my parents. Alas it's packed with the books ready for transfer to Queensland. When I was still in my pram she had me reciting:
A birdy with a yellow bill
hopped upon my windowsill.
Cocked its saucy head and said:
"Ain't you ashamed you sleepy head".

Scouts honour. I recited that before I could walk ;)

My aunt's name was F. Alexa Stevens. The F stood for Flora.
Janet



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 17, 2005).]

Well, as someone has been steeped in early literacy research, pedagogy, and theory for several years now, I am embarassed to say that I thought htis was a new study.

Anyway, I agree with just about everything Daniel said. As I said in my earlier post, "phonics," syntax, and context are all important in reading and all have to work simultneously. The reason we can read the jumbled text is precisely that we are using all of those cueing systems.



There it is. I couldn't agree more. I have been teaching students with "low literacy backgrounds" -- largeley poor kids with little or no exposure to print before Kindergarten. What they need is, ahem, EXPOSURE TO PRINT. They need oceans or reading experiences poured on them, and some guidance through it. Now, there are a lot of things we can do in the guidance part to assist development, but immersion in text is a necessary component of any instructional program.

John -- this point is one of the key points brought home by the groundbreaking New Zealand literacy researchers you've heard about (Marie Clay, Brian Cambourne, etc.). In NZ (and I am sorry, but this is such and old saw in litercy theory, that I do not know of a cite for it), they came up with this distinction between the "ten-book child," and the "thousand-book child." If you read to your child every night from age 2 to 5, that's roughly a thousand books. So when that child enters kindergarten he or she has had all this experience of seeing print and hearing print read fluently. Compare that to students who enter kindergarten never, or almost never, having had a book read to them. So how does the K teacher make up that gap? How do we fit three years of exposure plus a year of instruction based on that exposure into one academic year? Meanwhile, over the summer -- while one kid continues to get more exposure and practice, and the other does not -- the gap widens so that next year there is just as much ground to make up if not more.

The prevailing political answer in the U.S. right now is to bombard these kids with "direct, explicit, skills intruction" divorced from any meaningful reading experiences, because such methods are "faster" and can therefore "accelerate" learning. Rather than try to improve the "literacy background" of these kids and their families, which would require money and time and effort, let's just drill them with mind-numbing excercises. The result is that in some instances we are able to improve phonics and decoding skills in early readers, but when they hit 4th and 5th grade, their comprehension skills are so low, they might as well be "reading" engineering technical manuals.

The problem isn't really between phonics vs. whole language, or even "direct instruction" vs. "language experience," which are false dichotomies because in niether case does one approach necessarily exlude the other. The problem, for the most part, is social inequality, which is excerbated by posturing politicians and administrators (politicians in training) who don't think much of teachers, seem not to give a crap about kids (especially poor kids), and wouldn't know what best practices were they bit them on the tips of their....

As Daniel put it: *sigh*.

David R.

David,
When I was a child in New Zealand there was no television ;) WHAT? Is that possible?

My parents read for relaxation and entertainment and so did my brother and I. The great treat was the weekly trip to the Carnegie library and I had moved from the excellent children's library to the adult's library by the age of nine. The public library was the centre of my existence.
Janet

H. Roland Angus-

If you travel around the U.S. you might meet a woman in Terre Haute, who's from Prairie Du Chien, who takes you on a drive all the way down to Baton Rouge where you stay up all night eating crawfish pie and filet gumbo.



[This message has been edited by albert geiser (edited August 22, 2005).]