Key
IdeaWestern Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
Constance WeaverKey
Idea
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
Transcript from Critical Balances: Early Instruction for Lifelong Reading
DR. JONGSMA: Our next participant, Connie Weaver. DR. WEAVER: I too have to make a slight correction in Kathy's
introduction. She mentioned the books Reconsidering a Balanced Approach
to Reading and one about implementing a balanced approach to reading, but what
she forgot to mention is that I'm only editing them. And I don't think
Kathy knew this, but the Reconsidering book, the research-oriented book,
will contain articles by Dick Allington and an article coauthored by David
Pearson. And the second book, to be titled Practicing What We Know: Informal
Reading Instruction, will contain an article by Taffy Raphael. About 15 years ago, I read a book that changed my life. According to
the Dancing Wu Li Masters, a popularization of quantum physics, experimenter
Thomas Young had confirmed in 1803 that light has the properties of a wave.
Then, in 1905, Albert Einstein demonstrated that light has the properties
of a particle. And we normally think of these as being mutually exclusive.
Who was right? Both of them. Whether light is
a particle or a wave depends upon how we measure it, upon what kinds of
procedures we use. (More on FAQ6) The observed, in this case, light, is determined in a sense by the observer
and his or her methods of observation. This information from quantum physics
has profoundly affected the way I look at research in general and reading
research and assessment in particular. For one thing,
it's given me a healthy skepticism towards research, convincing me that
how we define concepts like reading, the way we design our research studies,
what counts as success, and how we choose to measure success will all influence
our results. (More on FAQ6) Quantum physics has also, however, given me a both/and orientation,
the conviction that we must consider not just quantitative
but also qualitative research, not just experimental but also observational and
ethnographic research. In the current drive to improve the teaching of reading, most
of this research, even most of the experimental research, is being ignored.
(Back to FAQ6) In a few minutes' time I can only begin to suggest some of the lines
and bodies of research that are especially important in deciding how to
teach reading, which I would like to define as a process of getting meaning
from texts. These include but are not limited to research on the nature
of the reading process; learning to read; teaching reading skills and strategies,
including phonemic awareness and phonics; the effects of extensive skills
work compared with extensive reading; and becoming literate and fostering literacy,
not merely developing reading skills. These bodies of research give rise to several conclusions that I would like to discuss,
and several of them are summarized in one article or another in that book
I mentioned, Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading. The first of these research conclusions is this: Proficient
and experienced readers typically read many words automatically and easily,
which facilitates the processing of text for meaning. (More
on FAQ1) These readers do not need to use context to help them identify
very many words, as younger and less proficient readers do. Nevertheless,
proficient readers also use context and their prior knowledge and experience
to think ahead as they read, to identify words by just sampling parts of
letters (even though they may fixate on whole words and "see" most
letters), to monitor comprehension (to notice when there is a need for
correction), and to help them in correcting. In the latter instance, proficient
readers typically try various fix-it strategies as needed to maintain grammar
and meaning. They may, for example, reread, rethink, reexamine the printed
word or words; read on; or use several such strategies together. (More
on FAQ1) Regarding the use of context, it is worth emphasizing the point that
good readers tend to think ahead or predict, so to speak. And I like to
put it in terms of their brain is ahead of their eyes. For that reason,
they actually make more miscues with simple function words and pronouns
than readers who are less proficient. For example, here [Figure 1 -- transparency unavailable] are some miscues that were made by children who were among the best
readers in their classes [underlined words were added; words in parentheses were omitted]: "A voice calling him somewhere above."
"It was enough to wake up the dead." "Stop driving until
we (can) see Los Angeles." "I went (over) to his bed." "The door
to Harry's bedroom." "A pair of pajamas, (with) blue and brown, with
white stripes." In each case, the meaning is preserved and the sentence is grammatical.
Sometimes our predictions as readers, or thinking ahead as we read, causes
us to make miscues that not only reflect the meaning of the text but may
be an improvement on its structure or grammar. Here are some miscues from a first grader [Figure
2 -- transparency unavailable], miscues that illustrate the kinds of miscues good readers make
whatever their age. One reader said, "Get the ball, Mary," instead of "Get
a ball, Mary." Now, I'm assuming that
was because there was a picture of a ball, so it was the ball to
the reader. "Who can ride with Mike?" Much more natural than "Who
rides with Mike?" "Mary said, 'Play ball, Jeff.'" "Mike
and I want to play ball." How much more natural to say the word "ball"
in there. "Mike said, 'I can't ride. I can't play with Mary and Jeff,
but I can play ball." I'm tempted too as I try to read that text
to put in the "but." It's simply more natural. It shows the
child is comprehending and reading, and that that is more important to
the child than saying every single word exactly as it is on the page. Next I would like to share with you my redundancy model of reading [Figure
3]. The role of context is widely misunderstood, I think, in reading,
and, thus, widely denied. However, experimental research
on word perception and observation-based miscue analysis research both
show that good readers automatically draw on context and their prior knowledge
as they read, even though this may take only a tiny fraction of a second.
(More on FAQ1) In any other field, if we wanted to know how something worked, wouldn't
we study the process as best we could instead of relying on our beliefs
or values or even on correlational research? For example, if we wanted
to teach children to swim, wouldn't we look at what good swimmers do and
base our teaching practices on helping children learn to swim as the best
swimmers do? Why, then, shouldn't a model of reading be based on investigation
of the reading process itself? And I think that's a key factor here, that
part of the research we need to draw upon is the research on the reading
process. Point 3, learning to read involves developing strategies
for making sense of text, and this in turn means developing letter-sound
knowledge and the ability to use it, along with context and prior knowledge,
in order to think ahead and use fix-it strategies. (More
on FAQ1) Number 4, children, as well as adults, tend to
read unfamiliar print words in pronounceable chunks like syllables and/or
smaller units, not letter by letter. (More on FAQ1)
Both children and adults tend to read unfamiliar print words by analogy
with the pronounceable parts of familiar words. Pat Cunningham has been
mentioned, for instance, as a reference, and her book on phonics emphasizes
teaching children to read words in chunks. (I didn't want to bother mentioning
all my references, so about a fourth of them are on the handout that was
on your chair earlier). Since it's faster and more productive to sound out words in pronounceable
chunks, it may be better then to focus our teaching on this rather than
on sounding out unfamiliar print words letter by letter and blending them,
which is known to be a difficult task. It's kind of hard to take c-a-t
(sounding out) and come up with "cat," for example. Also noteworthy is some recent research suggesting that decoding is
facilitated more by having a goodly stock of sight words than by having
learned individual letter-sound correspondences. I would refer you
particularly to the Moustafa research in the bibliography. And I think
this particular topic needs a lot more investigation because it certainly
is interesting and may be counterintuitive for many of us, but it may be
right on target. Decoding skills alone are often not adequate to
get the pronunciation of unfamiliar print words, although we may get close.
(More on FAQ1) Most of the time context alone is even
less adequate for getting the exact word or sometimes even the general
meaning. The most proficient readers use everything they know to get words
and meaning from text, not just context certainly, but not just letter-sound knowledge either. Rather, they use everything together. And many
children benefit from being taught to orchestrate these sources of information
into effective reading strategies. Six, phonemic awareness and learning
to read facilitate one another. (Back to FAQ1)
Some research suggests that phonemic awareness facilitates learning to
read, and that would include Phil Gough's research. And I think I need
to comment on an important difference in our perspective. (Return
to PI) I would certainly agree that phonemic awareness is an important part
of becoming an independent reader, but students, children, can read text
when supported by simple patterned text and supported by teachers. So I
wouldn't say, as Phil does, that they have to have phonemic awareness before
they can learn to read. I would say it's a part of what they learn in the
process of learning to read. So, to backtrack a second, some research does suggest that phonemic
awareness facilitates learning to read. Other research suggests that phonemic
awareness is a consequence of learning to read. If you learn to read, you
will have accomplished this task of becoming phonemically aware. Some other studies, though not very many, have even attempted to investigate
this, but some other studies suggest a reciprocal relationship, that indeed
phonemic awareness facilitates learning to read, but that learning to read
promotes phonemic awareness, too. Furthermore, none of the research contradicts this reciprocal hypothesis.
Thus, I think a logical conclusion would be to teach phonemic awareness
and phonics in the context of reading and writing, so as to facilitate
this reciprocity. I realize we can still differ considerably among us as
to what it means to teach it in the context of reading and writing, but
I would hope more and more of us could agree on at least that generalization
for starters. Another interesting point, research suggests that children develop phonemic
awareness most easily when the sounds are associated with letters. And
I know Phil may want to discuss this with you later, since we have a slightly
different perspective on -- we have been reading the research slightly
differently, I guess, is what that amounts to. Furthermore, a growing body of research suggests that such teaching
of phonemic awareness and phonics during and in association with the reading
and writing of whole texts is at least as productive as teaching these
skills intensively, systematically and in isolation. I'll come back to
that point later. Seven, decodable texts are more difficult
for children to read than texts with natural language patterns and a wider
range of vocabulary. (Back to FAQ4) Here
is an example of a decodable or at least mostly decodable text [Figure
4]. This actually comes from the 1970s when they were called linguistic
readers. These are the miscues of an 11-year old. I'll read it with just a --
read just a few sentences. It gets more and more painful. "Gail and
Ben cannot get home. The light is wide. I can mim bake a boat said Ben.
You the Gail said Gail. The Gail is big is Ben. Pete boat /not make a pail
boat. Ben they said boat boat said Gail." Well, obviously this child does not expect reading to make sense, and
these are the kinds of materials that were being used with him in a resource
room. Furthermore, a child able to read "Gail, pail, sail, bail"
and "tail" in isolation might still miscue on these words in
an unnatural, unpredictable text like this one. I know I do. When -- when
I actually try to read the real text myself, my tongue trips over itself,
if nothing else. So
point Number 8, many children develop and use phonics skills, that is, decoding
skills in this case, without very much explicit instruction, if any, except
perhaps through help in spelling words as they hear them. (More
on FAQ2) (More on FAQ3) Remember the figure that
Allington gave was, I think, something like 80 percent of our kids probably
learn without a lot of explicit instruction. However, some children do
need further help. (Return to PI) Number 9, many children develop and use effective
reading strategies without very much, if any, explicit instruction.
(More on FAQ3) However, some children do need further
help with that as well. And particularly we can think of the -- the so-called
fourth-grade slump in reading, when children are given more challenging
texts, particularly informational texts, and they suddenly have difficulty
in reading, perhaps partly because they have been reading words more than
thinking about the text they're reading. If that's been the case, that
would be a factor. Ten, children learning to read
benefit from what's often called scaffolding. (Back
to FAQ3) That is, they benefit from temporary support in the reading
of texts and words. One kind of scaffolding is patterned texts, wherein
most of the words repeat from stanza to stanza, so to speak, and only a
few words change as the story, poem, or song progresses. (Return
to PI) For example, "In a dark, dark wood, there a dark, dark path, and
up that dark, dark path there was a dark, dark house. . ." And you
can keep predicting, right, because you can see how the first line of each
stanza picks up on the last line of the previous one. Another example, with somewhat more complex language, is Mrs. Wishy-Washy.
"Oh, lovely mud, said the cow, and she jumped in it. Oh, lovely mud,
said the pig, and he rolled in it. Oh, lovely mud, said the duck, and she
paddled in it," and so forth. In both cases I have not put the ending
on the transparency, so if you are curious, you'll have to read the book. An important point that Dick made earlier, too, or implicit in what
Dick said earlier, is that reading and rereading familiar texts that are
enjoyable gives you the exposure to the words. And then you combine that
with, for example, with the research by Margaret Moustafa and Goswami and
so forth, and you realize that children are learning patterns of letter-sound relationships from the words; that it's not a matter of sight words
or phonics, it's a matter of texts, teaching you words -- and at the same time teaching you letter-sound patterns. The text teaches
you, among other things. Familiar songs, stories, poems, and prayers are another example of scaffolding,
as they make it easier for emergent readers to begin matching spoken words
with written words. And by the way, some of you may know the book The
Least of All by Carol Purdy. In it a young girl, the youngest in her
family, I think the only girl, and certainly the smallest, is kind of viewed
as not being able to contribute to the family's work on the farm. So what
does she do as she's churning butter? She teaches herself to read. She
remembers Bible verses from church and she teaches herself to read the
words on the page that correspond with what she's learned in church. Well, as I was starting to say, the shared reading experience is an
important aspect of, an important kind of scaffolding. This is where a
teacher and a group or a class of children read a simple text together
using a big book or a big chart, in any case a text that all the children
in the group or class can see. This provides support for the less proficient
readers as they read together with the teacher. And the teacher points
to the words as they read so the child has the opportunity to make the
connection between the spoken word and the written word. Another example
of scaffolding is the use of context. At first children may read many words
only in familiar or reasonably predictable contexts. Here [Figure
5], for example, are words that some first graders missed in reading
a list, but identified correctly in the context of a sentence. For example,
"his," "not," "went," and "with,"
the first ones, were misread in isolation, but were all read correctly
in their sentence contexts. Just because emergent readers need scaffolding does not mean they will
forever be dependent upon other readers or upon predictable texts and contexts.
These scaffolds are a lot like training wheels for learning to ride a bike
or water wings for learning to swim. Such temporary supports can be crucial
for some children. Studying or even demonstrating a reading skill
in isolation does not guarantee that it will be used in practice. (More
on FAQ2) For example, Freppon found that students in the skills-oriented
classrooms in her study attempted to sound out words more than twice as
often as those in the literature-based classrooms. But the literature-based
group was more successful in doing so. Apparently, children in the literature-based
group were more successful because they made better use of phonics, along
with context and prior knowledge. On the other hand, it is not necessary to demonstrate
a skill in isolation in order to use it in practice. (More
on FAQ2) For example, fourth grader Jan missed 14 of the first 31 words
in this phonics exercise [Figure
6 -- transparency unavailable] on identifying the sounds that "ea" makes in the words.
And she didn't even attempt the last 41 items, and no wonder, in my opinion.
However, she had relatively little trouble with "ea" words in
reading a connected text, based on her father's and uncle's experience
in pheasant hunting [Figure
7 -- transparency unavailable]. And the text is still rather unnatural in many places, I think, and
not terribly predictable, but if my transparency hasn't faded out on me,
you can see there are a lot more "ea" words she read correctly
than what she had trouble with. Number 13, children who spend a lot of time doing
skills work typically read less well than children who spend their time
reading instead. (More on FAQ2) Dick Allington has
done a lot of the research that demonstrates this and the point I'm about
to make, which is that teachers have typically provided readers they consider
less proficient with what in effect is less helpful instruction. For example,
they have insisted on word perfect reading from poorer readers when, interestingly,
they don't necessarily demand it from those they perceive as good readers.
Also, teachers have actively discouraged the seemingly poor readers from
using the kinds of strategies that good readers use. I can't resist trying to toss in an anecdote. I had a woman in one of
my graduate classes whose son was 21 years old, had been diagnosed as dyslexic.
And I said, why don't you take our reading process course next semester?
She did, did a miscue analysis on her son, and he was making exactly those
kinds of miscues that I illustrated where words were inserted or omitted
or substituted, but the grammar and the meaning were essentially the same.
She also, the mother, when she read aloud a couple of times in class, made
the same kinds of miscues and never noticed the similarity. She thought
he was dyslexic, but she herself was a good reader. So teachers don't deliberately give less useful instruction to poor
readers, I'm sure. They just don't notice what the strategies of better
readers are, necessarily, and they certainly don't realize what they're
doing in responding to kids' miscues. Number 14, children who are consigned to lower
reading groups seldom get out of them, and in fact the gap between these
children and the more proficient readers typically grows instead of closing,
and that's because of an emphasis on skills work rather than reading.
(More on FAQ2) But, in addition, one reason for this
lack of progress of the children in the lower reading groups is that they
consider themselves poor readers. Even if they use good reading strategies,
they often consider themselves poor readers because the emphasis has been
on reading every word and reading it correctly. Now, don't get me wrong. I do think we need to develop -- help children
develop -- letter-sound knowledge and phonics skills, including the ability
to sound out words in pronounceable chunks. I'm not saying we shouldn't
do that. I am saying that when we teach in such a way as to give readers
the impression that they have to identify each and every word, many children
just never become genuine readers. They give up, even if we don't give
up on them. And we often do. So, consignment to lower reading groups and extra skills work, instead
of extensive reading, is not nearly as helpful as some extra skills work
along with extensive reading. And, again, I have to refer to Allington.
In Schools That Work he emphasizes that point so beautifully. At least in the past, when children were taught with a heavy skills
and phonics emphasis and phonics first, some children have learned to read
well, let's say especially those children who have been read to a lot in
the home, while others have become mired in skills and more skills, phonics
and more phonics. And here for this transparency [Figure
8] I chose just to emphasize how, with phonics taught first and repeatedly,
before children read whole texts, they get mired in the swamp and go round
and round in the swamp of skills work, so to speak. Phonics becomes a gatekeeper, holding children back
from reading whole texts. Remember the point that was made earlier. Of
course the children aren't doing much reading; they have to do their skills
work. I mean, this is real. And the sad thing is that again and again the
research shows that it's reading, reading, reading, reading, reading that
does the most to improve reading. So we simply must avoid making this mistake,
of requiring kids to do phonics first and only, and giving them only "decodable"
texts until they've learned the phonics in isolation. Of course, children need to develop reading strategies
and skills, but these can be taught effectively, and for many children,
certainly most efficiently, in the context of reading and writing whole
texts, and in the process of becoming literate individuals who even from
the start not only can read and write but want to. (More on
FAQ2) For example, the results of several research studies comparing traditional
skills emphasis and/or phonics emphasis instruction on the one hand, with
literature-based and/or whole language instruction, on the other hand,
give rise to the following observations. And by the way, some of these
studies focused on children who were deemed to be at risk of academic failure.
This is a small body of research, I grant you, but all of these research
studies used some standardized measures, in addition to a wide variety
of other measures. That was my main criteria for selecting them and then
trying to see what patterns might emerge. These studies show slightly greater gains on various reading tests and
subtests for the kids in the literature-based or whole language classrooms,
and this includes tests of phonics knowledge, as well as comprehension
and so forth. Now, the differences are not usually great enough to be statistically
significant. They're very slight. But at least the children in the literature-based
and whole language classrooms are doing as well on the tests of isolated
phonics knowledge in these research studies. And the children use their
phonics knowledge more effectively. They read for meaning better rather
than just to identify words. They develop more strategies for dealing with
problems in reading, such as problem words. They develop grammar, spelling,
vocabulary, and punctuation skills as well or better. They write longer
pieces, with more sophisticated vocabulary, and they develop a stronger
sense -- develop stronger self-concepts and greater independence as readers
and writers. Now, one may wonder about these whole language classrooms, and I think
it's important to point out that the teachers did teach phonics
in the context of the reading and the context of the writing. Several of
the studies, though not all, used Holdaway's shared book experience in
which phonics was discussed in the context of reading. I'm also aware,
of course, that in the widely touted study by Foorman and others, the children
in the whole language classrooms did not do as well as the direct instruction
phonics children on those limited assessment measures that were used. Supposedly, according to the recently published article by Foorman and others, teachers did
teach phonics in context in the whole language classrooms, but there is
no documentation of this in the article that's been published. There is
no evidence of how phonics was taught in the whole language classrooms,
or how often, or for how long. And so these may be very different
classrooms from the ones in the research that I have mentioned. And of course the more time children spend reading, the better readers
they become. I've already mentioned that. The NAEP data, the National Assessment
of Educational Progress, also shows that. And that kids who read a lot,
who choose their books, and who have ready access to books, such as in
school and public libraries and at home, do better even on the NAEP test
than kids who don't have these opportunities. So, what are we to conclude from this diverse collection of research? That is what [Figure 9]
is meant to suggest. More broadly, it seems to me that a balanced approach to reading instruction
must derive from a coherent integration of the best research, regardless
of our individual preferences for one kind of research or another. Thank you.
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In
my opinion, a logical conclusion would be to teach reading strategies and
skills in the context of reading and writing whole texts and to provide
extra help and extra reading time for those who need it, not to dose everyone
with instruction that the vast majority don't really need. (Back
to FAQ2)
Posted October 1997
© 1997-2000 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232