Reading Problems:
Y Hole Langwidg Seams
OK
Today's Snack: Since we're talking about the most widespread reading
philosophy used in schools, and it's called "whole language," but it causes
most kids to become really bad spellers, let's have something really good (a
sugary treat, which we don't usually recommend on this website) - doughnut
holes! Or, for kids who haven't been taught the rules of spelling and how to
apply phonics to words, "donut wholes." :>) How about some orange "joos" to
go with?
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Scholars
who have analyzed the best methods for teaching young children to read all say
that the skills that come from systematic, intensive, explicit phonics
instruction are much better than the sight-reading techniques of whole language.
But almost all schools use phonics only as an add-on to
their basic reading program, which is almost without exception the "Whole
Language" philosophy. Part of that philosophy is to let kids guess at
unfamiliar words they come across in reading, or spell words any way that makes
"sense" to them, while denying the kids the 30 basic rules of spelling because
that kind of direct instruction is "stifling."
Sigh. What's stifling is to be functionally illiterate.
It's a real problem.
The
lack of systematic, intensive, explicit language education in the early grades
of school explains why so many more kids today than yesteryear can't read,
write or spell. It's because they haven't been taught the basic building blocks
of our language.
Parents,
teachers, and after-school program instructors would be very smart to give kids
systematic, intensive, explicit phonics instruction, since schools aren't doing
it, and then to schedule hour-long read-alouds every day, and expect kids in
their care to use a dictionary and correct their own spelling errors.
But
here's why schools have made this huge error:
Good
readers really DO sweep their eyes across pages of text, quickly and
accurately, and glean the meaning very well, despite not actually "reading"
each and every word.
That's
what you do AFTER you have learned the basics and have had a lot of practice.
The trouble is, as brain PET scans show, beginning readers, and those who are
struggling, are NOT able to read the "whole language" way because they don't
have the physical structures in place in their brains. It's not that there's
anything WRONG with them. It's just that they haven't been TAUGHT in a way that
BUILDS that reading-friendly brain structure.
For
disadvantaged kids, or those whose parents are not engaged with their
schooling, there's often a triple whammy: besides the inadequate language
instruction in school, they may be parked in front of the TV after school and
therefore are not improving their listening, speaking, reading and writing
skills at all . . . and disengaged or stressed-out parents don't tend to talk a
lot, own a lot of books in the home, or take kids to the library, museum or
anyplace besides the grocery store.
So
. . . disadvantaged kids aren't being taught right at home, aren't being taught
right at school, don't have access to books, aren't being read to, are being
deprived of the outside learning experiences that build the background
knowledge that is vital to decoding unfamiliar new words . . . you can see how
we're in a terrible mess with reading.
Phonics
keys off the sound-symbol relationships of the alphabetic letters and the
sounds they make, alone and in combination with other letters. Children are
taught the 70 phonograms, or written symbols for all the spellings of all the sounds
in English, in a particular order.
Quickly,
they internalize pronunciations of the phonograms so that when they read text,
their brains silently "pronounce" them. It becomes lightning fast in just a few
months. They also are taught the rules of spelling, proper handwriting, and do
a lot of listening and speaking aloud under the direct instruction of the
teacher.
Whole language is a more holistic, implicit approach. In
it, the teacher reads aloud to children, and they are exposed to text in
mini-books that come with illustrations. They are taught several cues for
deciding what the words are and what they mean.
But
rather than directly decoding each word, they are to absorb the whole sentence
and try to come up with the meaning as a whole. They scan the words, look at
the pictures, check out what the first letter is and the last letter as clues
to what the word might be, and think about the context the word has in the
sentence.
Adults who already know how to read do exactly that.
Adults never take time to think about how to pronounce the individual words;
they just scan along at a very fast clip and their brains take care of the
"breaking down" of the phonograms automatically and accurately.
However,
that's adults who learned to read with phonics. Adults who rely only on
sight-reading techniques rarely gain much function. And boy, does that show in
our society today, with relatively low levels of literacy compared to
generations past.
Children
today, who don't have phonics instruction, are basically guessing at what words
mean. And it shows in everything from standardized test scores to literacy
deficiencies in the workplace.
But it's easy to see how educators and educational
psychologists came to believe that whole language was an effective reading method.
It's how "able" readers already read. So, they figured, it's how we could make
children into "able" readers. But they were wrong.
An adult who reads well can scan the following passage despite
its atrocious spelling errors, and know what it means, because the brain is
already set up to scan and analyze text and discern meaning.
But
a child who's still learning to read, or without phonics skills, will flounder.
Without phonics training, this is what a lot
of kids see when they read today. Unlike adult, veteran readers, they can't
grasp any meaning:
I cduolnt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uendsatnrd waht I was rgdnieg. The phaonmneal
pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't
mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is
taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl
mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn
mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh.
What's sad is that teachers' colleges and many educators
don't realize that this "miraculous" ability to make order out of chaos, and
read a completely mixed-up passage like that, only comes with proper
instruction . . . and too many kids aren't getting it today.
