lirazel | (no subject)

I recently listened to a (very interesting, recommended) 6-episode podcast called Sold a Story about why so many USAmerican kids (and Kiwi kids, too, apparently!) can't read. Long story short: a lady from New Zealand came up with this theory that kids don't learn by sounding out the words but by paying attention to context and stuff like this ("three-cueing"). Her ideas took off and schools stopped teaching phonics. There's a big publisher and some superstar reading pedagogy authors who have made an empire from teaching this weird theory despite the fact that neuroscience is very clear that, actually, yes kids do indeed learn phonetically. This is accompanied by a theory that if you just give kids books on topics they're interested in, they will learn to read automatically? I guess? The idea is to make them "passionate" readers but not actually, you know, worry about whether they understand the mechanics of reading. Which, as a lifelong passionate reader, seems wrong-headed.

It's a depressing story (mostly because it appears that upper and upper-middle class families have papered over this problem by hiring private tutors, while poorer and working class kids just suffer), but what I kept getting hung up on was that this has to be an English-language problem, right? The root of this thing has to come down to the fact that English has such weird and quirky spelling for so many words. A language like, say, Spanish that uses an alphabet or syllabic system for phonetic spelling--in which you always, always know how to pronounce the word just by looking at it--could never give rise to such a theory, right?

So the fact that this took off in the Anglophone world has got to be just another manifestation of the way that Anglocentrism bites us in the butt--if any of these people had looked at how kids learn to read Korean or whatever, they would have realized that their theory can't be right?

Or am I missing something?

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yeah I've read about the three-cuing approach
and it does not seem at all right as a universal approach for teaching English reading! the articles I've read have indicated that a certain percentage of children WILL just learn to read no matter what approach you take to teaching them, but for the kids outside that set, they need phonics, if they're going to be long-term successful. I think you're right that it takes a language with a spelling as weird as English to give rise to a theory like three-cuing!

admittedly I do know someone who is an excellent English reader who I think has never used phonics strategies once; I get the sense they do whole-word recognition, as if English were written with logograms that you learn to recognize the shape of, word by word, instead of any individual letters being relevant ever? which is totally wild to me as a way to approach reading an alphabetic language! to me, the way I store words in my brain requires me to know the spelling, or it can't settle in properly! but I suppose it's an example of how some kids just WILL make reading happen no matter what

Yeah, like, obviously there are a great many English words that you can't read phonetically (or...you know, a given letter can make more than one sound which is complicated!). But the basics? The skeleton of the language? You absolutely can and should read those phonetically! Just because "knight" is so hard doesn't mean that "cat" shouldn't be read phonetically!

admittedly I do know someone who is an excellent English reader who I think has never used phonics strategies once; I get the sense they do whole-word recognition, as if English were written with logograms that you learn to recognize the shape of, word by word, instead of any individual letters being relevant ever?

Well good for them, if it works for them! I do think it makes sense that there are different strategies that different readers use. But as a baseline approach, surely phonics should be the first step?

but I suppose it's an example of how some kids just WILL make reading happen no matter what

Yeah, I think I'm probably one of those people, but I don't think there are all that many of us!

My guess is that over time most successful readers of English are treating words like (using your word) logograms. Some people encourage sight words from the beginning -Lots of board books for toddlers are like that, with a word next to a picture, especially useful for nouns. It's clear to me when I am reading things as sight words and when I'm sounding them out, especially when reading aloud - if we're looking up a medication, for example, and reading it to each other, we'll breeze through the stuff about take it before breakfast with a full glass of water and then slow to a crawl while sounding out the generic chemical name of the med.

I am goofing around with Duolingo Korean, and I find that I'm trying to make sight words out of what I see rather than sounding them out, even though sounding out is much more straightforward in Hangul than in English (not 100%, though). My guess is that readers in most languages end up doing this.

I know Dr. Seuss gets a bad rap as a person, but don't people still read Hop on Pop? The very basics of sounding out right there.

Yeah, I believe that's correct.

I think one of the problems here is that people look at skilled, fluent readers, see that they're recognizing words as wholes, and figure that must be how to teach beginners how to become skilled, fluent readers.

In contrast, gold-standard intervention for dyslexia is systematic phonics instruction.

Yeah, it definitely does sound like that's how the whole whole language/cueing theory thing (two separate things, but I'm conflating them here) arose.

It's clear to me when I am reading things as sight words and when I'm sounding them out, especially when reading aloud - if we're looking up a medication, for example, and reading it to each other, we'll breeze through the stuff about take it before breakfast with a full glass of water and then slow to a crawl while sounding out the generic chemical name of the med.

I don't usually notice at all, but you're right that the medication example is a really good way of looking at it. It's all about the phonics there!

I find that I'm trying to make sight words out of what I see rather than sounding them out, even though sounding out is much more straightforward in Hangul than in English

That's so interesting!

I think people very much do read Hop on Pop (in fact, I read it to my niblings just last week!) and it's that kind of thing that I feel like should be a foundation for learning to read.

oh yeah absolutely, eventually you get to treating words like that if you're a fast, good reader - I'm sure it's why I'm much slower with reading unfamiliar fonts, because the words look different! I thought the person I was referring to was interesting because they do not even approach unfamiliar words with phonics, and would not sound out an unfamiliar medication name.

Okay, here's an interesting thing--with unfamiliar words whose pronunciation is foreign enough to me (for example, lots of foreign words, especially names), my brain sort of shrugs and gives up on the phonics thing and just looks at the whole word. Not always--with Spanish, I always sound the words out. But with, say, a Chinese name, I pretty much just take a mental screenshot of the name instead of figuring out how to pronounce it.

oh fascinating!!!! whereas for me I ALWAYS stop and carefully sound out the word or name, because I cannot stand it if I don't! I wonder if it's in part that I need the sense memory of how it's pronounced to back up my ability to quickly recognize it, because I'm pretty aphantasic?

It only happens with foreign words, and mostly with names. And not ones that I use a lot--I have a phonetic pronunciation of the main CQL characters' names in my head (though it's almost certainly wrong), but whenever a side character who isn't important shows up, my brain just does the screenshot thing. It's like...it's not important enough to waste time trying to decipher it? Or something?