lirazel | (no subject)

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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, I think you're absolutely right.

I keep telling my ESL student how little sense English spelling makes, and tell her, "It's easier than Chinese, but not by that much."

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!

There are just so many exceptions! To every rule! I think that's one of the most frustrating things about learning English.

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.

cahn had a post about this pedagogical argument last year and I think that the argument COULD be entirely correct but it's the kind of thing where it's important to remember we're still deep in the middle of a Replication Crisis in social science research and I think framing this kind of story as being that one side of the pedagogy argument is totally ignoring science and the other side is on the side of science feels almost inherently dishonest. Human brains are complicated, any experiment involving them is subject to all sorts of confounding factors and is extremely sensitive to the questions being asked and types of experimental conditions that are easy to overlook even being part of the experimental setup.

Yeah.

The frustrating thing is that people drew ideological lines between "whole language" and phonics, at least in the US, and now saying that phonics is a better way to teach English reading is... considered a conservative position. Most people arguing strongly for phonics and saying "whole language" doesn't work are also arguing for only reading dead white men, teaching that the US Founding Fathers were actually conservative Christians of the speaker's variety that could do no wrong, and teaching that 1950s gender roles will make everyone happy and violating them is evil.

People who find those positions reprehensible often don't want to be seen attacking "whole language" because they don't want to be associated with people like that.

Absolutely. The series gestured to that when one teacher basically said, "Well, George W. Bush was pushing for phonics, so it couldn't possibly be right." Which is fallacious thinking, but somewhat understandable.

Plus, surely whole language and phonics are not in contradiction to each other but can both be used as tools.

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?

But it did! Up to the late 80s/early 90s, the phonic method was widely used (that's how I learnt!), but then the psychogenetic/immersive method became super popular. That in itself was not a problem--quite the opposite, because it definitely created a more immersive approach and reading experience. But in my opinion both methods can (and should coexist), because our brains need that structure when we are first approaching reading. Otherwise it's just like you said: a sort of reading pedagogy fad (that totally misrepresents Piaget's theories, I think!). And I agree with you in that poorer and working class kids are the ones more affected by a method that doesn't contemplate their reality. When I was a school librarian (in the mid 2000s), I definitely saw that kids benefited from immersive reading, and but also that they need that first structured approach! Giving kids books about things they're interested in is great (I hooked a lot of kids by offering them dinosaur books! XD) but first you have to give them the tools and structure to read them! Over here, in recent years, a sort of hybrid model has been tested, and I think that works a lot better.

Edited (Appropriate icon! :D) 2022-12-02 16:21 (UTC)

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.

OH YAY! This is exactly why I asked the question, because I was hoping someone could give me some insight from a different language perspective. Count on you to do that!

But in my opinion both methods can (and should coexist), because our brains need that structure when we are first approaching reading....When I was a school librarian (in the mid 2000s), I definitely saw that kids benefited from immersive reading, and but also that they need that first structured approach!

Yes, this makes sense! So much sense! That phonics would be an indispensable part of learning to read but that there are other tools too! I'm really fascinated by the fact that it popped up in other languages too--thank you for correcting me!

we're still deep in the middle of a Replication Crisis in social science research and I think framing this kind of story as being that one side of the pedagogy argument is totally ignoring science and the other side is on the side of science feels almost inherently dishonest.

Yeah, that makes sense, though I know nothing about neurological research at all. The podcast does certainly have an agenda--one that it's very straightforward about. Most things in life rest in the nuance, don't they?

Human brains are complicated, any experiment involving them is subject to all sorts of confounding factors and is extremely sensitive to the questions being asked and types of experimental conditions that are easy to overlook even being part of the experimental setup.

Thank you for this reminder!

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.

In Germany, a few years after I was out of primary school, they started teaching writing not anymore with a beginner's reading/spelling book but let the kids write the way they were hearing the words.

Which has led to a whole generation or two who don't learn how to spell correctly when they start writing and have to re-learn how to spell. Which, for many many children, doesn't happen. It's a travesty, really.

(German is easier on the phonetics than English, but we still have a few quirks with the diphthongs and the ss/ß spelling.)

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.

Wow, that's so interesting. I had no idea that this was happening in multiple languages. Incredible.

It really is so interesting to read perspectives and experiences from all over, isn't it? Apparently this one is very similar everywhere, because we've all been fucked over by this fad that says that phonics are old-fashioned and conservative and psychogenetics are modern and creative and the best thing ever... and now people are slowly realising that maybe this is not so! It's ironic because people like Piaget or Vygotsky definitely pointed out the importance of a child's context, like you were saying above, or their reality or their interactions with the world, and so on, but they never ignored a systematic learning, so this fad makes no sense, and it's just a watered down version of what they meant... like most fads, right? So "phonics would be an indispensable part of learning to read but that there are other tools too" is pretty much it, both are useful in order to build a method that will reach as many people as possible and be useful to them, and I agree with you!

(Now I have fond memories of the school library... showing kids books about robots and dinosaurs and monsters, reading aloud... and helping them with phonics! XD)

ETA: I forgot to say thank you for another super interesting and thought-provoking post!

Edited 2022-12-02 16:39 (UTC)

I think, I have heard something similar happening in Germany. Lately,there seems to be a tendency to let children write however they want for the first year or so.

There are phaenomena in spelling that you can't hear if you haven't practiced it or rules you can't apply if no one taught you. Like when to use "s", "ss" or "ß", or when to use "äu" verus "eu". Also capitalisation is like a thing and you can't hear that.

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?

Yeah, somebody mentioned that upthread and that's so WEIRD. It seems very backwards. Like, eventually you're going to have to learn it anyway! So why learn something else you're just going to have to unlearn?

I just saw

rekishi saying essentially the same thing. 😂 I have no idea why they would change it, or what was the problem with the first method.

But this made me think about how I leaned English (which was ~15 years ago, so that too might have changed).

They basically practiced simple sentences with us first e.g. "I like ..." and we would learn words for food, or hobbies or animals to fill in the blanks. In our book the vocabulary was written down in English (duh) and in IPA, so if we weren't sure about the pronunciation, we could check on a chart, how to pronounce the IPA.

We never learnt the weird rules, that I see in some posts, like "i befor e except after ...". And from what I understand those ""rules"" often have more exceptions than one can reasonably remember.

What I find especially weird when it comes to German is that we had a reformation of our spelling. Neue deutsche Rechtschreibung (new German spelling(?)) is new for a reason. Stuff got simplified and the rules we use nowadays are based on phonetics, as far as I understand it. The usage of "s", "ss" or "ß" doesn't change anymore just cause you use a verb in a different tense for example.

As far as languages go, German with the new spelling rules, is pretty logical.(if you ignore genders....)

Edited 2022-12-02 18:21 (UTC)

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