Return-Path: <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov>
Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id e9KN3O911938; Fri, 20 Oct 2000 19:03:24 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 19:03:24 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <a04320408b6168d3f60e3@[10.3.1.82]>
Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov
Reply-To: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov
Originator: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov
Sender: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov
Precedence: bulk
From: Anne Murr <anne.murr@DRAKE.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:204] Re: Response to George
X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
Content-type: multipart/alternative;
Status: O
Content-Length: 12521
Lines: 237
--Boundary_(ID_+8KNcvq4moAmy42UiVVkzg)
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
George,
Round Three!!!
Thanks, George, for challenging me to express what I am coming to
know as a result of what I have been reading and my experiences with
our adult new readers. I respect your knowledge and obvious command
of verbal expression!
Reading consists of two basic components-decoding (word recognition)
and comprehension (meaning making). I've been focusing on the
former; you on the latter. Both parts play significant roles in the
complex process of reading.
What I will continue to contend is that accurate decoding must be in
place BEFORE successful reading comprehension can occur. (Also
experiences, sensory stimuli, etc. which develop vocabulary and the
ability to make meaning). For persons with language-based
differences so severe as to be disabilities, direct, systematic,
multisensory instruction is necessary. (It's not for all, but will
help children and adultswho struggle with reading.)
Here's an analogy: You are working with a person with a physical
ability which allows her to walk only short distances with a very
broken gait. You invite her to join you as you stroll in a beautiful
park. You suggest ways she can move her legs which will make her
walk more smoothly and with stronger steps. You demonstrate various
techniques and encourage her as she practices with you. She,
however, continues to need the wheelchair most of the time. Do you
continue to invite her to join you in walks or do you take her to the
clinic where she can receive the physical therapy she needs to
strengthen her muscles and the neural connections which activate her
movement? I suggest persons with reading disabilities are akin to
this woman. The instruction they need requires direct, systematic,
multisensory instruction - as well as work on comprehension,
vocabulary development, etc.
Now (briefly!) to several of your points:
you referred again to assisted reading where a beginning level reader
reads an entire passage with few errors. Most Level 1 (NALS) readers
have a bank of words that are memorized (long term memory) and known
by sight. Words that are not known are inferred through context
clues, i.e., guessed. Reading begins with visual stimuli but the
cognitive processes which connect the visual stimulus with meaning
making involve phonological processing.
David Share (1995), in "Phonological recoding and self-teaching:
sine qua non (i.e., the essential condition) of reading
acquisition," Cognition, 55, 151-218, describes the learning to read
process as one where, after several exposures to new words which are
decoded, the words enter long term memory and now can be accessed
without the decoding effort. Persons with phonological processing
problems do not move beyond the struggling to decode stage into
effortless reading. Certainly schemas for organizing new information
are necessary as well. But first, the decoding must occur.
Shankweiler,D., Liberman, I., Mark, L., Fowler, C., and Fischer W.
(1979), in "The speech code and learning to read. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5, 531-545,
conducted a memory experiment with good and poor reading children.
The children were presented with string of letters (rhyming and non
rhyming consonants). Good readers had more difficulty remembering
the strings of rhyming letters because the sounds (phonemes) confused
their memory process. There was no difference in the poor readers'
memory task in either the rhyming or non rhyming letters. This led
Shankweiler, et al., to conclude that phonemes do have an effect on
short term memory and reading. The visual cue is not the key, but
the sound code. (Certainly, your presentation about short term
memory from Frank Smith holds true for memory acts, but I question if
that is the type of memory which is activated during reading?)
Have you read John Corcoran's book, The Teacher Who Couldn't Read?
He tells of going to school every year, desperately hoping that this
would be the year that someone would "break the code" for him so that
he could read. While he goes overboard in his advocacy for phonics
instruction, he does describe how he learned to read (at 51 and after
3 years of literacy volunteer instruction which brought him to the
third grade reading level) when he received phonemic instruction
through the Lindamood Bell method. The code was not broken for him
until he was directly taught the phonemic structure underlying words.
Finally, how do you measure and monitor reading progress in your
program? What criteria do you use? At present, we are tracking
progress through the Wilson reading levels. In a year or less we
have students progressing from Level One to Two (with one young man
moving into Level Four in just over a year). This is slow, but our
learners and tutors are finding that taking the time necessary to
build secure skills is meeting their learning expectations.
I want to read more research on the causes of reading failure.
Everything I have read thus far points to lack of phonological
processing ability as the cause. Frank Smith is a theorist, not a
researcher. Theories need substantiation. What else do you suggest?
I'm signing out of this dialogue for the next week or so. Other
projects are pressing. But I'll be back!
Anne Murr
Adult Literacy Center
Drake University
Des Moines, IA
anne.murr@drake.edu
--Boundary_(ID_+8KNcvq4moAmy42UiVVkzg)
Content-type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { margin-top: 0 ; margin-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Re: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:194] Response to
George</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">George,<br>
<br>
Round Three!!!<br>
<br>
Thanks, George, for challenging me to express what I am coming to
know as a result of what I have been reading and my experiences with
our adult new readers. I respect your knowledge and obvious
command of verbal expression!</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">Reading consists
of two basic components-decoding (word recognition) and
comprehension (meaning making). I've been focusing on the
former; you on the latter. Both parts play significant
roles in the complex process of reading. <br>
<br>
What I will continue to contend is that accurate decoding must be in
place BEFORE successful reading comprehension can occur. (Also
experiences, sensory stimuli, etc. which develop vocabulary and the
ability to make meaning). For persons with language-based
differences so severe as to be disabilities, direct, systematic,
multisensory instruction is necessary. (It's not for all, but
will help children and adultswho struggle with reading.)<br>
<br>
Here's an analogy: You are working with a person with a
physical ability which allows her to walk only short distances with a
very broken gait. You invite her to join you as you stroll in a
beautiful park. You suggest ways she can move her legs which
will make her walk more smoothly and with stronger steps. You
demonstrate various techniques and encourage her as she practices
with you. She, however, continues to need the wheelchair most
of the time. Do you continue to invite her to join you in walks
or do you take her to the clinic where she can receive the physical
therapy she needs to strengthen her muscles and the neural
connections which activate her movement? I suggest persons with
reading disabilities are akin to this woman. The instruction
they need requires direct, systematic, multisensory instruction - as
well as work on comprehension, vocabulary development, etc.<br>
<br>
Now (briefly!) to several of your points:<br>
you referred again to assisted reading where a beginning level reader
reads an entire passage with few errors. Most Level 1 (NALS)
readers have a bank of words that are memorized (long term memory)
and known by sight. Words that are not known are inferred
through context clues, i.e., guessed. Reading begins with
visual stimuli but the cognitive processes which connect the visual
stimulus with meaning making involve phonological processing.<br>
<br>
David Share (1995), in "Phonological recoding and
self-teaching: <i> sine qua non</i> (i.e., the essential
condition) of reading acquisition," <u> Cognition, 55</u>,
151-218, describes the learning to read process as one where, after
several exposures to new words which are decoded, the words enter
long term memory and now can be accessed without the decoding
effort. Persons with phonological processing problems do not
move beyond the struggling to decode stage into effortless
reading. Certainly schemas for organizing new information are
necessary as well. But first, the decoding must occur.<br>
<br>
Shankweiler,D., Liberman, I., Mark, L., Fowler, C., and Fischer W.
(1979), in "The speech code and learning to read.<u> Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory,
5,</u> 531-545, conducted a memory experiment with good and poor
reading children. The children were presented with string of
letters (rhyming and non rhyming consonants). Good readers had
more difficulty remembering the strings of rhyming letters because
the sounds (phonemes) confused their memory process. There was
no difference in the poor readers' memory task in either the rhyming
or non rhyming letters. This led Shankweiler, et al., to
conclude that phonemes do have an effect on short term memory and
reading. The visual cue is not the key, but the sound
code. (Certainly, your presentation about short term memory
from Frank Smith holds true for memory acts, but I question if that
is the type of memory which is activated during reading?)<br>
<br>
Have you read John Corcoran's book,<u> The Teacher Who Couldn't
Read</u>? He tells of going to school every year, desperately
hoping that this would be the year that someone would "break the
code" for him so that he could read. While he goes
overboard in his advocacy for phonics instruction, he does describe
how he learned to read (at 51 and after 3 years of literacy volunteer
instruction which brought him to the third grade reading level) when
he received phonemic instruction through the Lindamood Bell
method. The code was not broken for him until he was directly
taught the phonemic structure underlying words.</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br>
Finally, how do you measure and monitor reading progress in your
program? What criteria do you use? At present, we are
tracking progress through the Wilson reading levels. In a year
or less we have students progressing from Level One to Two (with one
young man moving into Level Four in just over a year). This is
slow, but our learners and tutors are finding that taking the time
necessary to build secure skills is meeting their learning
expectations. <br>
<br>
I want to read more research on the causes of reading failure.
Everything I have read thus far points to lack of phonological
processing ability as the cause. Frank Smith is a theorist, not
a researcher. Theories need substantiation. What else do
you suggest?<br>
<br>
I'm signing out of this dialogue for the next week or so.
Other projects are pressing. But I'll be back!</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">Anne
Murr</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">Adult Literacy
Center</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">Drake
University</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000">Des Moines,
IA</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1"
color="#000000">anne.murr@drake.edu</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
</body>
</html>
--Boundary_(ID_+8KNcvq4moAmy42UiVVkzg)--
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 16 2001 - 14:47:27 EST