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I'm holding magic in my
hands. (I held up a stack of cards.) Before I finish my speech
you'll understand why. An
Undervalued Language Most of us do not appreciate
or properly value our language. We've been told English is
illogical, irregular, and filled with endless exceptions. We
flounder teaching spelling and reading. I have transformational
news. English is NOT as perplexingly difficult as we've been led to
believe. With the information in my hand, just 98 cards, you can
unlock most words in our dictionary. This news is particularly
amazing considering the international significance of our
language. English is the most vital
language in the world, the first truly global language. Over half
of the people who use English do not speak it as their mother
tongue. English has the richest vocabulary on the planet. The
modern Chinese dictionary has about 12,000 entries. The French
vocabulary less than 100,000 words. But the Oxford English
Dictionary lists 500,000 words! While the world values English as a
key means to personal advancement, a growing number of native
English speaking people have trouble recognizing words in print.
With the most highly funded educational system in the world, we
assume everyone can read. We find it hard to believe that 30% of
high school graduates cannot read the warning on a can of Drano®,
fill out a job application, interpret a bus schedule, or decipher
the menu in a restaurant. The reports of massive illiteracy do not
ring true because most of us do not think we personally know anyone
with this problem. The chances are that more than one of your
friends struggles with the language but tries to pretend otherwise.
Non-readers in a culture such as ours do not broadcast their
handicap. Victims of this subculture go to great lengths to
disguise their secret. Consider John Corcoran,
author of The Teacher Who Could Not Read. This award-winning
high school instructor could not read the sign on the bathroom door
to know if it said men or women. Jonathan
Kozol in Illiterate America, describes a well-dressed
draftsman who carefully places a fresh edition of The New York
Times on his desk at work each day just to appear informed. At
night he trashes the paper he cannot read. Ones you least expect, the student next door, the
mechanic who repairs your airplane, or the CEO at your company may
be part of this invisible but growing minority. I
would have trouble comprehending the severity of the situation, if
I had not witnessed epidemic academic failure in the classroom and
with various highly intelligent adults who have over the years come
to me secretly for help. My
Experience: Witnessing the Problem I first became aware of the
literacy problem as a high school English teacher in the early
'70s. I taught in three distinct settings: an inner-city all-black
school, a small farming community, and a settled middle class
suburb. Low skill levels in all three locations made my job of
teaching literature, grammar, and upper-level composition close to
impossible. One year I was assigned a
high school remedial class. The students had high intelligence (an
IQ of at least 120 or above) but had major problems with spelling
and reading. They came from intact, middle-class families and had
involved, concerned parents. My budget for supplies exceeded my
needs. The principal begged me to buy supplies. If I didn't spend
all the money allowed, the school would lose funds the next year.
Our best and brightest struggled with the most foundational
academic skills. I realized that the blame could not be placed on
the students, their parents, or the supposed lack of money spent on
education. I began to suspect a problem with the teaching methods
themselves. I did not fault individual
teachers. I belonged to the ranks. Some of the most caring people I
know go into teaching. People, however, can be sincere and still be
wrong. I started investigating ways to correct the problem. A
friend told me about phonics. I did not know what that meant. She
showed me that letters represented sounds of speech. The letter A
said /a/ in apple. I couldn't believe her. I had never heard
this in my life. She gave me a recording so I could practice
hearing and saying the short vowel sounds. I would listen to the
recording at night and then teach the sounds to my class the next
day. I understood how handicapped I had been because of whole
language instruction. Nothing can measure the unnecessary stress
and limitations I had needlessly endured. I developed a passion to
learn what I had missed so I could give others a better start in
life. My
Experience: Victory over the Problem That was over thirty years
ago. Since that time I have experienced success teaching all
learning types, various ages, and in different settings. Classroom
teachers trained by me have reported amazing progress, as have
tutors and home educators. I have not only witnessed success with
average and above average students, but also with ones others
termed unteachable. I guided the dedicated mother of a highly
retarded daughter. The Downs Syndrome girl can now spell at the
twelfth grade level! I tutored the illiterate mother with two
juvenile delinquent sons. In five hours of instruction she jumped
two and a half grade levels. For the first time she had hope that
she could help her troubled sons. My
experience verifies what scientific research confirms. With the
right teaching techniques virtually all students can learn to spell
and read English. I believe three main problems hinder progress in
many schools today: whole word instruction, faulty phonics, and the
separation of spelling from reading. The language arts program that
you select should guard against these roadblocks to
success. 1. PROBLEM
NUMBER ONE: WHOLE-WORD INSTRUCTION English
needs to be taught by component parts rather than by a whole-word
approach. People assume whole word teaching is possible because
they think that Chinese is taught that way. It is not. A student
does not learn distinctly different pictures for each dictionary
entry. Chinese is a combination of a limited number of tonal
syllable characters and classifier symbols fused together in
various ways. Whole words have never been used in any language as
the sole basis for writing. "Ordinary people (including children)
can only remember about 1,500 to 2,000 abstract visual
symbols". The
first step in teaching any language is to isolate the most basic
components used to make up that language. In English we have
500,000 words. Trying to learn each word one at a time will
restrict the student. Sadly, most elementary teachers, in fact most
college professors of education, do not know the basic components
of English. Do you? How many ways do we have to spell the basic
sounds of English? (70) We call the letter or letters that
represent the sounds of English, phonograms. The next step is to learn the
rules that govern the use of these symbols. How many rules do we
have in English? (28). With a working knowledge of the 70
phonograms plus 28 spelling rules (our 98 cards), we can
phonetically explain 99% of the most commonly used words in the
language and at least 87% of all the words in our dictionary. Does
it sound unbelievable that the language with the most voluminous
vocabulary can be reduced to 98 key components? It seems more
incredible that such valuable information has been kept as a secret
from people in high places.
2. PROBLEM
NUMBER TWO: FAULTY PHONICS INSTRUCTION Some
think that phonics has been tried and didn't work, but phonics
works consistently if taught properly. Often it is not. The
whole-word method became the rage in the early part of the
twentieth century. Periodically, a backlash of complaint would
restore phonics for a time. Teachers unschooled in phonics would
then combine the unfamiliar material with the whole-word techniques
they knew. When this did not produce the promised success, teachers
returned again to whole-word instruction. Each time teachers made
the switch between whole words and phonics, our understanding of
phonics became more frayed. Some of what is now taught as phonics
is a weak substitute with worthless rules. Teachers who fail using
phonics usually use an inadequate version. At least three
characteristics of weak phonics could be the cause. Evaluate any
program by asking if it uses phony phonics, pokey phonics, or
fickle phonics. a. Phony
phonics I reviewed a state-approved textbook
for beginning reading. Every lesson in the teacher's manual had a
section boldly titled, "Phonics." I read every word in the flagged
segments. Nothing even remotely related to phonics. In one lesson
the text told the teacher to draw an elephant on the board. Under
the picture she should write "elephant." She was to point to the
picture and have the class repeat, "Elephant." Next she was to
point to the word and have the class say, "Elephant." Many teachers
like me never learned as children that letters represent sounds.
Such a teacher could be deceived by this type of text and might
naively tell parents that she uses phonics with every
lesson. b. Pokey
phonics Phonics instruction should be first
and fast. Some systems take years to introduce the key components
to the language. Unnecessarily delaying this vital instruction will
force children to invent their own inadequate and unreliable
systems. Fragmenting key information
into bits and pieces which are introduced separately over time
makes retrieval hard. Instead of teaching only short vowel sounds
or long vowel sounds, it is easier for a student to file together
in one place of her mind all the common sounds a phonogram can
make. A student who learns only the short vowel sound of O will
experience frustration trying to read words like open or
do. A person who knows from the beginning that the letter O
has three possible sounds will not be discouraged that the first
sound did not work. She has two other choices on the tip of her
tongue to try. The same concept applies to
multiletter phonograms. CH can make three different sounds. Even a
retarded or very young child can see CH and say the three sounds it
can make. In many programs these sounds are taught separately over
a period of years. Students in first grade may have a list of words
using CH to say /ch/ as in child. In second or third grade
they may have a list of words using CH to say /k/ as in
chord. In fourth grade they might have a long list of words
using CH to spell /sh/ as in chef. The three distinct sounds
are rarely presented together in an uncluttered
way. c. Fickle
phonics Phony phonics is not real phonics.
Pokey phonics may include correct information, but it is presented
too slowly. Fickle phonics is unreliable. Like a fickle girl who
flits between more than one lover, it muddles phonics with whole
language ideas. It may involve bogus rules, a cluttered code, a
backward focus, or misleading exercises. (1) Bogus
Rules Fickle phonics may teach useless ideas.
Some teach the cute sounding rule, "When two vowels go walking the
first one does the talking." In other words, if we see two vowels
together, the first one will say the name of the letter and the
second one will be silent. (OA = /O/). Back in the '70s, I felt
excited to learn this rule. My students marked page after page of
words that illustrated this principle. The concept worked when we
did screened worksheets, but in real life the rule failed
repeatedly. I discovered why. The "two vowels going walking" rule
works only 27% of the time. It only works consistently with oa, oe,
ee, ay, ai. It never works with eu, ew, oy, oi, aw, au. It could,
but usually does not, work with ey, ei, ou, ow, oo, ie, ui, ea,
ear. The effective way to deal
with vowel pairs is to teach each vowel team as a separate
phonogram that the student recognizes instantly by sound. Our goal
should be to establish the most instant response between the symbol
and the sound, not to waste time with unfruitful mental
gymnastics. A student can be taught all
the sounds that EA regularly makes. Such a student is prepared for
EA to say /E/ in bead, /e/ in head, /A/ in
steak, and /er/ in learn. A student who learned the
Two Vowels Go Walking rule might stumble over words like head,
steak, and learn. People conclude, because of bogus rules like
this, that English is so complex and is spelled so unpredictably
that teaching phonics is useless. They don't understand that the
problem is not the language, it is a faulty presentation of the
language. (2) A
Cluttered Code The ideal way to teach a
complex subject is to identify the most essential core parts. The
phonograms and rules (my magic cards) are the consistent components
to a proper understanding of English. Elevating blends to the level
of the phonograms adds needless complexity and creates unnecessary
confusion. A blend is made by running
together the sounds of two or more phonograms. For example, if we
quickly say the sound of the B plus the sound of the L we have the
blend /bl/. A student who knows the individual sounds can easily
combine them for the blend. Contrast BL with the phonogram PH.
Together P and H can represent /f/, a sound distinctly different
from the sounds these letters would make being blended together
normally. The idea of blending can and
should be taught with spelling words, but presenting blends in the
same way as phonograms weakens the core foundation. If we teach
blends in isolation, we add 76 or more unnecessary units that water
down the essential foundation. (3) A
Backwards Focus We need to train the eye to
move from left to right in reading English. Some systems try to
group words by word endings, or rhyming patterns. Activities
include reading a series of words by simply changing the first
letter: day, may, pay, ray, say. This misleads the student
to expect words that look alike to sound alike. English is built from
phonogram units, but cannot be consistently organized by
appearance. Many words that sound alike are spelled differently
(rowed, road). Likewise, numerous phonetically reliable words sound
different but look alike (timber, climber/ rose, lose/ home, some/
to, go/ have, cave/ put, but/ pant, want/ are, care/ both, cloth/
hat, what/ etc.). Students who expect all
look-alike words to sound alike will stumble over words like
gas, has, was. The letter S and the letter A can represent
more than one sound. Has and was are not irregular.
One or more of the phonograms use a predictable alternative sound:
gas = /g-a-s/; has = /h-a-z/; was = /w-ah-z/. Focusing on the final rhyme
confuses eye sequencing from back to front, a problem with
dyslexia. Organizing by rhyme burdens the mind with an unnecessary
overload. English has over 1260 rhymes. It is better to teach 70
phonograms than to memorize a multitude of unpredictable rhymes.
While heard and beard appear irregular in so-called
"word family" programs, these words are regular in a phonogram
based program. (Beard uses four phonograms /b-ea-r-d/.
Heard uses three phonograms /h-ear-d/.) (4) Misleading
Exercises Phonics ladders are tools to teach
blending. The plan is to give a consonant or two and then a single
vowel. The student is taught to use the short vowel sound and form
new words by adding different consonants. This
type of exercise is unsound phonemically for two reasons. First, a
vowel at the end of a syllable rarely has the short sound.Contrast
the words co-ma and com-ma. If a student sees CLO as
a separate unit, he should expect the final vowel sound to be OH
(as in clo-sure) not AH (as in clock). Secondly, if the vowel is not
at the end, we need to see the next letter or letters before we can
determine the sound it will make. Several simple patterns commonly
change the vowel sound. Is it a part of a two-letter phonogram team
(OA, OW, OU)? If so, we might read the words as: cloak, clown,
clout. Is the vowel sound influenced by a silent final E
(clove)? Leonard Ayres scientifically
organized a list of the one thousand most frequently used words in
the English language. With phonics ladders, over a third of this
core list of words would appear to be exceptions. With a phonogram
plus simple rule base, less than one percent of these words are
"rule breakers." Spelling and reading skills
should progress to an instantaneous, almost subconscious, response.
This happens by building in the student a second nature instinct
for the language. Teaching methods should logically build such
automatic responses. Avoid methods that do the opposite. Effective
phonics deals with the sounds represented by phonograms and gives a
complete, uncluttered, reliable presentation of the code as soon as
possible. 3. PROBLEM
NUMBER THREE: SEPARATING SPELLING AND
READING Dr. Hilde Mosse, an expert in
children's reading disorders, proclaimed, "Contrary to the
prevailing educational theory, reading and writing belong together;
they reinforce each other". Typically
today, reading is taught first and spelling is delayed as an
unrelated afterthought. Children are taught to read /k-a-t/ and
spell /See-A-Tee/. While reading utilizes the sounds the letters
represent, spelling is taught using alphabet letter names. The two
skills seem unrelated. For all children to
understand the magical idea that letters represent speech sounds,
the code must be presented as reversible. We should think to spell
/k-a-t/ and read /k-a-t/. This is best done by teaching spelling as
the foundation to reading, as teachers did in the old days.
Students should spell their way into reading. In spelling we
analyze the individual parts that make up a word. We teach a child
to unglue a word syllable by syllable and sound by sound as he
writes it. This is best done by dictation, not by copying. Reading
thereby becomes a natural side effect. The student blends back
together what he has learned to take apart and
analyze. The author of The Writing
Road to Reading said, "The failings of most of the phonics
methods may be summarized in that they neglect spelling and do not
teach the saying and writing of the forty-five basic sounds of the
phonograms of the language before trying to read". Findings of
Scientific Research Eighty percent of students
today are taught with whole-word methods. Massive academic failure
shows we need change, and scientific evidence shows where.
Correctly taught phonics must form the foundation for spelling and
reading instruction. Illiteracy in America,
a book published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in
Washington, D.C., explains, among other things, the achievement
decline in our country. The National Council reports, "Since 1911,
a total of 124 studies have compared the look-say eclectic
approaches with phonics-first programs. Not one found look-say
superior." Yet, "since 1955 approximately 85 percent of our 16,000
school districts have been using this eclectic approach...
Regardless of labels, only about 15 percent of the nation's primary
children have received instruction in direct, systematic, and
intensive phonics". Susan Hall, the president
of the Illinois Branch of the International Dyslexia Association,
comments, "Millions of capable children are not learning to read
well in America's schools today. The causes and cures are
well-known in the research community, but classroom practice has
been slow to change. Almost all children can learn to read well if
taught with appropriate methods. But not all children in today's
classrooms are receiving the type of instruction that will equip
them to be good readers". In a publication of the
International Reading Association a leading Canadian reading
expert, Dr. Keith E. Stanovich, confirms the necessity of phonics.
"That direct instruction in alphabetic coding facilitates early
reading acquisition is one of the most well-established conclusions
in all behavioral science". Dr. Diane McGuinness, in a newly
published book, summarizes the last 25 years of empirical studies
on reading instruction. "From research in the classroom and the
clinic, we have discovered that when the sequence of reading and
spelling instruction is compatible with the logic of the alphabet
code and with the child's linguistic and logical development,
learning to read and spell proceeds rapidly and smoothly for all
children and is equally effective for poor readers of all
ages". Students need to internalize the symbols that
form the code for written English. This information must be
considered vital, not just an afterthought. A little dab won't do.
For the most effective results, we need to teach early, direct,
systematic, intensive phonics. EARLY--first
and fast (Teach the code as the foundational beginning)
DIRECT-- straightforward, precise instruction
SYSTEMATIC -- scientifically ordered, not incidental
INTENSIVE -- one or more times a day
PHONICS -- link the sounds of speech to letters that represent the
sounds.
Correctly taught phonics
replaces the frustration and insecurity of whole-word chaos.
Instead of word-by-word memory or random guessing by context, the
student has a logical basis for mastering the language. The fog
lifts and the student is free to explore independently the
wonderful world of print. Conclusion A kind mistress started
teaching the young slave child about letters and the sounds they
represent in English. This changed his life forever and impacted
the lives of many others. He had progressed to spelling three-or
four-letter words when the master discovered what was happening. He
forbade her to teach the boy any more and explained why when he
screamed, "If you teach [him] to read, it would forever unfit him
to be a slave!" In his autobiography,
Frederick Douglass wrote, "From that moment on, I understood the
pathway to freedom. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning
without a teacher, I set out with high hope and a fixed purpose, at
whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read". Once Douglass had a taste
of the alphabetic code and how it worked, he searched for the
missing pieces. He would tease the little white boys to tell him
more. He might say to them, "I bet I know more words than you do."
He would write in the dirt several words he had learned. They would
then write some more. Eventually he mastered the language well
enough to compose a letter giving him permission to travel, sign it
with his master's name, and use the paper to escape. This runaway
slave became an internationally famous spokesman for the
anti-slavery movement and helped lead his people to
freedom. Slavery has been overturned
as an institution in America, and yet 93 million in our nation are
in bondage. People who cannot read and write fluidly can never
reach their full potential. We can and must help set them free. We
have the tools to do so. I hold them in my hands. If we will
provide a logical presentation of our language using the most basic
component parts, massive illiteracy will become a thing of the
past. |
