{"id":38566,"date":"2017-04-18T12:01:30","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T19:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=38566"},"modified":"2017-04-18T12:03:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T19:03:10","slug":"how-do-we-learn-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-do-we-learn-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"How do we learn to read?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"learning<\/a><\/p>\n

The sign on the public car park in the tiny Tasmanian town of Wynyard reads,<\/p>\n

Egress from this carpark is to be via the access lane in the rear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cEgress?\u201d I wondered.<\/p>\n

As my 21-year-old son quipped, perhaps the council had called in the local duke to write its signs. Or at least the local lawyer.<\/p>\n

I could say all the words on the sign with very little effort, and with impressive fluency.<\/p>\n

That is called decoding.<\/p>\n

I had to work a little harder to understand what the sign was saying.<\/p>\n

That is called comprehending.<\/p>\n

The aim of reading is, of course, comprehension.<\/p>\n

In essence, debates around how to best teach reading<\/a> have been about which comes first, the decoding or the comprehending.<\/p>\n

Research concludes<\/a> these debates are redundant because comprehension and decoding are codependent.<\/p>\n

The federal government\u2019s recent proposal, however, for a Year 1 Phonics Screening test<\/a> \u2013 which tests a child\u2019s ability to decode made-up words \u2013 appears to support the view that decoding comes before comprehension.<\/p>\n

Comprehension, therefore, is deemed irrelevant \u2013 at least initially.<\/p>\n

So who is right? The researchers or the politicians?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at what the research tells us about how we learn to read.<\/p>\n

Tackling unknown words<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the first word in the car park sign that threw me. \u201cEgress.\u201d<\/p>\n

I used my knowledge of how sounds map on to letters in English to decode it. However, because I couldn\u2019t remember ever hearing the word said out loud, I wasn\u2019t sure if I was decoding it correctly.<\/p>\n

It might be EE-gress or ee-GRESS, EGG-ress, or egg-RESS. It is the first, apparently. I Googled it later.<\/p>\n

In any case my decoding efforts didn\u2019t help me understand what the word means. In order for decoding skills to be of any use in reading, children need an excellent vocabulary to which they can cross reference as they attempt to decode.<\/p>\n

Tip 1:<\/strong> teach phonics through words already in the children\u2019s vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Building children\u2019s vocabularies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before we rush out and start teaching children lists of vocabulary, words in lists are not enough<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If someone had shown me \u201cegress\u201d by itself on a flashcard, I might have guessed it was a bird.<\/p>\n

Luckily, \u201cegress\u201d was in a full sentence on a sign in front of a car park, and all of that context helped me comprehend the word.<\/p>\n

Without context, words are just letters on a page. This is because all words in English are polysemic – they have multiple meanings depending upon the context.<\/p>\n

The wind<\/strong> in my hair. My baby has wind<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

And some words keep their spelling but change their pronunciation as well as their meaning.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to wind<\/strong> you up. I need to wind<\/strong> my clock. Why do I always **wind **up doing the dishes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tip 2:<\/strong> build your children\u2019s vocabulary by talking and reading to them so that they encounter words in all their many and varied guises. Seeing a word in many different contexts is more important<\/a> than just seeing the word flashed at you many times.<\/p>\n

Grammar matters<\/strong><\/p>\n

The grammar of the parking sign in Wynyard also helped my comprehension.<\/p>\n

I had figured out from the context that \u201cegress\u201d meant either entry or exit. I hear a lot of language so I understand how words \u201ccollocate\u201d in English – that is, how some words always hang out together grammatically. My experience with the language meant I knew that we exit \u201cfrom\u201d and enter \u201cinto\u201d.<\/p>\n

The more we hear and read real language, the more we learn about how word order works in English.<\/p>\n

Tip 3:<\/strong> teach reading through real books with real language so that children learn the rhythm and patterns of English grammar.<\/p>\n

Experience counts<\/strong><\/p>\n

I relied on my experience as a driver to look around and see that a median strip in the road would make \u201cegress\u201d from the front of the car park tricky. Life experience helps us read too.<\/p>\n

If I write I live in a studio apartment in San Jose, your interpretation of where I live will depend upon whether you understand a studio apartment to be a basement bedsit, or penthouse bachelor pad. It will depend on whether you understand San Jose to be an affluent tech hub or an working class industrial city.<\/p>\n

The words alone cannot carry all the meaning of my message. You bring your life experience to the task of reading my words.<\/p>\n

Tip 4:<\/strong> give children lots of real life experiences and talk to them about what they see. Trips out and about, and chats about things beyond their everyday environment are important.<\/p>\n

Are we giving poor readers the help they need?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Good readers have a full repertoire of skills, each dependent upon the other.<\/p>\n