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Myths and Mysteries of Reading Hidden insights from cognitive neuroscience Helen Abadzi Global Partnership for Education (c/o World Bank) June 1, 2013 Mind, Brain, and Education - Quito
Myths and Mysteries of Reading
Hidden insights from cognitive neuroscience
Helen Abadzi
Global Partnership for Education (c/o World Bank)
June 1, 2013
Mind, Brain, and Education - Quito
Reading outcomes in Ecuador?
Average urban middle class 6-year olds
score 100+ on Spanish Peabody
Picture Vocabulary test
Rural children score 63
Reading may have similar trajectories
Rendimiento de varios países
Nicaragua (around 2007)
Cuantos lograron 60 palabras por minuto?
Grado 1 : 17%, Media=77 cwpm Comp, 87%
Grado 2 : 60%, Media=85 cwpm Comp, 87%
Grado 3 : 85%, Media = 101 cwpm, Comp,
87%
3
Resultados del piloteo de materiales
Cantidad de palabras leídas por minuto Grado Mínimo Máximo Promedio
del
piloteo
Desviación
estándar
Resultados
previos pilots*
D.F.
Resultados
previos
1008 ninos
D.F.**
2º 20 114 72 29.29 70 67
3º 42 176 84 35.68 80 82
4º 44 131 92 22.24 97 102
5º 65 164 109 25.99 112 130
6º 54 211 113 39.25 111 136
Grados Mínimo Máximo Promedio Desviación
estándar
1º 92 158 131 20.69
2º 82 200 132 30.27
3º 116 188 157 18.72
Mexico – palabras por minuto
Escuelas primarias
*Resultado publicado por Banco Mundial (lámina siguiente)
**Proyecto ASDEF “Vamos por 600 puntos”
Escuelas secundarias
Should Spanish reading take 2-3
years to learn?
It ought to take 4 months, even among
the poorer !
Constructivist approaches?
Let us consider the evidence
Many low-income students of the
early grades don’t even know letters
6
Source: Authors calculations, 2009, based on assessments conducted by RTI in each country.
Notes: Honduras and Kenya are not nationally representative samples. All assessments were conducted in 2008 and
2009.
Amber and luis 2009 Mali egra
9.1
15.8
50.0
61.8
66.1
83.0
93.7
48.0
28.6
0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0 70.0 80.0 90.0 100.0
Nicaragua, Spanish
Senegal, French
Rural Honduras, Spanish
Kenya, Kiswahili
Kenya, English
Guyana, English
The Gambia, English
Mali, Bamanankan
Mali, French
Example: The Gambia:
about 80 percent of grade 2 students could
not read one word of text ( EGRA 2007,
2009)
Source: www.edddataglobal.org
Proportion reading zero
Proportion reading 0 words
RF
Proportion reading with
80% comprehension
7
In these countries children also
drop out early
And will become a new cohort of illiterates
It is crucial that they become fluent
readers before they drop out !
Classroom activities must be focused on
achieving this goal over many others
8
Students going to schools have a wide range
in terms of ability or social advantage.
All must be served effectively
in lower-income European countries nearly all
learn by end of grade 1 in consistent scripts
usually by Christmas
• In poor countries only the few best students
learn
Theoretical distribution of student performance
Below-average
students must be
reached
9
Can the average or below-
average students learn reading
from instruction as it is provided?
Can they distinguish the blackboard or book
letters?
How easily do students learn complex shapes?
Do textbooks provide the necessary inputs?
Do pictures and colors aid early readers?
This presentation will focus on
The basics of how reading develops in the brain
Pertinent visual perception research
Reading challenges in various scripts
Memory and automaticity for reading
Methods likely to be more effective than others
Conclusions
How to help nearly all students learn reading under conditions of limited opportunity to learn?
There are many opinions and philosophies about reading
Common methods of higher-income countries require support , plenty of time, reviews
Are there shortcuts, more efficient methods?
12
How many of you believe…?
…in whole language as a good way to
teach low-income students?
….that there is no best method to teach
reading?
….. that reading speed is bad for kids?
........that people are not really reading
unless they understand?
See a high-income classroom
with many resources
central Doha school of Qatar shows the
potential that children of highly educated
parents can fulfill
14
A glimpse of a low-income classroom
with few if any resources
Lack of textbooks
limited teacher knowledge
classrooms have little activity
15
Malawi
blackboard
copying
You are first grader in a country that has decided to
adopt Japanese as the language of instruction
Your parents do not know the
language and cannot help you.
Textbooks are somehow unavailable
You are sitting near the back
The teacher interacts mainly with the front rows
Your only feedback is other students’ answers.
So you are largely self-instructing!
16
How easily can you learn to speak and read an
entire meaningful sentence?
Here is your first sentence, look carefully:
わたし は ほん を よみます [I read a book]
Repeat verbally what you heard Can you say the entire sentence
Write on paper what you saw Try this slide multiple times if you want
Did you succeed in learning to read an entire meaningful sentence?
17
[re-record
the
sentence;
keep for 10
seconds
The “look and say” method is popular in
reading
18
からだ
[slide goes away after 10 seconds]
Point to the picture (body) and say its name in Japanese
Please write on a piece of paper the letters you saw
Learn Japanese hiragana through
the “whole word” method りんご
いぬ
さかな
はな
あか
(ri-n-go)
(i-nu)
(sa-ka-na)
(ha-na)
Now Identify the following words
What is the sound and meaning of
each one? からだ
あか
いぬ
さかな
はな
20
Some reading specialists believe that students
should learn to read one letter at a time
(phonics)
Look at this Japanese hiragana character.
Its sound is …
ひ hi (fire)
Look at it carefully
[after 10 seconds it disappears]
Please repeat verbally what you heard
Please write it on paper
21
Which activities will impart
literacy most efficiently?
Methods = activities of various frequencies
All methods work for some students!
Which set of activities would be most parsimonious?
More doable by low-educated teachers? And
why?
Some little-known variables that
affect reading acquisition
Crucial for the low income
students
Perceptual learning of scripts
Hardly noticed in middle-income
schools
Problem in low-income schools
And adult literacy
We always recognize letters from features
Crowding spoils letter recognition outside the
central visual field
Center of the eye initially reads 1-2 letters,
4-5 letters for expert readers
Letters too small, too crowded
slow down reading
Critical letter size
Critical spacing
Distance from blackboard
Research by D. Pelli et al. (2006, 2007 etc)
Issues severe for those not habituated to
the dense script
even if they are relatively fluent readers
Our visual system reads fastest
when letters on blackboards and
textbooks are big and rather loose Once upon a
time there was a
land with a good
king named Midas 24 point font double spaced, 3 spaces 27
Doubled accuracy rate and somewhat
increased speed for Italian dyslexics
(Zorzi et al. 2012)
We get habituated in
distinguishing dense letters
Initially beginners cannot easily tell letters apart
After a few days of practice we get habituated.
The children who grow up around print and TV may get
habituated early, even if they do not learn to read.
Then we cannot really perceive that others may not be
used to them
So textbooks and children’s books are often written in
print that is too small and crowded and that slows
kids down.
29
Ottoman Turkish
grade 1 textbooks about 1925, by Ali Haydar
Contemporary Urdu
30
Fluent readers do not realize
Beginning learners need clear,
spaced letters
Particularly poorer students whose
parents do not help
Teachers scribbling fast in grade
Example from Nepal
Many learners can’t distinguish blackboard
letters! Experienced readers do not realize the extent of the problem
Do these students
discriminate among
letters of the fuzzy
blackboard from
this distance?
Malawi
What impresses you most about this scene?
Blackboard in Mozambique
Laos: Critical letter size
Grade 1 flash cards can bring letters
closer to students teachers may not use them, or letters too small
Imagine you are seated at the back
of this class
Can you see from this distance?
If not, will you maintain attention?
37
“Social loafing” effects for young learners
Imagine that you had to share
textbooks
would you have the chance to look at
the letters as long as needed?
Visual perception issues crucial in early
reading Students may be reading less often than we
think!!
3% of time estimate in one study
particularly when they lack textbooks
Can they distinguish the blackboard or book
letters?
Do pictures and colors aid early readers?
How easily do students learn complex shapes?
40
Pictures may be useful only if relevant
and after automaticity when working memory can hold both letters and
pictures
Children from Kwale district in
coastal Kenya – by Peggy Dubeck
Efficient books maximize space for
reading practice
5000 words in grade 1?
Once upon a time there
was a country with a
good king named Midas 24 point font double spaced, 3 spaces
Sinhalese – critical spacing?
Nepali (devanagari)
critical size and spacing?
Research-based
recommendations for early grade
1 text Blackboards and flash cards should have
really big, separated letters
Sit no more than 5 meters from
blackboard
Books 24 point font, double spaced
3 spaces between words
Picture size minimal, perhaps few pictures
by M. Martelli and G. Zoccolotti, U. of Rome psychology dept.
Perceptual implications for reading
Simpler shapes are learned fastest
More complex letter shapes take longer to automatize
Larger numbers of letters take longer to tell apart and automatize
Dense print, small letters are read more slowly
Irregular spelling is learned more slowly
These are more reasons for teaching letters one by one
47
The neuroscience of reading
Memory principles
Letters = Object recognition
Visual complexity in languages
and scripts
Working memory for
comprehension
Grade 1 reading fluency matters
all the way to the university!
The fluency paradox:
If you don’t read fast enough,
by the end of a sentence you
forget the beginning!
Why do students need a minimum
reading speed?
A simplified sketch of memory
Very brief amount of time
Very limited capacity
Long-term memory
12 seconds at most About 7 items
for simple text
Cognitive networks
Working memory
51
To read an average sentence in an ‘average’
language roughly..
7 items in 12 seconds…
students must read at least a word per 1-1.5
second
with 95% accuracy (correlates .87 with
speed).
45-60 words per minute minimum
7 words in 12 seconds equals 45-60 words per
minute!
Relación entre rapidez y comprensión Sin fluidez y precisión no se puede comprender
Ghana
Chunking
needed to put much info into
working memory
With some practice the mind joins items
of information together
Chunked pieces pass through working
memory as one
And you can only form big chunks from
smaller ones
54
55
An illustration of chunking
Patterns make easy chunks
pattern detection therefore facilitates
automaticity
a e i o u
B ba be bi bo bu
C ca ce ci co cu
D da de de do du
F fa fe fi fo fu
G ga ge gi go gu
H ha he hi ho hu
Etc
Letter Fatha Qasra Dhamma
ض ض ض ض
ص ص ص ص
ث ث ث ث
ق ق ق ق
د د د د
ش ش ش ش
س س س س
cte
56
If we swallow big chunks we find them harder to
digest
Single letters are small chunks
Simple procedures
Whole words are bigger chunks
Learning one long chain
57
Chunking concept explains many
educational failures
Without practice to combine small chunks,
larger ones cannot be built
reading, math, driving a car
If we get chunks that are too big for our
experience, we cannot learn them
Unless someone breaks them down for us
E.g a parent breaks them down at home for
children
Unless they happen to learn some alternate route
58
Implications of working memory:
Fluency must be the goal of all
training We must do effortlessly, no time for searches:
Reading
Math calculations
Vocationally related skills
Gas chromatograph, computer operation, etc.
Chunks must start small, be learned gradually
If the small chunks are unknown, remediation
is necessary
Our initial reading is halting, effortful,
letter by letter
With practice reaction time to a letter drops to
milliseconds
small chunks are build of 2-3 letters
Brain imaging shows activity in areas related to effortful
decoding
60
Practice “programs” the brain
for automatic reading
Nerve “wiring” develops in children’s brains
The visual word form gets activated
The eye takes in 5 letters at once in about 250 msec.
The brain identifies entire words
Long and short words are read equally fast (silently)
each word or phrase becomes an item
Eventually speed rises to 250+ words per minute
Tolerance for ambiguity, scribbling, calligraphy
People can’t help but read
Attention to message rather than the print
Sufficient activation of the visual
word form area
Speed increases then rather suddenly takes off
How do students sound when the
visual word form area is activated?
Hear the students
Pratham, 6 weeks Consistent pairing of sounds and letters
With 2 hours of daily practice children may pass from the off state to
on in 6 weeks (India)
Then students read fast enough to understand text
It seems that adults require much longer
practice times than children to attain
automaticity
63
Activation of the Visual Word Form
area (VWFA)
means that words are read like faces Implications
Perceptual constancy
See multiple features
Yet see entire face
and not notice some
details
Eventually word pictures
Are built
We still read letters in a row, known words and
context hints handled separately
We always need individual letters
Letters account for 62% of the adult reading rate
Words 16%, context 22%, individual variance 6%
The processes are not redundant, they work on different words.
Implications:
Methods that get children to read whole words are not efficient
If the children read in one language, they can read in another (in same script).
Pelli, Dennis and Katharine Tillman. Parts, wholes, and context in reading: A triple dissociation. PLoS
ONE, August 2007, e 680.
The magic of automaticity
See for yourself
66
successo articolo operazione movimento
capacità situazione rapporto sindacato
volta acqua vita mezzo
capo corso linea tipo
The eye movements of automatic vs. effortful reading
successo articolo operazione movimento
capacità situazione rapporto sindacato
c a p o c o r s o l i n e a t i p o
v o l t a a c q u a v i t a m e z z o
G. Zoccolotti, U. of Rome
Proficient reader
Dyslexic reader
67
Eye tracking: One more method for studying automaticity
blue
What color are these words? Name them fast did the color of the word confuse you for a moment?
yellow 68
Now learn two Japanese Hiragana
characters
• あ =a Ka = か
• あか = red
• What is the color of the word below?
あか
69
Did you perceive the color before reading the word?
It is because you still read letter by letter in Hiragana
Another sign of automaticity
and activation of the face recognition area Can you read the sentences below?
70
Brain imaging techniques (since about 1995 )
Example:
Brain activation patterns of literates and
illiterates
The activation of the visual word form
area can be assessed through
various brain imaging methods
Brazilians
Many around
50
72
Activation intensity
A specialized Electroencephalogram (Event-Related potentials - ERPs)
can demonstrate the required activation level of the visual word form area
See the N1 electrode showing -3 millivolts 170 milliseconds after the wired person reads
73
We always need individual letters
We read by recognizing letters in a row,
known words and context hints handled
separately
Entire words are not usually recognized, though they seem so
individual letters needed to get the word Letters account for 62% of the adult reading rate
Words 16%, context 22%, individual variance 6%
The processes are not redundant, they work on different words.
Implications:
Methods that get children to read whole words are not efficient
If the children read in one language, they can read in another (in same script).
Pelli, Dennis and Katharine Tillman. Parts, wholes, and context in reading: A triple dissociation. PLoS ONE,
August 2007, e 680.
Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
Phonics instruction changes both the
performance and the brain (Simos et al., 2002),
Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere
BEFORE
AFTER
L
R
Superior posterior temporal gyrus
Event-related potentials imaging
Whole word vs. phonics
Event-related potentials imaging
Whole word vs. phonics Teacher directing attention to phonology vs.
semantics
Evidence in favor of teaching
phonics
Brain imaging
Psychophysics – shape complexity
Pelli & Tilman study on letters-words
Chunking concept
Much educational research
US Reading Panel 2000
Reading speed and
comprehension in simpler and
more complex orthographies
Reading level after 1 year of instruction
0
10 20
30
40
50 60
70
80
90
100
% c
orr
ect
Reading lists of words
Seymour et al. (2003), British Journal of Psychology`
Items per minute when reading word lists
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
r accuracy/speed = .87 Seymour et al. (2003), British Journal of Psychology
U.S. Oral Reading Fluency Norms
connected text - Spring
Hasbrouck and Tindal (2006)
Grade 50th %ile 25th %ile 10th %ile
1 53 28 15
2 89 61 31
3 107 78 48
4 123 98 72
5 139 109 83
6 150 122 93
7 150 123 98
8 151 124 97
“Oral Reading Fluency Norms: A Valuable Assessment Tool for Reading Teachers.” The Reading Teacher, 59,
2006
Relationship between reading and
comprehension Ghana: Early Grade Reading
Assessment
Monitoring indicator
from neurocognitive research
45-60 words per minute for all
In just about every language and script:
By the end of grade 1 students should “crack the
code”
By the end of grade 2 at the latest students
should read words fluently
Students in grade 7 (1st secondary year) should
read about 120-150 words per minute and give
a summary of what they read
However due to limited practice, students fall
behind and cannot catch up…
Reading in languages with complex spelling
spells trouble
Students are somehow presumed to know English and French or
learn it fast
No dictionaries in African languages for the students
Spanish Native English Francophone Africa
5 words per
minute.
Benchmark = 60
35 words per minute
Reading fluently enough
to understand?
60 wpm correctly?
Rural Indonesia grade 2
simple spelling rules, good class time use
Rural Niger – best 6th grader, graduating in 3 weeks
Study only in French, time use uncertain
Como los niños deberían leer
Cuba grado 2 (2004)
Los estudiantes deberían rápidamente aumentar su
velocidad
pero necesitan mas práctica en la lectura (2007)
Argentina – 4o grado
Rio Negro
La Plata
Beginning reading in Spanish
Problems arise from common teaching
practice Teacher recites, then all students in unison
Often one voice (of a better student) gives
the right answer, and others cue in.
Students may not read while they repeat
They may get little practice reading.
Despite small class sizes observed,
teachers rarely gave individual attention or
feedback
Triage:
Effect of limited prior knowledge
International research Harris and Lockheed 2005; Llambiri 2007
Teachers work with those who can do the
tasks and ignore others
The unengaged students lose attention,
motivation, eventually drop out
Cannot catch up by themselves
Students becoming fluent late
may always read slowly
have limited comprehension
If they finally learn reading in grade 6
They may read 70 wpm in grade 8
They get no more books by grade 8
They will read little secondary school
university or teacher training colleges
They cannot read fast enough to consult sources
Or read volumes of text At 110 words per minute, it takes 5 minutes per page
Prior knowledge? Some students
attend secondary school without
knowing how to read
Graphique 4 : Simulation de la probabilité d’être alphabétisé
en fonction du niveau d’étude
Source : EDS 2003, calcul des auteurs
Secondary and higher ed. achievement
depend on primary school knowledge
If students lack a scheme to attach a new item,
they will either forget it or put it in memory areas
where it cannot be retrieved
To get information they must know how to read
early on
High reading speed is needed to scan text and consult
multiple sources
How long does it take to scan a complex text at 80
wpm?
Without practice with books,
students read very slowly for their
grade
Burkina 80-105 words per minute (150 would be
good)
Have limited vocabulary in English and French
Those who read faster can answer questions
Examples from grade 7
140 words per minute,
private 104 words per minute, Thyou
Mozambique, Argentina
some Brazilian states: No free textbooks for secondary schools Students spend their class time taking dictation
They show little understanding of math,
science, language
No biology
comprehension
grade 10
No math book for
grade 10
Analfabetismo funcional en edades
avanzadas
Brasil – arte y producción de textos por
analfabetos (2002)
Problema: Los maestros no
entienden como aprenden a leer los
niños
No aprenden los maestros como ensenar la lectura
Uso del método global en español en el grado 1-2
Libros con el método global - grado 1-2
Poco tiempo dedicado a la lectura en clase
No hay tiempo especial de la lectura en el currículo
Falta de retroalimentación a los alumnos
Maestros involucran solo a los que contestan
Método analítico-sintético
Reading fluency issues in
various countries and
scripts
Due to visual complexity of
characters
Number of characters to
automatize…
probably affects the time needed
to acquire automaticity
(various studies)
The more complex the visual recognition or
spelling
the longer it takes to automatize
Automatizing large visual patterns
(psycholinguistic grains) – takes longer,
may “trick” some brains
students depend more on language knowledge
And if they don’t know the language? (English,
French, Portuguese, Urdu)
Learning to read in a complex system without
knowing the language is a job for geniuses!
And if school time is also wasted?
African languages have regular spelling
can be automatized in a few months Fluency to other languages transfers within the same script
Perceptual Learning:
Visual complexity in various languages and scripts (Psycholinguistic grains)
English
through, caught, bake, often, saw, sew
French
Ils etaient, oiseau, mois, etant
Bengali
jomi – earth
boithak – meeting
koThin - difficult
Complex shapes written with “more ink”: Students of other syllabic scripts face the same difficulties
ko
Koh (kuoh)
kau
Bengali Sinhala Lao Khmer Latin
Dhivehi – possibly the simplest functioning alphabet
in the world
Amharic
Exact
spelling but
much larger
matrix with
some pattern
irregularities
More time
needed to
acquire
automaticity,
fluency
Kannada – high error rates
complex forms, multiple visual patterns
Half-consonant
combinations
and vowel
combinations
result in a
matrix of about
300 characters
that must be
automatized
Some are
unpredicatable
Devanāgarī alphabet for Hindi
Khmer – patterns of ancient Indian scripts
To read vowels, students must know the ‘series’ that consonants belong to
Devanagari
(Sanskrit,
Hindi,
Nepali)
Khmer
Bengali vs. Khmer “subscript”
consonants:
An additional alphabet !
Separate instruction of letter series in
grades 1-2, color-coding
Hebrew voweled (small grains)
and unvoweled (large grains)
The letters are separate, decoding easier
Kol benei ha'adam noldu benei xorin veshavim be'erkam uvizxuyoteihem. Kulam xonenu batevuna uvematspun, lefixax
xova 'aleihem linhog ish bere'ehu beruax shel axava.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and
should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Voweled Arabic – small “grains”
Unvoweled Arabic – large “grains”
connected letters with rules about connections (and lack thereof)
Unvoweled Arabic is less crowded but harder to decipher
فاستوطنوا هناك وإذ ارتحلوا شرقا وجدوا سهال في أرض شنعار .
ا نصنع طوبا مشويا أحسن شي »: فقال بعضهم لبعض فاستبدلوا . «هي
فت ين بالز وب، والط الحجارة بالط
Better font for beginners:
Arabic monospace unicode
Written in a straight line
nakhla – palm tree
nahla - bee
najla - offspring
Arabic: “Topological” complexity
Students need practice in reading non-
linear script
Non-linear Arabic writing
Urdu – multiple issues Urdu – multiple difficulties
Few vowel signs
even in grade 1
Vowels are not
predictable as in
Arabic
Dots separated
from the main
body of letters
Topological
imprinting
Need to learn the
visual pattern of
each word
separately
Farsi, Dari, Pashto
Contemporary Pakistani and 1925 Ottoman
textbooks
Local language reading
often applied in various countries
through “Anglo-centric” methods (D.L. Share 2008)
English (and unvoweled Arabic) require intensive resources to teach because multiple letters must be read instantly
Thus, the methods use:
Sight-word lists
Early emphasis on meaning, vocabulary, language
Letter knowledge needed from kindergarten
Phonological awareness of onsets and rimes
Books focus on pictures for prediction, have little text
Attention to all this in local languages may lower practice amounts
Teachers lack the skills to do the above
Simpler orthographies
need simpler instruction
Phonological awareness: mainly word segmentation
Systematic analogies, children experts at pattern detection
impossible in English
Vocabulary matters less for pronunciation
No need for controlled words
Small vocabulary ok
Attention to morphology helps (small units of meaning)
Listening and reading comprehension weakly related (Georgiou et al. 2008)
Practice leads to fluency, leads to comprehension
Comprehension strategies are secondary
Without valid advice on reading
learning outcomes stay low!
Some reading methods are more efficient than others
grade 1 textbooks now consistently don't teach how to read
Egregious examples in donor advice:
Honduras whole-word textbooks and constructivist curricula
Malawi – effective phonics-based grade 1 textbooks were changed to the ‘whole word’ approach
Grade 1 day 1 in the Gambian
literacy
Grade 1 lesson 4 in Gambian
literacy
Whole language approach in
French
Cote d’Ivoire
Cote ivoire implicit assumptions about the speed of
perceptual adaptation
and automaticity acquisition
Whole language in Malawi
(Chichewa)
Whole language in Egypt
Egypt: Grade 1 whole-word reading
“active learning” class (without vowels children may identify entire words as particular shapes)
Result: Students just “sketch”
letters (Mozambique)
The child tried to draw an O: “O sapo”
The brain‘s rules for recognizing object
similarity
Mozambique and Angola teach calligraphy early on.
Calligraphic and printed letters cannot be seen as equivalent initially, only after extensive practice
e= E =
Illiterate students writing “art”
Nepal grade 1, first two
instructional pages
“Balanced” reading program of whole
words and phonics (Mango Tree NGO – Uganda)
But do students have enough real time in school?
Can you predict the success of a
literacy program from the first
pages of a grade 1 book?
Why?
The special problems of adult
unschooled illiterates
Is there a neurological obstacle to
automaticity?
Adults learning to read seem to have
difficulty attaining automaticity
The brain “prunes” unneeded circuits at
various times until maturity
“critical” periods for acquiring some skils
After adolescence we may lose the ability
to recognize new letters within
milliseconds
We may all become dyslexic as adults!
Issue not well researched
A learner may see just jumbles of
letters, some incorrectly…
T h e g r o n p c o m m i t e e w i l l w
o r k h a r d t o d e v e l o p n e w p r
o d u c t s a u d s e l l t h e m t o t h
e m a r k e t a t g o o d q r i c e s w i l
h c r e d i t f r o m t h e s a u i n g s
b a n k
How to make students literate in
consistently spelled languages
fast?
Literacy in 100 days
for transparent orthographies
The 5 pillars of reading US National Reading Panel
Phonemic awareness - phonemes in fox
Phonics
Practice for fluency
guided oral repeated reading
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Simple comprehension is natural
predictions, inference can be taught explicitly
Phonemic awareness How many phonemes are there in fox ?
difficult skills to teach and learn (Stainthorp, 2003)
UK teacher trainees: phoneme counting: 23%
6 months later: 40%
specific instruction ~ phonemic structure, importance
in literacy teaching
How to maximize the probability
that individual letters will be
retained?
How to present a letter?
E.g. Attention to a letter with gestures,
minimal wording (educational practices)
“look at this letter” [point] The sound of
this letter is b
Distributive – one letter per day
Advice from neuroscientists studying
long-term potentiation could be
considered
Do children know exactly what to
attend to on a blackboard?
“Extreme Phonics”
to capture even the “back of the class” in about 100
days 65 1-hour lessons of decoding (followed by 35-65 days of story
readings)
1 letter per day, similar ones kept apart (separate capitals)
Phonological awareness, word segmentation
Attention to a letter with gestures, minimal wording
Textbooks to take home, 1 per child
Plenty of text for practice, e.g. 140 pages
Economical paper use: small pictures, few blank spaces, 24 pt. fonts
Readability from a distance !
Writing, also on table, in the air etc
Systematic brief feedback for everyone
Using the better students to monitor and teach
Listening comprehension – stories if there is time
Scripted lessons to facilitate teacher compliance
Initial short-term reading module (45-65 lessons)
Phonological awareness exercises
help map sounds to letters
Insight that words are made up of large sounds (syllables: tha –la, gaan) and tiny sounds (phonemes: th-a-l-a, g-aa-n).
Strong phonological skills facilitate reading and spelling learning
In Bengali (applicable to Khmer):
children found it easier to work with syllables than phonemes
They understood that words are made of phonemes later
Children not splitting words easily also had trouble recognizing words and spelling
However, most findings thus far are correlational, causality uncertain
intensive, computerized phonemic training changes
receptive language skills – and auditory attention (Stevens, Fanning, Coch, Sanders, & Neville, 2008)
Teachers must learn how to teach reading !
Some teachers read out text and expect
students somehow to “model” Is this possible?
Students cannot “memorize” large numbers of letters instantly
They need to link and practice 1-2 at a time
Like trains shown earlier
Students who don’t know letter values cannot learn them from others’ fast reading
Rural Mozambique
Help from peers
Literacy in 100 days – the Gambia
Steps for daily instruction:
two 35-minute periods together
Step 1:
Review: letters , vocabulary of earlier day
Step 2 [early lessons only]
Phonological awareness
- teach
- Practice
Step 3
-Teach new letter
flash cards, blackboard, other means
select only small or capital letter
Step 4
Writing exercises
Step 5
-reading practice:
Teacher & better students monitor every child
Deal with absent students
Step 6 - if time is sufficient
[or as step 1 to attract students]
Listening comprehension
Read story, point out vocabulary
Ask comprehension questions
Instructional focus: Parsimony
Sequences and routines little-educated
teachers can do easily
Materials that are cheap, black and white
actually teach reading
Coaching
Simple scripted lessons
Otherwise not sustainable
Writing
Why should students also write
fast?
Writing speed: total words average in US:
25 in gr. 2, 39 in gr 4, 44 in gr. 6
What is the writing speed among job seekers in
client countries?
written expression, spelling, etc.
US National Council on Teacher Quality (Walsh, Glaser, &
Wilcox, 2006)
random: 72 elementary education programs - syllabi
15%: all components of science of reading
31%: no reference
Why are these issues not better known?
Please consider researching these
variables
How well do students perceive written text?
Do they always actually see it?
Distance, fuzzy blackboards,
Textbook legibility
Retention of letter shapes
Chunk size for reading – rate of increase
158
Filosofía educativa y
controversias
El constructivismo surgió de
investigaciones sobre las redes
cognoscitivas de 1980s
Cómo informar la filosofía educativa
según los hallazgos de las
investigaciones?
Thank you very much for coming !
Extra slides
