Concluding Reflections: Learning to Read and Reading Pedagogy
We have focused so far mostly on skilled reading, but we conclude with brief reflections on learning to read. The orthography‐to‐language mapping system – how graphs map onto units in spoken language, both phonological and morphological – is the foundation of learning to read. Beyond this foundation is the transition to the skilled reader of the Reading Systems Framework.
The experience‐based shift in word reading
The progress to skilled reader requires establishing memories of visual word forms – orthographic memories. The ability to access a word memory rapidly is critical to fluent reading. The comprehension system depends on rapid and effortless input from the lexicon, and this, in turn, depends on rapid and effortless access to a word meaning from its form.
The importance of orthographic learning has been recognized in English reading research for some time (e.g., Ehri, 1992; Perfetti, 1992). As developed by Share (1995, 2004) in the self‐teaching hypothesis, decoding a word supports the establishment of its orthographic memory (see Castles & Nation, this volume). Ehri (2005, 2014) describes overlapping phases of development that move toward a skilled phase characterized by orthographic mappings at morpheme and syllable levels.
This movement from decoding words to effortlessly identifying them can be expressed as a general operating principle (Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2017b): Word identification shifts from computation to memory‐based retrieval for individual words as they become familiar, although sublexical procedures continue to be involved. Word reading speed becomes the distinguishing marker of skill once children reach a threshold level of word reading accuracy. The frequency effect in word reading is evidence that readers retrieve word identities (pronunciation, meaning) more quickly as word forms become more familiar. Developing readers, as they increase their skill at decoding, also increasingly use a rapid retrieval or “look‐up” procedure when a word becomes sufficiently familiar. Moreover, the effect of experience is not merely on access to word forms. By encountering words in varying contexts, meaning aspects of lexical quality are refined and reading comes to reflect a rich experience‐based lexical legacy (Nation, 2017).
How this development happens is simple: through practice. Experience in reading – effective experience in which children read words successfully and achieve comprehension – is the only certain path to establishing rapidly accessible orthographic representations. Beginning reading instruction supports this process only when it establishes the mapping foundations that allow this path to be used.
Teaching reading
The science of reading has established an ample basis for what needs to be learned and how to support this learning with systematic instruction. In teaching English, whether in the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or other areas where children learn to read English as a first language, there is a continuous tension between competing instructional ideas. Science‐based recommendations for teaching the foundations of the orthography‐language mappings have been the subject of multiple national panels and reviews (Castles et al., 2018; Rayner et al., 2001). The strong knowledge base and the support of governments for science‐based education have led to some improvements in English reading instruction (see Savage, this volume). However, these improvements are uneven. In the United States, recommended improvements have not penetrated teacher training as widely as is needed. Marilyn Adams (1998) pointed out that aspiring and practicing teachers in the late twentieth century were taught a “three‐cueing system,” syntactic, semantic, and grapho‐phonic “cues” the child can use to identify a word. This practice seems to have continued in the United States (in contrast to the United Kingdom) well into the twenty‐first century (Hanford, 2019). This strategy, rather than supporting the child’s developing word‐identification system, encourages guessing. In contrast, teaching in many other alphabetic languages generally provides direct support for decoding in beginning instruction (Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2017a). This direct support may be more important for the learner than the details of their orthography.
A final reflection
In skilled reading, the reading systems – the knowledge sources and the processes that use them – combine to present a smooth‐surfaced stream of even‐flow. Underneath the smooth surface are the mixed currents of processing that push the flow of reading so that, even in one second, processes of word identification, meaning retrieval, parsing, meaning integration, coherence building, and deeper understanding are present in overlapping, distributed phases. For learners to reach this level of skill, where only the smooth flow of the surface is visible, it is imperative to get foundational instruction right. This must be done in a way that supports the child’s engagement in reading, thus enabling what Huey (1908, p. 197) called “willing effort” for further reading. The progress to skilled reading crucially depends on effective experience that can come only through reading itself.
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