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    Reading Science and the Crisis in Literacy
    Reading Science and the Crisis in Literacy
    Reading Science and the Crisis in Literacy
    Ebook163 pages1 hour

    Reading Science and the Crisis in Literacy

    By Deborah Gorman

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    Nearly 40% of American students are not proficient in reading by the fourth grade. These poor readers will continue to underachieve and are at risk for dropping out entirely prior to high school graduation, because reading is the foundation for learning any subject including math and science. With over 14% of adults unable to read at a basic level and nearly 30% read at just a basic level, the United States continues to lag behind other developed nations in literacy.
    Since the 1950s when Rudolph Flesch called for a return to the teaching of reading by phonics, the subject has been controversial and debated by educators, publishers and parents.
    Programs such as No Child Left Behind, which relied heavily on mandated national testing have largely failed to reverse the trend because they do not get at the root of the problem.
    The reason so many students fail in reading is because the predominant method of teaching reading simply does not work for too many children, especially boys, English as a Second Language students, and those with learning disabilities. Parents are concerned about their children and frustrated by the lack of progress. They are seeking out solutions. We are undergoing a paradigm shift. More and more parents and teachers are realizing the time has come to scrap the whole word approach and replace it with phonics-first.
    Originally written as a series of blog posts and essays, the book takes an in-depth look at how reading and spelling have been taught in American from the time of Noah Webster to the latest scientific research on how the human brain processes language.
    We will never bridge the reading gap unless we change to the most effective method of teaching reading, which is phonics-first.
    That phonics is the most effective method of teaching reading has been proven over time. Research on reading and the brain helps us to understand why phonics is the only method that can be effective for every student.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDeborah Gorman
    Release dateOct 4, 2018
    ISBN9781370450206
    Reading Science and the Crisis in Literacy
    Author

    Deborah Gorman

    Deborah is a holistic life coach and Reading Instruction Specialist who helps people to have a better quality of life. She is an entrepreneur who has started several businesses and is the author of Essentials of Starting Your Business, published in 2017 by Business Experts Press, and two previous books as well as numerous blogs. Prior to the advent of the Internet, she got her start in writing as a newspaper correspondent in Wisconsin.Deborah is a retired pastor who is originally from the Midwest, where she served congregations in Minnesota and Wisconsin for many years. She has an M Div degree from the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary.Deborah is most likely to be found on Linked In, Google+, and Smashwords.com.Deborah is a servant leader who is passionate about her faith, and active in her church. She is a mom and grandma to six grandchildren and currently makes her home in North Carolina. Deborah loves books, gardening, hiking and travel.

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      Book preview

      Reading Science and the Crisis in Literacy - Deborah Gorman

      Foreword

      Poor readers lag behind their peers in elementary school and beyond. Leading educators agree that those students who can't read well by third-grade will continue to struggle in all subject areas. They will remain behind their peers throughout their school years, and unless an intervention is made, they will be unable to catch up. Consequently, they are at risk of being severely limited in their ability to get an adequate education.

      Reading is the key to learning and mastering any subject area, including math. Because every academic subject requires reading proficiency, it's crucial that children learn to read well early in life. In the twenty-first century, getting a post-secondary education is an essential requirement for most good jobs.

      I teach a reading course that utilizes a phonetic system based on the 44 sounds of English. By coincidence, when I had come to a vocational crossroad a little over thirteen years ago, I stumbled upon a magazine ad that was soliciting persons with an interest in becoming a reading instructor, took a training course and became a reading instruction specialist. While I had been somewhat aware of literacy issues, I had little first-hand experience working directly with poor readers except for some brief tutoring stints while I was a student. I'm a passionate reader and always thought I would like to help others to become better readers.

      From childhood on, I'd always loved books and reading and learned to read fairly easily myself. I grew up in a family of avid readers and there were always books, newspapers and magazines in my home. I don't recall any family member who had trouble with reading. My own two children also learned to read easily, and quickly achieved fluency without problems. They did well academically and both graduated from college.

      So while I had little personal experience with reading problems, I was aware that learning to read could be a struggle for many persons. When I was in high school I had been a volunteer tutor in a church program without problems. I had always thought I would like to help struggling or illiterate persons learn to read.

      The course I teach was developed by a public school teacher and principal in California who had been concerned by the difficulties that many children in his school had experienced in learning to read. Most of these students had normal or even above average intelligence. Yet they struggled with reading.

      When I first heard that students taught by this method typically gain two or more grade levels in reading in 30 to 60 hours, I was somewhat skeptical. I knew little about teaching methods and wondered how a poor reader could learn so quickly. As I worked with students, slowly my eyes were opened as I gained experience and saw the undeniable results before my eyes.

      Many of my students have come to me after trying other programs or methods which had failed to help them improve their reading ability. Seeing them make progress at last and observing the wonderful results they achieve is a true joy.

      Teaching students to read has been an adventure that is gratifying, challenging, and eye-opening. I'm grateful for the challenges of teaching reading, and for all that I've learned from my students.

      This book is an account of my experience and a reflection what I've learned from my experience of teaching students with reading problems. The names of students mentioned in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

      Often students who aren't proficient readers are assumed to have a disability. The tendency to assume that any struggling reader who has failed to learn by conventional methods must have some type of disability is concerning.

      As I have worked with students, I also studied teaching methods as I desired to help more persons to become proficient readers. I learned much more about literacy issues. I was shocked to discover what a widespread problem illiteracy is and wondered why the schools don't employ teaching methods that are proven to be effective. The book has been enhanced by my discoveries about what scientific research tells U.S. about the brain and reading.

      Initially I was hesitant to make any claims that phonics was actually a superior way to teach reading. Since I didn't really know that much about it, I assumed that some students learned better by this method, while most did fine with other methods. Yet questions lingered as to what logic made this so. Intuitively I began to question whether it was actually factual to assume an equivalence in teaching methods. When I saw nonreaders catch on as they were taught decoding skills by the phonetic method, I disbelieved the prevailing wisdom that said whole-word was the best way to teach reading. But I had no way of knowing what evidence such assumptions had been based on.

      In time I made a more in-depth look into scientific research and found many research studies that validate the phonetic method for reading instruction. Nevertheless, phonics is still discounted as an inferior method by many educational professionals, while whole-word teaching methods remain prevalent in most American school systems, even though there is a dearth of scientific evidence for the effectiveness of whole-word reading instruction.

      I feel passionately about reading instruction and literacy. For the purpose of this book, literacy will be defined as the ability to read and write. I write from my own perspective and what I have learned from both personal experience working with students as well as further exploration and reading of scientific studies.

      * * *

      1. Ten Myths About Learning to Read

      Myth #1: Learning to read is a natural process.

      Actually it is not natural for human beings to learn to read, any more than it is natural for them to learn to drive a car, swim or play golf. That is why learning to read can be difficult for many children. Learning to walk and talk, for example, are natural abilities for humans to learn, which all but the most severely handicapped easily learn to do early in life.

      Writing and reading on the other hand are human inventions that were developed rather recently, within the past 5,000 years of human history. The first alphabets were created around 3,000 years ago. That is why, unlike speech, reading and writing are not instinctual. Our brains must be taught how to read.

      Myth #2: Children will eventually learn to read if given enough time.

      Since reading is not a natural ability, many persons never learn to read, because they may never have gone to school or received appropriate reading instruction to help them learn how to read and write.

      Myth #3: Reading programs are the key to success.

      There are no reading programs that automatically guarantee success. Reading success is a result of skilled teachers who teach the necessary skills, while making sure that students practice them until they achieve mastery and become proficient readers. On average it can take two years for children to become proficient readers of English at a basic level.

      Myth #4: There is no best way of teaching reading.

      This notion aims at achieving a compromise between several teaching philosophies. This idea also has been disproved by a large body of research, which has concluded that some methods of reading instruction are definitely more effective than others.

      Myth #5: Skilled reading involves using syntactic and semantic cues to guess words, and good readers make many mistakes as they read authentic text.

      There simply is no evidence to the effectiveness of these theories. There are no research studies that have shown this be the case. There are studies, however, which show that poor readers rely on these methods.

      Myth #6: Research can be used to support whatever your beliefs are — lots of programs are research based.

      This myth goes along with #4 and #5, and is also untrue. The weight of evidence over the past 50 years has concluded that there are specific methods of teaching reading which are effective.

      Myth #7: Phoneme awareness is a consequence (not a cause) of reading proficiency.

      This is backwards. Phoneme awareness is a skill that good readers have acquired. The weight of evidence from scientific research studies have concluded that phonemic awareness is the best predictor of reading success in young children. Numerous research studies have also shown that children with a high level of phonemic awareness make progress to become proficient readers.

      Myth #8: Some people are just genetically dyslexic.

      It is possible that there may be an inherited tendency toward dyslexia. If so, there may be a combination of genetic and environmental factors at work for some problem readers who are considered dyslexic. At the present time, no specific gene has been isolated that is associated with dyslexia. Researchers suspect that possibly several genes may be involved.

      On the

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