Contrary to accepted notions, pedagogy for beginning reading instruction favours a right brain perspective: holistic, spatial, intuitive and emotionally referenced. Though language skills tend to be a left-brained activity, such skills are not necessarily invoked in beginning reading instruction where the instruction is wholistic and abstract. This top-down, right-brained approach that seeks to abstract meaning first, as a result, is gender biased; it favours how girls (can) learn. Statistics for the last several years--academic achievement, high school completion rates, the majority of university entrants--confirm this; if, that is, one accepts that reading is the basis of all learning.
Left brained thinkers tend to be structural, sequential and analytical; in other words, they tend to be concrete in their approach to learning as opposed to abstract; they prefer a bottom-up or building block pedagogy.
Seeking to remediate, though perhaps not to redress, the learning discrepancies caused by the top down pedagogy, most provincial education bodies have introduced Reading Recovery (trademark, Clay) programs whereby boys, if this was not already obvious, can learn to “catch up”; for, any reading recovery program anywhere comprises mainly boys. Now, the merit of Reading Recovery is questionable; few, if any, independent/scientific studies point to its efficacy in ameliorating the problem. One of its pillars of instruction, the notion of Learning Styles, certainly appeals in an intuitive way (right brained thinking) as to how children may have a learning disposition for visual, auditory or kinesthetic teaching methods (Learning Styles Inventory). This pillar, however, is firmly planted in sand (Stahl, S. A. (2002). Different strokes for different folks? In L. Abbeduto (Ed.), Taking sides: Clashing on controversial issues in educational psychology (pp. 98-107). Guilford, CT, USA: McGraw-Hill).
Right-brained or left-brained, we all use all our senses in attending to any task. Boys, as beginning readers, are cognitively predisposed (this is not a learning style in the sense illustrated in the previous paragraph) to logical learning; girls, it would seem, are relatively neutral (Why Boy Are Different, Dr. Bonnie Macmillan). Re-enforcement of top down beginning reading methods in reading recovery programs, however, may tend to nullify a left brain or logical tack in understanding of how words are first decoded to abstract meaning. None of this means our brains are are hard-wired, fixed in either left-brained solutions or right-brained solutions. The brain is plastic; it responds to stimuli that could evoke left or right brained activity; it can be trained. But, a cautionary note: practise make perfect. This repeated injunction is a familiar phrase. It can be re-phrased: practice makes permanent. We become good at what we practise even if those practices are inefficient or ineffectual. And we tend to keep repeating them unless taught otherwise. Practices encouraged in balanced instruction (in most schools, a pseudonym for whole language) such as guessing, using the first (or sometimes the last) letter of a word or its shape (the word outline); predicting, trying to use context (which presumes an extant level of reading ability); and, using picture cues are examples of inefficient and ineffectual methods of teaching reading (Goodman, Smith, Clay et al). Phonics is also used but indirectly. Children are encouraged to deduce, without explicit instruction, the relationship between letters and sounds. Together, these practices are known as the three cueing system, whereby semantics (context restricted guessing), syntax (word order or predictable guessing) and phonics (orthographic information as a last resort) are used to teach children to read. Because these practices are also encouraged as first strategies for beginning reading, with phonics as a last resort or not at all (again, Goodman, Smith, Clay et al), they tend to become permanent, almost hard-wired, thus abandoning children to the picture book stage of learning to read with no, or little direction out.
The way out of this dead-end maze of three cueing is English orthography.
Despite its seeming irregularity, the English language is amenable to rules of pronunciation, known as phonics rules. The utility of these rules have been dismissed in much of the research literature. Clymer was one of the early researchers to investigate the phonics rules and concluded that they were of little use.
DISCUSSION OF PHONICS GENERALIZATIONS (link for full discussion)
Literal analysis of The Parents (Roald Dahl) corresponded in terms of percentage generalization utility with Clymer. How, then, do the rules help if they ostensibly display marginal utility? The answer lies in the brain’s innate predisposition for logical argument or reasoning. It is natural learning. And the process it uses is akin to Boolean algebra: an algebra of logic that enables us to dispense with intuition and deductively simplify logic statements.
Taking the first rule stated earlier as an illustration, not forgetting that even before use of rules (or more accurately logic guides since this implies inferential judgement) a child must have an appreciation of letter/sound relationships (phonemic awareness) and, ideally, alphabetic names. (Knowing the names of the alphabetic characters, though not essential to reading, provides a convenient mnemonic handle for the child [the alphabet song] and use of them is often unavoidable; e.g. in spelling.)
So, with phonemic awareness as the master programming logic, nested within this program are subroutines, which represent the rules for particular letter configurations; and, within these, further subroutines to accommodate anomalies. If this sounds complex, it’s because it is—complex but logical.
Back to the first rule: When a word has only one vowel letter, the vowel is likely to have a short sound. Let’s take a CVCC (consonant/vowel/ consonant/consonant) combination, FIND, in the sentence: Help find a lost cat. By the rule, the sound of the vowel would be short and pronunciation of the word would not register with the child; the sentence would be read with short vowel sounds at each vowel occurrence-and it would not make complete sense. This would be a convenient point to introduce an additional, logic argument: IF NOT a short sound THEN a long sound. Re-reading of the sentence with a long I sound in find would meet with success: message understood. Find would then be tentatively placed in the brain’s register of exceptions; and, quite soon, as exposure to print increased, the register would fill with similar word forms: rind, grind, blind, mind—all of which fall into one of the rime categories, described by Adams and others, that enable words to be retained in the rime register for rapid recall. These rime registers are actually logic registers that are accessed when triggered by certain graphic (letter) inputs.
The Boolean logic recognizes particular letter formations; it recognizes that for these graphic inputs there will be a probability of certain sound outputs. If the individual letters are considered as gates, the sequence of these gates, when seen as a pronunciation cluster, decreases the probability of mispronunciation of the word as a whole. The letter clusters (CIND in the example, where C represents a Consonant) eventually become permanently wired logic—at least until another anomalous situation arises—and are instantly perceived as such, accessing the rime or logic registers in these combinations and not as individual letters. CIND and similar letter patterns become the logic statements. Clustering of letter combinations in this manner is the sublimation of the phonic generalizations, leading to—for all intents and purposes—instant, whole word recognition.
At this relatively sophisticated reading stage, new words will be interpreted by their ‘logic chunks’ —spelling/sound patterns—rather than phonic rule analysis. Even when initial ‘chunking’ fails, comparative analysis with lexical word stacks—matching to stacks of words of similar letter patterns—is the strategy of first choice for the mature reader, the phonic generalizations no longer being consciously addressed.
Attainment of this sophisticated reading level is facilitated by an understanding and refinement of the phonic generalizations. Here is a list of vowel sound probabilities for the first rule:
single vowel word = P(.57) vowel sound short
C&I&N&D = P(.99) vowel sound long
C&I&C&K = P(.99) vowel sound short
C&O&L&D = P(.99) vowel sound long
C&V&C = P(.85) vowel sound short, with was and saw as common exceptions
The designation, &, in Boolean logic signifies that there is only an output when the specified inputs are ANDED together. These inputs are recognized as syntactically acceptable. (Though syntax usually applies to word order, letter order, too, is governed by the need for reproducibility—the ability to articulate; of course, nonsense words can still be formed that are pronounceable.) If the output, however, does not stimulate an immediate recall from the knowledge base of words, different tacks are used. Alternative tacks, based on experience (note the method for the mature reader, above), are applied in the order of most probable and most rapid success. For example, for the CIND group to be triggered as a long vowel sound, the first consonant gate must be recognized as legal to access the register of CIND words; additionally, the grammatical denotation (verb, noun, adjective.. .) would modify pronunciation probability for known words in unfamiliar context and unknown words in familiar context.
Provided, however, meta-cognitive awareness of the phonological processes exists—though not necessarily consciously verbalized—reversion to lower level analysis (phonic generalizations) is the option once comparative analysis has been tried. A simple experiment serves to illustrate this point. (Prior to reading the following sentences, I expect you have been reading CIND with a short vowel sound and pronouncing C with an S sound to comply with the rule for the letter C.) Mature readers (those that have to read and write technical material as part of their daily job functions) were asked to read aloud the following sentences:
1. I will need a roofer to mend the lind on my chimney.
2. The rough edges on this piece will need brinding.
The hypothesis for the first sentence was that, despite analogy to similar rime forms (blind, etc.), the logic statement, CIND, with a long vowel sound in lind, would not be triggered at the first consonant gate-the letter I being an illegal trigger (onset) for the CIND register or lexical stack of words with this form. Reversion (unconsciously) to other word stacks then to the general rule would take place and the word pronounced with a short vowel sound. The hypothesis for the second sentence was that background knowledge (workshop experience—predictably, the word should be grinding), appropriate context, and the legal form (rind) within brinding would probably lead to some pronunciation with a long vowel sound.
Of the nine readers in the sample, eight pronounced lind with a short vowel sound. One person rationalized his pronunciation by analogy to a friend, Lindsey; another rationalized it by analogy to words beginning with ind, like: index, independent.. . While Lindsy is a legitimate pronunciation analogy, the index, dependent stack, for most people, is not—it doesn’t follow the C&I&N&D format. With unsuccessful comparative analysis to the CIND register, then, the general rule would have been applied for pronunciation of lind; that is, with a short vowel sound.
Though there was a higher than expected number pronouncing brinding with a long vowel sound, five out of the nine, otherwise, the analysis process for word pronunciation would have been the same.
Critical to successful outcome of these probabilistic inferences—the probability of correct pronunciation—when encountering new words is initial attention to the individual letters which comprise the anomalous words, that is, those words that don’t fit the reader’s lexical stacks or word registers. When the logic guides are not enabled nor the phonological processes invoked, as when saying ‘blank’ or guessing, the opportunity for expansion of lexical knowledge is severely inhibited.
When new or unfamiliar words are encountered, phonological understanding—at the reader’s own particular level—permits a meta-analysis of the logic chain in deducing a contextually appropriate sound output, thus obviating the need for guessing or saying ‘blank’ strategies.
A form of training that invokes use of both hemispheres of the brain is karate.
