Learning to read

Summary Reading begins with the child’s acquisition of spoken language. Later he learns to differentiate the graphic symbols from one another and to decode these to familiar speech sounds. As he learns the code, he must progressively utilize the structural constraints which are built into it in order to attain the skilled performance which is characterized by processing of higher-order units—the spelling and morphological patterns of the language. Because of my firm conviction that good pedagogy is based on a deep understanding of the discipline to be taught and the nature of the learning process involved, I have tried to show that the psychology of reading can benefit from a program of theoretical analysis and experiment. An analysis of the reading task—its discriminatory and decoding aspects as well as the semantic and syntactical aspects—tells uswhat must be learned. An analysis of the learning process tells ushow. The consideration of formal instruction comes only after these steps, and its precepts should follow from them. This article is adapted from a paper used at a conference on Perceptual and Linguistic Aspects of Reading, sponsored by the Committee on Learning and the Educational Process of the Social Science Research Council and held at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, California, 31, October 1963. Reprinted by permission of the Author and Publisher from Science, V. 148, No. 3673, 21 May 1965.     

Learning to read

This paper traces the philosophical and programmatic evolution of Pratham's accelerated reading programme ‘Read India’. It outlines the experiences that led to the development of the accelerated reading technique and the organizational contexts in which this approach has been played out.     

Learning to read in Australia

Abstract

Reading scientists have learned a good deal over the past 40 years about how children learn to read, why some find this so hard, and how such children can be helped. But this science has not reached many classrooms. National governments in the USA, UK and Australia have all recently been so concerned about the incidence of poor reading ability amongst their children that they have commissioned national surveys of reading and the teaching of reading. The Australian review committee issued its report and recommendations in December 2005. The report found that in most teacher training courses around Australia very little time was devoted to material on how children learn to read and how best to teach them, and that a majority of senior staff in schools consider that beginning teachers are not adequately prepared to teach children to read. The report recommended various ways in which this problem might be solved; and it also recommended, on the basis of a review of relevant research, that the teaching of reading in Australian schools should always include in the early years extensive systematic explicit instruction in synthetic phonics. We await implementation of these recommendations.     

Learning to read: a professional learning journey

This article reports on a study that investigated a professional development initiative in Australia to address a decline in reading comprehension scores in the middle and upper years of Primary school. It describes the professional learning journey of a middle primary teacher and his literacy coach over a period of 12 months as they worked to improve the teacher’s knowledge and skills to explicitly teach reading comprehension. A series of classroom observations and interviews at the beginning, middle and end of the school year were analysed for the kinds of reading skills taught and the nature of the instruction. The data suggest that there were significant changes in the teacher’s pedagogical repertoires and practices and an observed improvement in the student’s understandings of different comprehension knowledge, skills and strategies.     

Learning a second language in late adulthood: benefits and challenges

ABSTRACT

As human longevity increases, the proportion of older people worldwide increases as well. Statistics show that, while the population of older adults (ages 65+) was 5% in the 1960s, in 2018 it increased to 9%, and it is projected to rise to 16% by 2050. According to the World Health Organization, the proportion of the population aged 80 and over is growing fast. However, older learners have been neglected as a cohort by researchers. Although there have been more studies on older adults’ language acquisition recently, there is still a lack of research about the benefits and challenges of learning a second language in late adulthood. For these reasons, this paper will begin with a summary of background studies on the age factor in second-language learning, and then discuss its benefits and challenges for both older learners and language teachers.     

Processing inflected morphology in second language word recognition: Russian-speakers and English-speakers read Hebrew

This paper reports on an investigation into the morphosyntactic processing of second language (L2) learners who differ in terms of language learning experience. The chief area of interest was the relationship of L2 learning patterns and experience to the acquisition of automatized processing skills in the morphological domain. English- and Russian-native speakers of Hebrew as L2 were assessed on their sensitivity to complex morphological structures which do not exist in their respective native languages (L1). The Hebrew word formation rule which was the focus of investigation was the affixation of prepositions to nouns, resulting in single words which are also full prepositional phrases. In both English and Russian, prepositions and nouns in prepositional phrases must be autonomous. Participants named high frequency words of one (e.g., /parah/ cow) and three morphemes (e.g., /bakis/ in the pocket), which were presented in a control condition and also presented in conditions which either preserved or disrupted the natural morpheme boundaries through the manipulation of font-size. In addition to the experimental measure, participants were also asked to read an expositional passage from a popular Israeli newspaper. Results showed that the Russians, although significantly more accurate than the English speakers at text reading, were significantly less accurate and slower than the English at the naming task, and less impaired by the experimental manipulations. The results are discussed in terms of automaticity, print exposure and age of L2 acquisition.     

Learning to read: a psycholinguistic analysis of transitional processing

In the last decade a shift in view of the reading process, from basically an‘analytic’to a‘constructivist-psycholinguistic’view, has become apparent. The basis of this shift is analysed. The question of whether the process of learning-to-read, i.e. the transition from initial reading to fluent reading, can be understood in the same light is raised. It is argued that although the process of learning-to-read can be viewed essentially as a constructive process, developmental constraints require a modified view of the róle of constituent processing strategies. Implications of this modified view are suggested for the evaluation and teaching of reading.     

Orthographic learning through self-teaching among learners of English as a second language

Reading and Writing - Children can teach themselves new words via independent text reading. Previous studies on self-teaching heavily focused on learning to read in a first language (L1). Limited...     

Learning mathematics in a second language: A problem with more and less

An investigation into the development of the understanding of the relational terms more and less when used in a mathematical setting is described for two distinet groups of children. The first is a group of Papua New Guinean children attending government schools in Papua New Guinea; English isthe second language for these children. The second is a group of expatriate children attending international primary schools in Papua New Guinea. English is the first language for these children. The language of instruction in both school systems is English. In all, 376 Papua New Guinean children in grades 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10, and 255 expatriate children in grades 2, 4, and 6 were given a test in which the words more and less were used in different contexts. Although analysis of errors suggested that Papua New Guinean and expatriate children tended to make qualitatively similar errors, substantial differences were found in the grade levels by which class mastery of a given meaning could be assumed, with the Papua New Guinean children lagging from 2 to 4 years behind their expatriate contemporaties. This difference appears to have serious educational implications for the learning of elementary mathematics in Papua New Guinea.     

Learning English through actions: a study of mobile-assisted language learning

This study investigated the impact of taking photos using mobile phones on the English phrase-learning performance of English as a second-language learners. A total of 116 students enrolled in a college in Central Taiwan participated in this study. The participants were divided randomly into two groups: a control group and an experimental group (EG). The control group was assigned an online phrase-reading activity for the purpose of phrase learning, whereas the EG was instructed to engage in phrase learning by taking photos using their mobile phones. The study primarily investigated the participants' daily encounters with newly acquired phrases through the use of photos taken using mobile phones, which were associated with the sentences they constructed. The results of the study indicated that the students in the EG significantly outperformed the control students on the delayed posttest, and the EG exhibited a significantly higher level of perception toward the phrase-learning activities compared with that of the control group.     

Children’s concepts of language in learning to read

Conclusion To summarize, acceptance of reading as secondary to, and dependent on, the primary activities of speaking and listening does not mean that reading is simply speech in print, albeit reading is a language-based activity. Listening and speaking seem to proceed from the meaning of the discourse to analysis; whereas written language comprehension proceeds from analysis to meaning, at least for some beginning readers and some poor readers. Analysis of speech takes place at the unconscious or tacit level; conscious analysis of segments of print (sentences, phrases, words, syllables and phonemes) is often required in reading, especially at the initial stage. Good readers pass this decoding stage relatively effortlessly; poor readers may still need to deal with the mechanics of reading before these become automatic. Thus, while children should be introduced to reading through a variety of rich language experiences, there should be a parallel process of the development of subskills. This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Orton Society in Minneapolis, November 1978.     

二语习得补缺法

二语习得过程就是学习者形成自己中介语的过程。学习者利用补缺法,不断对自己的中介语进行修正、补充、建构,使其接近于目标语者的母语水平。这一过程分为注意、选择、补充三个阶段。该方法的意义在于能解决部分二语习得理论中的难题,能弥补克拉申输入理论的不足,能提高输入转化为吸收的效率。     

Learning to read in Russian: effects of orthographic complexity

Much attention has been paid to the delay in writing acquisition caused by irregularities of Russian orthography, but little is known about their effect on reading acquisition. Results of the present longitudinal reading acquisition study of Russian first graders suggest that phonological recoding is the dominant strategy in the initial phase of reading development in Russian, while there is evidence of gradual shift towards orthographic processing in reading high‐frequency regular words. The study confirms that Russian readers encounter difficulties in reading orthographically complex words, where phonological recoding does not completely succeed. These findings are compared with results of reading acquisition studies in other orthographies, and their relevance for models of reading acquisition in different types of orthographies is discussed.