Professor Rosemary Sage
Professor and Dean of the College of Teachers 

“The dear people do not know how long it takes to learn to read. I have been at it all my life and I cannot yet say

I have reached the goal.” (Goethe)

Sounding out letters (phonics) is a popular reading approach, so how would you say /ho/ in hotel, hot, shop, hope, hold, hook, hoot, house, hoist, horse, horizon, honey, hour or honest? Many possible responses make it a hit-and-miss affair. In this article, we look at attitudes to reading as well as developmental issues, concluding phonics works if you know what the word is likely to be in the first place. Once you recognise a word as ‘hotel’ you do not need to consider other pronunciations of /ho/. Sounding out words, however, into parts (c-a-t) unlocks those that are unfamiliar. If a context suggests you are looking at dog or cat, phonics helps to differentiate. Children must not rely just on phonics alone, but consider words as a whole. Targeting overall meaning before the mechanics of individual word decoding follows brain processing. Narrative thinking and structures are necessary for this but more difficult to achieve in today’s visually mediated world. An oracy-to-literacy approach to reading, followed by high-achieving nations, is advocated and promoted in The College of Teachers’ online courses.

Introduction

I learnt to read from cereal packets on the breakfast table in the days of the Rice Crispy Snap, Crackle and Pop folk. Hellbent on finding out more about these little men, I pored over words on the box and managed to reveal their secrets by asking my parents! By the time of entering school, I could read anything and was bored by the c-a-t/r-a-t phonic teaching routines that connected letters with sounds. It was soon evident that links between many of these were arbitrary and could not be uniquely specified. Our daughter had a similar experience. I was signing Christmas cards when Helen (just 3 years old) seized my pen and wrote her name clearly. She became a fluent writer and reader, with no formal lessons, before starting school and was put off by phonics. When consulted, her teacher said that all children must be treated the same.

However, our son was quite different. He had early hearing loss due to recurrent Otitis Media (inflammation of the middle ear). The phonic approach to reading was beyond him and he began hiding when it was time for school. His head teacher told us, “Luke is a dull boy of bright parents!” Fortunately, we held out hopes for him, realising that reading is more than just decoding to sound and assuming words will be instantly understood. Luke needed to focus on the meaning rather than the mechanics of words and was lucky that his Mum was a speech and language therapist and understood the oracy to literacy shift! I helped Luke to identify words using context, focusing less on sounds. This is commonly known as the whole language method. Luke is now a psychologist, specialising in motivation. He is one of the few students to gain a PhD scholarship (so much for him being labelled a dull boy!)

It was these family experiences that motivated me to research primary (spoken) and secondary (written) language issues to further understand them. This has taken me all over the world. I have found that countries with around 100 per cent literacy achievement, such as Japan, Cuba and Denmark, focus firmly on formal, spoken language ability as the basis for all learning. They believe that if children can select and arrange ideas coherently, when giving extended spoken information, explanations and instructions, they will shift naturally into the secondary language activities of reading, writing and mathematics. Formal speaking opportunity gives students the experience of dealing with quantities of words and how to sequence them logically for audience understanding. In Japan, teachers do not teach reading, regarding it as an activity where gaining meaning is primary, needing a one-to-one mediated approach, better achieved by parents at home in relaxed settings where content can be discussed (Sage, 2010).

Reading is continually debated, as the quality of national life is affected by people’s literacy competence. Despite vast attention to reading, we have produced more problems than solutions because there is no common understanding of the process and how it should be facilitated. At present our Government recommends phonics as the best way to teach, following the endorsement of the Rose Review (2006). This article advocates a broader approach to reading which acknowledges that it is a secondary linguistic activity that can only be successful if primary levels of language and thinking are fully established for meaning to be extracted from written text. First, we consider common views about reading and how they influence practice.

What is reading?

Views about reading affect how we research and make provision for its development. Some people (as in Japan) regard it as the result of maturation rather than something achieved through systematic instruction. Others (as in Britain) view reading as an activity taught at school as opposed to naturally within the home environment. Children’s ideas, gathered in a Leicester University project, range from “reading is: ‘saying words’; ‘books and then more books!’; ‘finding out new things’; ‘escaping into other worlds’”, (Sage, 2000). These also reflect a range of attitudes about literacy, which, broadly defined, is the ability to deal with both spoken and written words.

There are those who see reading as primarily visual, leading to study of eye movements and reading speed for expanding eye-span printed word intake. Others consider reading as fluent, accurate word pronunciation, focusing on phonic instruction in letter-sound relationships. Less emphasis, however, is given to reading as assembling expertise, experience and knowledge, reflecting on what is written in order to relate this to other areas of life. This broader view takes account of established spoken, literate language levels that build skills of reference, inference and coherence. Through reading we can expand our horizons, extend interests and gain a deeper, wider understanding of ourselves, others and the world in which we live. There is a purpose and a point to grappling with written texts which goes well beyond barking at print! Two, broad perspectives on this sight-to-sound-to-meaning process are summarised below:

Mapping print onto already established spoken sequences (phonic approach).

Reconstructing from print a writer’s ideas, feelings, impressions, intentions and moods to make our own meaning (whole language approach).

If we view reading as a visual task, we target correction of eye defects and provision of legible materials. If we regard it as word recognition, we drill sounds and sight vocabulary. If we approach it as gaining facts, we focus on specific parts of text. If we consider it a thinking process, we encourage skills of reference, inference and coherence for interpreting, generalising and reflecting about what has been read. If we think reading helps personal development we select texts that apply to life and meet individual/group needs. These views are compatible but we tend to favour one at the expense of others. We now consider how brains work to assist reading development so that we can achieve this process more successfully.

How brains work to assist reading

Three brain parts have evolved, developing at different times and comprising the cerebellum, limbic brain and cerebrum. They are viewed in cross-section adapted from Class Talk, Sage, 2000 (p.107).

The cerebellum and brain stem (pons, medulla, mid-brain) in evolutionary terms is the oldest part with major development between conception and 15 months after birth. It monitors the external world through sensory input (sound, sight, touch, taste, smell and sense of position in space – proprioception). The body is activated to respond to survival needs (food, shelter, warmth, security, safety) and reflexes are integrated into movements of neck, arms and legs for posture, rolling, sitting, crawling, walking and exploring. Thomas and Chess (1977) showed that adult competency stemmed from three early learning factors: rich sensory indoor-outdoor experiences that build strong images; freedom to explore without restriction (other than for safety) and adults acting as consultants when children question. They also emphasized the need for sensory, hands-on learning to continue throughout life as the basis for a proper knowledge and understanding about experiences.

Educational practices, like reading, derive from a view that pupils learn well from knowledge in spoken monologue or written two-dimensional form. They must sit still, keep eyes forward and take note. We have only to observe the glazed, locked eyes and vacant stares of classroom learners to know this belief needs challenging! Linear perspectives in written words and pictures predominate in formal learning but are merely arbitrary, artistic conventions. Touch and proprioception organise what we see in real situations. Less than 10 per cent of visual interpretation takes place in the eyes (Sage, 2000, p.109) and it is touch and feeling that bring understanding of dimension, texture, line and colour variation. Formal learning relies too much on verbal explanations. So, what is wrong in this? Einstein’s maxim: “Learning is experience, everything else is just information”, provides a perfect answer. Words, as representative symbols, give us merely a glimpse of reality and are a poor substitute for hands-on learning. Rich, sensory input, from live experience, brings proper understanding and without this images are distorted in memory, so that we are only able to achieve limited meaning from written texts.

The limbic brain (thalamus and surrounding parts-hypothalamus, basal ganglia, amygdala, hypocampus) lies above the brain stem, adding emotion to base patterns of sensory input and learned motor function from age 15 months. By five years, a child connects reason (from the cerebrum) with emotions and by 8, adds insight (from frontal lobes) to refine thinking. Responsible expression of emotion requires integration of the mind-body system when feeling occurs, assisting links with insight and reasoning. Learning and remembering need rich multi-sensory input, personal and emotional connection and movement which supports experiential teaching. Emotional development is responsible for absorbing rules, values and wisdom and without these intelligences we can do little with our learning. This aspect is rarely considered as a prerequisite for reading attainment.

The implications of these insights for education are enormous. Our mind-body system learns through experiencing life for real, in relationship to everything else, with emotions mediating situations. In order to think, express, create and learn, children must have emotional commitment otherwise school is just an academic exercise. Curriculum demands ensure we deliver knowledge in segregated, prescriptive forms in an unemotional and unsociable context where connections to personal concerns, interests and developmental needs are remote. Teachers complain of being disciplinarians rather than educators as they continually clamp down on students’ social and emotional interactions. Many European countries, such as Denmark, France, Germany and Italy, respect natural brain development and do not start formal schooling until 7 years, adopting a more natural, flexible learning style in tune with child needs. Therefore, children in these countries learn to read when physical, mental, social and emotional development is at a stage when this is more easily achieved.

The cerebrum comprises the largest brain structure (the size of 2 clenched fists) in two hemispheres with 4 lobes. It developed only 100,000 years ago, in response to a need for more sophisticated human interpersonal communication. The frontal lobe controls body muscles; the parietal lobe integrates, interprets and evaluates sensations; the temporal lobe deals with sound, pitch, rhythm, speech, balance and smell whilst the occipital lobe copes with eye impulses. The four lobes of each hemisphere accept external information from the opposite side of the body via the brain stem and limbic system. So, information coming into the left ear goes into the right temporal lobe for interpretation. All sensory-motor function on the right side of the body is either realised or controlled by the left hemisphere with the reverse usually occurring. Some people, however, are transposed with part of the right brain controlling the right side of the body and vice versa. The fact that most of us write with the right hand but a few with their left one (including myself!) is proof of brain differences.

People are described as left- or right- brained because of their learning style preferences. We are likely, however, to be a mixture of styles with predominate strengths in either left or right brain activity. Each hemisphere develops and processes information in a specific way: the linear one (normally left) deals with details, parts, language processing and sequential patterns whilst the lateral brain (normally right) copes with images, rhythm, emotion, intuition and whole processing. In children, both hemispheres contain all functions until specialisation occurs, which is different for everyone, accounting for some not developing hand preference until late. Our son picked up a pencil with either left or right hand until 13 years. On average, the lateral, right hemisphere exhibits a growth spurt between 4-7 and the linear, left side between 7-9 years. Normally, hemispheric specialisation is in place between 9-12 years although late developers, with slow myelination (sheathing) of nerve fibres, necessary for making extensive brain connections, may establish dominance after this. With regards to early phonics teaching, we are expecting analytic processing from children at a stage when their brains are focusing on understanding wholes rather than parts of things. This puts them at disadvantage, diverting them from concentrating on outlines of events, which precede understanding of how parts fit into wholes. With regard to reading, focus on the whole before considering the parts is fundamental to grasping an overview of the content and forming a mental schema in memory (Sage, 2000).

Implications for learning

In a small sample of 218 students at American schools, Hannaford (1995) found those with strong verbal abilities and preferred linear processing were more often labelled as talented by teachers. Those with weaker verbal abilities and lateral processing were frequently regarded as having special educational needs. Linear, dominant processors (usually left-brained) focus on parts – specifically in language on sounds, words and sentence structure. They show more adeptness at using logic in maths problems and employing details in other subjects, coping with a phonic emphasis on reading more readily. The lateral processors (usually right-brained) take in the big picture, feel emotional connections, access intuitive understanding and learn kinaesthetically through movement and hands-on experience. These prefer to approach things as a whole, in broad outline, exploring, playing and feeling their responses. This group require greater support and guidance to deal with details and logical processing.

Hannaford pointed out that left-brained linear processors are more positively reinforced in education. They are likely to have higher self-esteem and experience less school stress because work is geared to their strengths with an analytic teaching style that suits learning preferences. Within our current education system, lateral, right-brain processors are more affected by the early push between 5-8 years to acquire detailed, analytic functions, as in phonic emphasis for reading. They learn to judge themselves, therefore, as inadequate. Albert Einstein is believed to have been a lateral, right-brain learner and his academic failures are legendary:

The words of language do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be combined. (in Sage, 2000, p. 116).

Mattson (1989) found those with learning difficulties show less left-brain activation, even for verbal tasks, and fewer shifts from one brain side to the other for activities requiring both top-down (whole processing) and bottom-up (part processing) strategies as in meaning and mechanical reading aspects. These students demonstrated increased levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which Diorio and co-workers (1993) concluded is correlated with decreased learning and memory and increased attention problems. At the muscular level, the tendon guard reflex comes into play during stress, locking knees, back and neck and decreasing functions of both cerebral spinal fluid and their connections. Sage (2000) noted this in children with spoken and written communication problems, describing links between a shortened calf muscle (gastrocnemius) and inability to speak or write clearly and coherently. Therapy enhanced functioning of both hemispheres and stimulated the connecting bundle of fibres (corpus callosum) that allows left and right brains to be integrated for effective learning. When fully developed, the corpus callosum carries 4 billion messages a second across more than 200 myelinated (sheathed) nerve fibres connecting the 2 hemispheres. This is impressive performance by any reckoning! Such speedy access allows full operational thinking. Research shows that the corpus callosum is smaller and thinner in those with learning problems, resulting in weaker left and right brain links (Shaffer, 1994). Females have around 10 per cent more fibres than males, attributed to more interactive relationships and richer dialogues with others (Harvey, 1985). They are not so inhibited at expressing feelings and better at language tests. Acceptance of emotional experience and expression in normal learning might allow this discrepancy to disappear.

Brain development and educational planning

Neuroscience should feed into educational planning. In normal growth, young children are primarily accessing their lateral, global right-brain processing which develops and enlarges between 4-7 years, at the time they are beginning formal schooling. The linear, analytic processing of the left-brain does not kick in until 7-9 years. The most natural way, therefore, is for them to learn initially through sensory experience, rich in feelings, emotion and movement. Children at this stage are very imaginative and love to play, act out their world and mimic adult activity. They show a preference for narrative thinking and its language expression in their active pursuits by talking about everything they do. This activity prepares them for formal, literate speaking, shifting (when it is developed) into reading, writing and number tasks employing explicit, narrative structures.

Our educational system, however, begins alphabet and number recognition immediately that children enter school. This is followed quickly by reading, with a strong phonic approach, widely perceived as simply a matter of decoding print to sound with instant comprehension. Readers, however, must bring meaning to print rather than expect to receive it from written words. The fact is that writing cannot be translated into speech without some understanding of it first, so undermining spelling to sound correspondence rules for decoding. As links between the 26 letters and 44 sounds of English cannot be specified, it is necessary to have entire words or large parts of them in memory before readers can recognise and identify them. All alphabet letters are associated with more than one sound and vice versa. They are not one-to-one but complex many-to-many correspondences which bring confusion and anxiety if given too much prominence.

Analysis of our 6,000 most common words reveals 211 different correspondences with no way of predicting when they apply (Smith, 1990, p.54). Take pronunciation of the letters /ho/ as in hotel, hot, shop, hope, hold, hook, hoot, house, hoist, horse, horizon, honey, hour or honest. Do you think we learn these words just by sounding out letters? Blending or sounding out unfamiliar words does not guarantee correct pronunciation because of many possible responses. Also, the 14 words above show that phonics requires reading from right to left as pronunciation depends on letters that come next. This principle has few exceptions (ash/wash; mood/blood; host/ghost) but is rarely made explicit in teaching. Such issues require extensive knowledge of phonetics and phonology to provide appropriate, accurate guidance for learners.

Phonics has remained the favoured teaching approach because expecting new readers to recognise and understand written language directly, without decoding to speech, is viewed as overburdening the memory of children. It has been considered more reasonable to apply a set of rules for transforming print to speech rather than to expect recognition of words on sight. Children normally memorise effortlessly, learning on average 8 words a day and 2,000 a year. They also acquire knowledge that enables them to identify thousands of faces and objects so that recognising words merely adds to existing memories of what these symbolise.

Early teaching of phonics would not be such a problem if a strong experiential programme was followed in schools but the opposite occurs. Children are encouraged to sit still and learn letters and numbers in linear fashion for lengthy periods. They read books having simple vocabulary and syntax, often in long, inaccessible sentences with limited images and emotions involved. If you observe children naturally they love to scribble, draw and mimic adult writing because of its rhythm and flow. This process is lateral, global and holistic and should have prime value in learning at a stage when the brain is concentrating on this growth (4-7 years). Recognition of such child needs may well prevent most of the behaviour problems that now plague teachers in school. Children would rather be thought bad than behind and low level disruption is a way of avoiding what they cannot manage.

Danish children are encouraged to ‘write’ and although output cannot be understood, the teacher allows them to read it out to the class. Vocabulary is targeted: ‘It looks like ‘swimming’ is one of your favourite words. Would you like to see how I write it?’ (Sage, 2000, p.119). As children like making adult words, the teacher produces her version so that next time pupils write they will have learned the spelling without effort. Reading is approached through songs and rhymes. The teacher asks for a favourite song and writes it for children to follow as they sing. This establishes a strong emotional and relational connection, which is vital to memorising as emotion and memory are linked in the limbic system. Movement and rhythm orchestrate and organise the singing-reading activity, ensuring it is an active, enjoyable experience.

In learning new things it is important to tie into the familiar with concrete images that are already known. Consider reading books in school. Do they have strong emotional links for children? Many reflect an unfamiliar living style and, although this can be positive, there must be opportunities to connect with own experiences. Writing and reading books about their lives makes a perfect entrance into meaningful and relevant activity for pupils. Research shows that many children do not easily grasp the purpose or point of reading. It is not necessary for their daily existence and so some youngsters never become motivated to do this for pleasure (Sage, 2003).

Another unnatural challenge is the fashion for printing letters, which is a linear process that interrupts the continuous flow of language, as it is experienced in the mind and expressed through talk or hand. A cursive script is in keeping with the flow of ideas and assists this process. Children are taught to print at 5 years when it is hard to do so as their brains are attuned to wholes rather than parts of events. After 7, when the linear, left-brain has developed to cope with the discrete operations involved in printing, cursive writing is then encouraged. It is no wonder that some children find writing such a chore. In some schools, word-processing on computers is encouraged but its impact on narrative thinking and expression requires monitoring.

Many European schools do not teach printing and find students have no problems going from cursive writing to reading type at around 8-9 years when linear brain development makes this transfer possible. German teachers have now switched to block printing as a first step to written language but are reporting more student difficulties (Sage, 2000). Seligman (1975) talked about ‘learned helplessness’ resulting from children expected to perform tasks that are beyond them. It results in them opting out, giving up or making less effort to learn. Excessive testing also creates this situation by promoting habits where students learn for tests. We are sacrificing successful long-term learning for short-term illusory gains. Learning for tests encourages shallow rather than deep understanding of concepts and sets narrow, firm, inflexible teaching agendas.

Comment

In summarising this section, there has been an attempt to put phonics teaching in the context of brain maturation and public attitudes to reading. The conclusion is that phonics works if you know what a word is likely to be in the first place. Once you recognise it as ‘hotel’, from the context, other pronunciations of /ho/ need no consideration. Understanding of letter-sound relationships is useful as it leads to confident word attack. Sounding out a word into constituents (c-a-t) assists when an unknown one is met. If you know the word will be dog or cat from its context, phonics allows you to tell the difference between them. However, children must not be taught to just rely on this unreliable approach but to first consider words within the whole narrative. This will encourage them to focus on the meaning rather than just the mechanics of reading.

Analysis of sounds, moreover, is not easy before the age of 7 when the left hemisphere starts to develop and takes responsibility for this activity. So the major issue to consider is the timing of input. With the present early push to master phonics we are ensuring that many children will fail, not just because of mistiming but the fact that some will have less analytic strengths by virtue of brain dominance differences amongst us. Maturation also varies in children to work against fixed periods for learning that are applicable to everyone. In the next section we add to the debate by considering linguistic development for judging reading readiness.

Language and reading

Language, symbolising objects, actions, ideas and feelings, powerfully combines the processes of body, mind and emotion and through it we develop the capacity to think. Its progression occurs as a child moves from a sense of vibration and rhythm in the mother’s womb to hearing and tone discrimination as a toddler. A child mimics the intonation of others, babbling and playing with sounds, so developing the nerve fibres in the voice box (larynx) and enabling a variety of tones to be made. Almost half the motor cortex deals with vocalisation, stimulating muscular movements of the larynx, tongue, mouth, jaw, facial muscles and eyes that form and express words.

Muscular memory resides in the basal ganglion of the limbic system, linking to the frontal lobe to control thought and vocalisation. This area is actively involved in movement, thought and speech. The nerve connections between the motor cortex and the formal reasoning area of the frontal lobe suggest the importance of movement to thought processing. Most children like to talk and share ideas, draw pictures or write about them, and must be given frequent opportunity to do this because these processes tie directly into thinking, taking place in the following stages:

1. Sensory-motor (0-15 months)

At this first stage, a child is grasping voice dynamics to express word meaning (pitch, pace, pause, power, pronunciation) and coordinating breathing and sound-making movements. Today, more children are not speaking properly because they are not hearing words pronounced slowly (Healy, 1990). Fondness for watching television means they continually hear words at a fast pace, with insufficient time to focus and link these with referents, so reducing the possibility of comprehension. A reader must be able to infer how words are said to make meaning from text. Take ‘Luke likes fruit’ and imagine it spoken in different ways. If stress is on ‘Luke’, it denies a previous utterance such as ‘Helen likes fruit’. Emphasis on ‘likes’ implies another denial - ‘dislikes’. Power on ‘fruit’ negates a suggestion as in ‘Luke likes chocolate’. Repeat the sentence with a rising tune at the end and a question rather than statement is indicated. Hitting on the right interpretation rests on ability to consider the whole event and the context in which words occur. Early targeting of phonic strategies marginalises this development so that language delay is now an escalating problem that hinders academic achievement in schools (Sage et al., 2010).

Sage (2000a) found, from assessing school entrants in the same city school over three years, that all were at least two years delayed in thinking and formal communication ability. Cwenar (2011 in press) examined pupils entering senior school, in the same area, and using identical assessments found 80 per cent were functioning at a 5-6 year level at age 11. It was not surprising that the institution was continually in special measures. There are considerable discrepancies (between 5 -100 per cent) amongst studies reporting language delays amongst children, largely because of the different aspects of communication tested by researchers, ranging from the status of the phonology system, vocabulary knowledge, grammar and syntax use, informal talk and formal narrative thinking and structure levels (Gross, 2011).

2. Functional use of words (15 months- 4 years)

Once voice patterns are understood, children start to gain an overall sense of objects, people, actions and events by exploring their environments to enable links to word referents. Size, weight, material, colour and components of things are only understood by touch and movement. Children must be encouraged to look beyond a name to its function, as in the question, “What’s this?” with expansion in the answer, “It’s soap we use to wash off dirt and keep us clean”. The limbic brain searches out relationships so language coaching cashes in on normal development, extending both thinking and the means to express this. Adults who encourage verbal expansions are modelling narrative structures that are vital for encouraging explicit, spoken and written language.

Before 4 years, a child takes most behavioural cues from what is seen rather than heard. Sensory fascination and physical stimulation are so compelling that verbal commands do not register. From age 4, Wernicke’s area, in the temporal lobe, enlarges to assist understanding and reasoning so that a child can learn consequences of actions. At the same time, Broca’s area, in the frontal lobe, grows to enable clear speech and meaningful exchanges with others. However, pupils may start school without this level of development, either because of insufficient stimulation at the right growth stage, slow maturation or damage of the neurological processes. Thus, some children are not ready to begin reading but have to conform to a prescriptive system that requires them to meet certain educational standards at specific ages.

3. Outer speech (4-7 years)

Once speech is in place, a child processes thought through verbalising what is happening. A child needs to talk continuously to gain insights regarding experiences. This outer speech is the way a child solves problems and how thinking and its expression in language develops. An evaluator questioned pupils who had undergone a communication opportunity group strategy in school and all valued a chance to talk, suggesting that they normally were expected to be quiet in class. They said that “talking makes you better at school” and “when you talk ideas come and become real”, with “more talking makes it easier to get help from others” and “help with talking helps me do more work on my own” (Sage,2000a). Such comments demonstrate that talk assists thinking and reasoning and is respected in high-achieving nations, like Japan, where classrooms are the nosiest places imaginable but engagement and performance of pupils significantly higher than those in Britain (Sage et al., 2004, 2006).

Speaking thoughts gives us feedback about what we know and understand and allows others to comment for further reviewing and refining of ideas. However, it is not uncommon for children to read words well but make no connection between the sentences. There has been limited interest in this barking at print in Britain but more so in America. The National Assessment of Educational Progress has shown, since 1987, specific difficulties in higher order thinking skills, including those necessary for reading comprehension, maths and science. Despite efforts to strengthen the curriculum, students are showing no gains in thinking. Healy (1990) states:

The effects of these universally noted trends have begun to show up even in highly selective colleges, as professors find they must water down both reading and writing assignments as well as expectations for analytic reasoning.

Colleagues, working at all educational levels, reiterate this view with regard to their own students. The conclusion is that students may be sounding out words better but they actually understand less. A reading task demonstrates how easy it is to answer questions without understanding what the content means. Try the exercise below as an example:

The stroops tos finging healy uger the chocan. A few stroops burr glip but the rest burr glipper. They tos very pullie and rather wockley so they didn’t mirgle the snook. Some stroops were fromerlech.

• What were the stroops doing?
• How well did they fing?
• Where were the stroops finging?
• Where were all the stroops glip?
• Why didn’t the stroops murgle the smook?
• Were any stroops fromerlech?

It is not difficult to provide answers, even if the story means little, because as a language user you can apply grammar and syntax knowledge to the task. As example, the answer to question 2 will normally be an adverb ending in ‘ly’. I tried this exercise on 9-year-olds and they could answer well. Such information casts doubt on comprehension tasks as a means of assessing understanding. Questions usually ask for specific information and rarely require a summary that would provide evidence of cognitive-linguistic ability. Traditional assessments of thinking and language demonstrate the same principles shown in case studies (Sage, 2000b).

In addition, a plea for more talking opportunities to gain feedback on understanding also assists sound–making. The English sound system is not fully developed until 7+ and those with slow maturation of neurological processes will master this much later. This is important when implementing an early phonics programme for reading, as until a child can make sounds properly there will be an inaccurate feedback loop operating which makes it impossible to analyse phonemes correctly. Diorio and co-workers (1993) found high levels of stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, in young children. These hormones pass through the placenta from mother to child, interfering with hearing and slowing its development. In addition, Levinson (1988) discovered that over 90 per cent of children with learning difficulties had a history of ear infections, so missing hearing complex tones with consequences for spoken and written language development. Again, these factors are important when planning reading approaches and suggest that an early concentration on phonics will inevitably bring problems for some children.

4. Inner speech and reading (7 years onwards)

Experiences of talking with others not only structures a child’s immediate activities but helps reasoning and learning to gradually internalise thinking. This enables a child to talk through things silently in their head and complete tasks independently. Externalising feelings and ideas into words, that are sequenced intelligibly, is not a simple extension of the unplanned, incomplete utterances of conversation, dependent on context cues for meaning. In formal, planned extended speaking or writing, children must de-centre and de-contextualise thinking and consider the audience to make meaning clear. An abstract, written medium demands explicit information to make up for absence of a real context and non-verbal cues. Narratives, moreover, always have information and opinion gaps, because it is impossible to include every detail. They require, therefore, a rich general knowledge and experience from the listener or reader to make the correct inferences for understanding. So, formal speaking and writing are demanding narratives and skills of understanding and producing coherent information in speaking predicts literacy levels. Work by Hunter-Carsch (1999), reporting on the Leicester Literacy Summer Schools, supports a connection between narrative ability and literacy, reinforcing research by Sage (1992).

Alongside the purpose of reading to make meaning of content is the mechanical process of mapping 26 alphabet letters (graphemes) onto speech sounds (phonemes) for word identification. Analysing spoken English into constituent sounds reveals 44 elements with voiceless and voiced equivalents (e.g. p/b; t/d; k/g). So, as discussed, there is no simple relation between spoken and written forms. The same phoneme sounds differently in each context. Compare the voiced, bi-labial plosive /b/ in bark, beetle, hobble, tab, or lamb, where the nasal /m/ is the last sound heard. Speakers with different accents produce a variety of sounds but the corresponding written account will be identical. When we help children read we are introducing them to a more neutral code and a new way of thinking about language. The same sound may have different written forms as in rows/rose/roes; an ice cream/a nice cream; attack/a tax. The subtleties of this require a level of development and understanding that matches the 7+ brain maturational period, when the whole of something can be grasped and how its parts fit into this framework.

In addition, reading depends on a special development of the eyes to focus on two-dimensional forms. In a three-dimensional context, such as outdoors, the eye is in constant motion, gathering sensory information to build intricate images necessary to negotiate space. The brain integrates these images with other sensory data, such as touch and prioprioception, to develop the visual perception system. The retina (sensory nerve layer of the eye) contains light receptor cells – 95 per cent rods and 5 per cent cones - named because of their shape. The rods are distributed around the periphery of the retina and are stimulated by dim light, whereas the cones group in a small area called the fovea centralis and need bright light. Reading requires foveal focus. Before 7 years, the ciliary muscles that shape the lens are short, causing the lens to be thin and elongated. So, the incoming image spreads across the retina, involving both rods and cones, to accommodate three-dimensional, peripheral and distance vision. It is not until 7+ that muscles lengthen allowing the lens to round out and focus the image on the fovea centralis.

So, children need big letters to compensate for lack of two-dimensional eye-focusing capacity, which make it difficult to scan large chunks of text to grasp meaning quickly. Coping with big print, therefore, slows reading speed which encourages barking at print and reduces comprehension (Sage, 2003). The ratio of rods to cones (95:5) suggests we are not designed to spend long periods in foveal focus activities such as reading, watching television and working on computers. Eyes need to experience the world as a whole for vision to develop spatial awareness for clear perception, thought and communication. This indicates that reading and writing will be less stressful and more rewarding after 7+ when brain processing capacities are in place.

Final comment

Reading is both a mental and mechanical process, involving coding and decoding strategies. By stressing phonics early we are working against brain development, as the 4-7 year period is when minds are concentrating on grasping the whole rather than constituent parts of events. Countries which begin formal learning after 7 are working with natural brain and body growth. If reading is introduced at the 7-9 year stage, children are normally ready to cope with detail, in relation to the outline of events, and can focus more easily on two-dimensional letters.

When considering language development, there are other issues that hinder early phonic activities. Children are now born with higher levels of stress hormones, reflecting pressures of modern society, and these slow up hearing development which again works against early phonics teaching. There is considerable evidence that children enter school with inadequate formal, spoken language levels to support the move towards more explicit, complex written forms. Television has supplanted extended talk at home and restricts opportunities for discussion. This results in pupils having problems in bringing together a quantity of words, both for understanding and expressing feelings and ideas. High-academic achieving countries, such as Japan, Cuba, Denmark and Finland, recognise this by prioritising formal speaking opportunities in the curriculum. In fact, in one Japanese school where I have worked, pupils do all the teaching in order to achieve literate talk, necessary for shifting into reading and writing. It must be significant that the ten highest academic achieving countries do not start formal learning until 7 years, so working with rather than against natural development.

My own research, in the Centre for Innovation in Raising Educational Achievement, University of Leicester has convincingly shown that a formal, narrative level of spoken language is an essential prerequisite for successful reading and writing (Sage, 2000-6). Narrative defines a series of unified events, comprising a beginning, middle and end, with children learning to put together an outline which is then supported by logical thinking to fill out the step-by-step detail. This process involves both right and left brain activity, depending on maturation over 4-9 years to achieve this competence. A Communication Opportunity Group Strategy is based on learners tackling written language at the level they can think and speak it and this has proved both motivating and successful (Sage, 2000b). In September 2011, The College of Teachers is updating this approach, in an online course with supporting materials, to promote the importance of both spoken and written communication in learning.

Finally, it must be recognised that we all learn differently and what is a successful approach for one person may not be so for another. My own children, introduced in the first section, are proof of this. When I was a teacher (with the benefit of a speech and language therapy background), I estimated 75 per cent of my class, in a social priority school, had intermittent hearing loss due to constant upper respiratory problems such as colds. This was confirmed by a visiting audiologist. My experience is that many children in class find phonics difficult because of less strength in this competence and physical, mental, emotional and social factors contributing to maturation delays. Furthermore, the teaching of phonics requires some understanding of phonetics and phonological development. Many teachers are unaware of how to introduce voiced and voiceless sound contrasts, presenting whispered versions such as p, t, k accompanied by the shwa (neutral vowel /er/). Since the acoustic spectrum will then be the same as their voiced equivalents, b, d, g, this will confuse children whose hearing is inadequately developed. Teachers must be properly educated in phonetics and phonological problems in order to help children effectively.

In conclusion, I remember an advertisement in the New York Times, many moons ago, in which a boy was reading a book about ‘Dick and Jane at the Farm’:

See the nice book.

See the big boy read the nice book.

See the big boy drop out of school.

In court, last week, as a serving magistrate, I saw 38 youngsters between 16 and 20 years old. All had criminal records longer than ‘War and Peace’; all left school with no qualifications and all had limited spoken and written language abilities. Eleven years of schooling had done little for them. It is urgent that we get to grips with issues regarding communication, which is our medium of learning and means of surviving. We are some way from presently achieving this, but where there is life there is hope and where there is hope there is opportunity for action!

Professor Rosemary Sage is a qualified Speech and Language Therapist, Psychologist and teacher with experience in health and education fields.

For the past 20 years she has worked in higher education in London and Leicester and was made Professor of Communication in Education at Liverpool Hope University in 2007. She is a long-standing Visiting Professor at the Women’s University, Nara, Japan and has been Visiting Professor at the University of Havana.

Rosemary has developed some College of Teachers' online courses in Communication in Education in line with the Government’s 2011 Year of Communication in Education. She is continuing work with the European Commission on communication in learning in further projects and is bringing this within the umbrella of the College. She has recently edited a book Meeting the Needs of Students with Diverse Backgrounds by Continuum press in which the importance of cross-cultural communication is stressed by all contributors.

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