Reading abilities (or the lack thereof)

Debate Room
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Lacking a category about general science stuff, I’m posting it here.

I came across this article (from 2019, but should still be relevant) about teaching children how to read. The article is about the faulty three cueing strategy and how it actually teaches children reading strategies that are being used by bad readers, instead of focusing on strategies that will foster good readers:

By about second grade, a typically developing reader needs just a few exposures to a word through understanding both the pronunciation and the spelling for that word to be stored in her memory.38 She doesn’t know that word because she memorized it as a visual image. She knows that word because at some point she successfully sounded it out.

The more words she stores in her memory this way, the more she can focus on the meaning of what she’s reading; she’ll eventually be using less brain power to identify words and will be able to devote more brain power to comprehending what she’s reading.39

But when children don’t have good phonics skills, the process is different.

“They sample from the letters because they’re not good at sounding them out,” said David Kilpatrick, a psychology professor at SUNY Cortland and the author of a book about preventing reading difficulties.40 “And they use context.”

In other words, when people don’t have good phonics skills, they use the cueing system.

“The three-cueing system is the way poor readers read,” said Kilpatrick.

And if teachers use the cueing system to teach reading, Kilpatrick says they’re not just teaching children the habits of poor readers, they are actually impeding the orthographic mapping process.41

[…]

In many balanced literacy classrooms, children are taught phonics and the cueing system. Some kids who are taught both approaches realize pretty quickly that sounding out a word is the most efficient and reliable way to know what it is. Those kids tend to have an easier time understanding the ways that sounds and letters relate. They’ll drop the cueing strategies and begin building that big bank of instantly known words that is so necessary for skilled reading.

But some children will skip the sounding out if they’re taught they have other options. Phonics is challenging for many kids. The cueing strategies seem quicker and easier at first. And by using context and memorizing a bunch of words, many children can look like good readers — until they get to about third grade, when their books begin to have more words, longer words, and fewer pictures. Then they’re stuck. They haven’t developed their sounding-out skills. Their bank of known words is limited. Reading is slow and laborious and they don’t like it, so they don’t do it if they don’t have to. While their peers who mastered decoding early are reading and teaching themselves new words every day, the kids who clung to the cueing approach are falling further and further behind.42

These poor reading habits, once ingrained at a young age, can follow kids into high school. Some kids who were taught the cueing approach never become good readers. Not because they’re incapable of learning to read well but because they were taught the strategies of struggling readers.

So my question is: is this how kids actually learn how to read in the US today, and can this (at least partially) explain the less than optimal literacy rate?

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It could explain a small part of it, but I think the major reason is that movies and videos are readily available and take way less energy. Why read the book when the movie is coming out soon? Additionally, reading may not be encouraged at home. So, in a word, I think it may be due to laziness.
That’s sad. Reading is participatory. Movies / tv / videos aren’t.

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Additionally, I was taught phonic in primary school and am pretty sure that’s why am abysmal at spelling. :woozy_face:

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On learning about the three cueing method just now, my first thought was “WTF‽” From what I can remember from primary school, we were first introduced to the letters and the corresponding sounds, and then we were supposed to read the text out loud (or rather sounding it out letter by letter), in turns(*). I don’t know if it is phonics, but it sounds much closer than cueing. And I cannot remember any particular problems with reading abilities among my peers, other than what can be adequately explained by natural variation.

(*) I remember this as a rather painful process to participate in, as I was an autodidact fluent reader by the age of five, well before I started school.

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Yes, phonics was “sound it out”. Spanish, for example, would be well-suited to the phonetic method. The English language doesn’t work that way a great deal of the time, though. ← like the word though.

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Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

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I wouldn’t quite put it that way. Media are participatory in the sense that it’s a shared experience with the rest of the audience or if you’re watching alone it still something you will have as a shared and remarked-on experience with other watchers over time.

To me the difference is that reading engages a different and more active part of the imagination. It doesn’t provide visuals and audio for you. Those provided by your imagination can even be superior in ways, especially in certain genres, such as horror. You are also more likely to have your own reactions rather than some kind of herd-inspired resonance with the reactions of others. I think it encourages more independent thinking and self awareness.

Audio books never caught on at all with me, so I don’t have much of an opinion about them. I suppose they’re somewhere in between reading and passive reception of predigested media.

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Modern English has the worst combination of features for those learning the language from scratch, be they preschool children learning to read for the first time, or adult speakers of other languages learning English as a second language.

Difficulty No. 1: as has already been noted above, English is notoriously non-phonetic. Whereas numerous other languages have proper, systematic phonetic rules in place for frequently encountered letter combinations, English doesn’t. Much literary hilarity has ensued, some deliberate, some not.

Difficulty No. 2: English has also been shedding declension at a rate of knots during its evolution.

For those unfamiliar with the term, declension refers to the existence of systematic spelling changes to reflect grammatical usage. The canonical examples of languages with full declension in place are Latin and Classical Greek. Every word in these languages undergoes spelling changes to reflect grammatical usage. Nouns and adjectives change spelling to reflect number and case. Verbs change spelling to reflect person, tense (or aspect in Greek), mood, and voice.

These two languages used to be staples of education up to the mid 20th century here in the UK. Mastering these languages gave an insight into the etymology of English words (either taken directly therefrom, or filtered through intermediates such as French and Italian). they also provided an insight into language structure, that was valuable for increased comprehension of English.

The deletion of these classical languages from the modern curriculum, of course, was in part motivated by the emergence of new subjects, all requiring space within said curriculum. Computer science, for example, didn’t even exist as a properly constituted pedagogical discipline outside universities, until the mid-1970s. Subjects that did exist on the curriculum have undergone enormous changes in content, requiring additional effort to master.

But the ejection of Latin and Classical Greek from the modern curriculum, might have been premature from the standpoint of improving literacy. Knowing how other languages operate, provides valuable insights into the operation of one’s own language, and anyone who is trilingual or better, usually finds that understanding of one’s native tongue is improved by that broader linguistic experience.

Though, of course, there are other aspects of the American curriculum that are in dire need of improvement. Geography, for example, is a recurring major deficiency in American schools, and among the alumni thereof. The status of science teaching has famously been corrupted by duplicitous religious interference, a situation that is scheduled merely to worsen with recent developments. As for philosophy (ethics in particular), I’ve heard so little about the status thereof in US schools, that it may now be practically nonexistent therein - just when it’s needed most sorely of all.

Quite simply, if one’s education system does not equip its students with the means to launch real progress in human development, then it has failed. Churning out bored and inadequately stimulated little cogs for the capitalist machine, has so demonstrably proven to be an existential catastrophe, that an overhaul is not merely long overdue, but a pressing need.

Literacy is about more than merely understanding text. It’s about understanding concepts, and how to render those concepts in language with proper finesse.

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Same here. It was all phonics for us. It seems to have served me well.

But like you, I was already reading pretty well by the time I started school, and so every year my mother would get contacted by the new teacher that year, fretting that I was daydreaming. It usually took the teacher a month or so to figure out that I either already knew the material or understood it when first explained, without all the constant damned repetition.

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Did native English speakers also have to learn other languages, like French, German, or Spanish? Nowadays, hearing native English speakers speak something else than English (disregarding those who have emigrated to another country) is rather rare, as seen from the outside. So I was rather delighted when I watched a TV documentary here the other day about Rolling stones, where Mick Jagger spoke French in an interview. What is the status of learning foreign languages in the UK and the US these days?

Illustration: Mick Jagger speaking French (this is not the interview that was used in the documentary mentioned above, but will do for demonstration purposes):

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Your post explores a lot of interesting ideas, and I agree that reading skills are deteriorating in the United States . . . although I think that there are other factors besides phonics vs. cueing.

I believe that technology and culture play a part. About 60 to 70 years ago, science fiction experienced a golden age with the birth of pulp magazines like Amazing Stories, Galaxy Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and so forth.

Much (but not all) of this literature is action-driven, and meant to appeal to children.

And even though much of this work is garabage by adult standards, children still had to read in order to get their primitive entertainment.

Then comic books became the preferred medium for children because they were more visual, and then television decreased the motivation to read even further.

The VCR/videotape revolution increased this reliance on the visual medium because movies and shows can be viewed whenever it is convienient . . . and then computer and video games represent the next step away from the written word, because one can be a part of the action . . . whether this entails fighting zombies, flying on a dragon’s back, and so on.

I predict that the next step away from the printed word will be an immersive virtual reality, which we are already starting to see with VR goggles and headsets.

Parents are often complicit in their kids’ obsession with video games, because the electronic medium is a great babysitter, because the kids are safe at home instead being outside doing drugs with questionable friends, having sex, or committing crimes.

My point is that technology has steadily removed the motivation to actually read by giving kids a substitute for the printed word, so reading has become a difficult, tedious, and unhappy chore instead of a pleasure done for fun . . . and we are paying a price.

After all, how can Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings appeal to a child who only needs to turn on a computer to be immersed in a fantasy world of flying dragons and evil wizards? Reading is work, and sitting passively while watching television is easier.

A lot of the literature in the old pulp magazines is garbage, but it served a useful purpose because it fostered literacy in children.

P.S. Please note that some of these ideas were explored by Isaac Asimov in his essay “The Ancient and the Ultimate,” which was published in the January, 1973 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as I don’t plaigiarize.

P.P.S. I corrected a misprint where I mixed up the author of the Dragon Riders Series.

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My wife and I were both taught phonics in primary school. I am not a good speller but my wife was. She claimed that when she was trying to spell a word she visualized and then sounded out the word.

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I was in high school in the early 1970s and at the time it was considered optional but recommended to take a foreign language for purposes of college prep. My small town high school only offered French and I was fine with that because it was more likely to be practically useful to me in life, I figured, than Spanish (a fairly close second) or anything else. But legally we needed 5 students to form a class, and there weren’t enough of us for 3rd year French. So I just got the 2 years.

Fast forward to the early 2000s and my stepson took German and French and my stepdaughter took Spanish and went on to Mandarin Chinese in college. And they were fairly proficient, and did in-country foreign exchange programs where they needed to speak those languages.

It is just that, not living in a smaller country surrounded by smaller countries that speak other languages or dialects, it seems more an academic exercise than a practical one to students. The closest thing we have to that are the hispanic enclaves in larger cities and certain areas like southern California where a lot of Spanish is spoken. And it’s no accident that some Americans are by turns offended by that and suspicious of it.

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There was a big resurgence in reading 25 years ago when the Harry Potter books came out, but it seems that the momentum quickly faded after the last book in the series and hasn’t been seen since.

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IDK that I’d give JK Rowling credit for single-handedly turning kids on to reading, especially given the subsequent movies. And there are the Hunger Games novels – same pattern, more or less followed the Potter series. And the Twilight vampire book series after that – same deal. Although those other two were targeted to a bit older kids I guess.

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Unable to tell you about the present, but in the 1970s, when I was attending school, my education included German and Latin. Not a frequently encountered combination even then, but it was almost universal for a student to take one, and frequently two, foreign languages during my schooldays.

The usual combinations for those taking two languages would be French/German, French/Spanish or German/Spanish, though my school was a bit unusual in that it didn’t have a Spanish teacher at the time, so the other option was, wait for it, Russian. Sadly I wasn’t allowed to take three foreign languages in one go, due to curriculum restrictions (I’d already chosen double mathematics and all three sciences).

The current geopolitical situation would have made Russian very useful to have under my belt, so I’m regretting not being able to partake thereof. I chose German rather than French because a significant number of scientific journals were published in German at that time, particularly in chemistry, and being able to read papers in the native German I considered to be a useful talent. Turned out it was more useful for historical papers, because even Angewandte Chemie has been available in English in its international edition now for over 30 years.

But, that usefulness for historical papers came in handy, when I discovered that the original paper describing the weird South American butterfly Styx infernalis was written in German by Staudinger, the original describer of the species. Indeed, I still have that paper filed away somewhere, along with a translation of the essential parts covering the anatomy of that frankly odd butterfly. But I digress.

Yes, I lament not being able to add Russian to my belt, so to speak, because right now, it would prove very useful indeed. But, I was hardly expected to anticipate what would transpire in 2025 way back in 1975 as a teenager. :slight_smile:

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The key is getting them reading early, and to sustain that.