Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

reading

Beginning readers’ brains are not the same as skilled readers’ brains, so stop teaching beginners to read like they are adult experts

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Unlike speech and oral language (talking and listening), reading is biologically unnatural. Most (not all) people learn to understand and to speak their first language without much fuss. But everyone – in every generation, from every culture, in any language – needs to learn to read. As a species, we’ve only been doing it for a bit over 5000 years.

For some people, learning to read happens easily. For others – including people with dyslexia and reading comprehension problems – learning to read can be a lifelong struggle.

Learning to read changes the brain

Brain plasticity – also called ‘neuroplasticity’ – is the ability of the brain to modify its connections or to rewire itself. Without brain plasticity, the brain would not be able to develop from infancy to adulthood, or recover from brain damage (Banks, 2016).

At birth, we are not wired to read – there is no specialised “reading centre” in the brain. Instead, researchers think that most of us are able to ‘recycle’ evolutionary older brain circuits with similar underlying functions – e.g. general visual processing – to recognise written word forms. This is called the ‘neuronal recycling hypothesis’ (e.g. Dehaene & Cohen, 2007).

Many reading scientists think that learning to read consists of creating mappings (associations) between:

  • visual representations (letters and written words); 
  • phonological representations (speech sounds); and
  • semantic representations (word meanings).

These three-sided mappings are the focus of the ‘triangle model of reading’ (e.g. Seidenberg, 2005). This model suggests that learning to read requires us to:

  • look at written words, sentences and texts; and
  • convert them into oral (spoken) language, so that we can understand them (e.g. Dehaene & Cohen, 2007).

This model is consistent with the evidence-based ‘Simple View of Reading’, which you can read more about here and here and here. 

Learning to read: the print-speech convergence

To learn to read, we have to learn to integrate (combine into a useful whole):

  • auditory information (speech and oral language comprehension); with 
  • visual language information (recognising words). 

Learning to read results in a brain network that brings together speech, language and print recognition: an overlap in activation during reading tasks. Some researchers call this the ‘print-speech convergence’: a brain signature of successful literacy acquisition (Rueckl et al., 2015). 

The development of print-speech convergence can be seen in emerging readers, but not in pre-readers of the same ages. This suggests that learning to read induces (influences or causes) speech-print convergence (Chyl et al., 2018).

The dual-stream model of reading

The brain’s organisation for reading is different for beginners and for skilled readers. The brain changes as beginners learn to read (e.g. Dehaene et al., 2015; and Pugh et al., 2001). To understand what this means in a bit more detail, we need to understand some very basic brain anatomy and a theory called the ‘dual-stream model of reading’ (Marks et al., 2019; and Pugh et al., 2001):

Source: Selket, 2007.

This diagram shows a (very simplified) outline of the human brain visual system. There are two main streams to know about that are relevant for reading: 

  • the dorsal stream or system, which is marked in green; and
  • the ventral stream or system, which is marked in purple. 

For developing readers, the dorsal (green) system predominates at first. This stream is associated with analytic processing for learning to integrate the:

  • orthographic (letters/spelling); 
  • phonological (speech sound); and 
  • lexical-semantic (word comprehension/meaning) 

features of printed words. This stream is most involved in the slow, effortful learning that’s needed to build the foundations for reading. We have summarised some of the key research about how best to teach early reading skills here.

As beginners become more skilled, the ventral (purple) system plays an increasingly important role in the processing of reading, facilitating fast, fluent word recognition that does not require effortful decoding. To explore this almost magical process in more detail, you need to learn more about specific dual pathway models of reading, e.g. the DRC model (Coltheart et al., 2001), the Triangle Model (Harm & Seidenberg, 2004) and the CDP+ model (Perry et al., 2010), which are beyond the scope of this article. It’s also useful to learn about the Self-Teaching Hypothesis (e.g. Share, 1995), which we touch on here.

Growing evidence

Evidence for these ideas continues to mount. For example, recent research by He and colleagues on child beginners (aged 9-12 years) and skilled adult readers of Chinese (aged 20-21 years), using a Chinese word-sound matching tasks in speech and print, showed that:

  • skilled adult readers demonstrated greater speech-print convergence than children who were beginning to read;
  • consistent with the dual-stream model of reading, coactivation in the dorsal stream predominated for children, whereas coactivation in the ventral stream predominated in adults; and
  • greater visual-model specialisation was observed with development. 

In other words, the researchers found clear evidence of developmental changes in readers’ print-speech networks during word-sound matching processes. (The study is cited as our primary source below, with a link to the full paper.) These findings are consistent broadly with studies using alphabetic languages (e.g. Chyl et al., 2018; Marks et al., 2019; and Preston et al., 2016).* 

Bottom line

When we are teaching children and adults how to read, we must remember that:

  • reading is biologically unnatural: no one is wired to do it from birth;
  • the brain needs to rewire itself to become good at reading; and 
  • rewiring the brain to read takes lots of time and effort, and comes more easily to some, than to others.

We can help beginners learn to read by:

Beginners are not experts. Beginning artists can’t paint like Leonardo da Vinci or Jackson Pollock. Beginner composers can’t write music like Johann Sebastian Bach, John Williams, or Prince. Beginning readers can’t read like Maria Popova, James Clear, Mortimer Adler, Octavia E Butler, Warren Buffett,  Mahatma Gandhi  – or even just you or me.

Related articles:

Principal source: 

Yin He, Xin Liu, Jiali Hu, Emily S. Nichols, Chunming Lu & Li Liu (2021). Difference Between Children and Adults in the Print-speech Coactivated Network, Scientific Studies of Reading, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2021.1965607 https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2021.1965607

An introduction to neuroplasticity: What is brain plasticity and why is it so important?

*In studies of alphabetic languages, there were some differences from the findings in He et al., 2021, including significant co-activation of the dorsal posterior temporal regions of the brain in beginning child readers. The researchers speculate that this may be due to the differences between alphabetic and non-alphabetic writing systems.

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Help your child to make inferences when reading

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Inferencing – the ability to join the dots or to read between the lines – is a key life skill.

In this week’s infographic, our speech pathologist, Emma Robinson, outlines what we can do to help students of all ages to learn how to do it.

1. Inferencing is the ability to combine: (a) what we already know (our world knowledge); and (b) what a text says, to generate meaning about the text.

2. Generating inferences is a key part of understanding what we read. Inferencing is needed to analyse and solve problems, and to think critically: key life skills.

3. As students progress at school, the ability to generate inferences becomes more important.

4. We can help students to make their own inferences by:

  • modelling how we do it out loud;
  • teaching them common text structures;
  • practicing answering and generating questions about what we read;
  • activating prior knowledge of information related to what we read; and
  • explicitly teaching evidence-based strategies e.g. the ‘ACT and Check Strategy’ and the ‘Why technique’.

5. The ACT and Check Strategy involves a few steps:

  • Asking a question about the sentence/text.
  • Considering the text.
  • Thinking about what you know and making educated guesses.
  • CHECKing the accuracy of your educated guesses as you read more of the text.

6. The ‘Why technique’ (also known as ‘elaborative interrogation’) involves asking yourself ‘why?’ questions several times as you read a text and forcing yourself to answer them.

7. For lots more detail on helping students to improve their inferencing skills, check out our article.

Sources:

(1) Murza, K. (Presenter), (n.d.). Supporting Students’ Inference Generation Reading [Webinar]. Medbridge: https://bit.ly/3qacsyr.

(2) Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K.A., Marsh, E.J., Nathan, M.J., & Willingham, D.T. (2013). Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1) 4-58.

(3) Freed, J. & Cain, K. (2017). Assessing school-aged children’s inference-making: the effect of story test format in listening comprehension. International Journal of Communication Disorders, 52(1), 95-105. 

Related articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Getting ready to read at big school: a free guide for families with preschoolers

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Too many preschoolers start school without the speech and pre-reading skills needed to thrive in Kindergarten. But which skills matter the most?

In this free guide, we seek to answer this question by summarising the evidence in Plain English.

Getting ready to read at big school

We cover:

  • typical speech development, consonant acquisition milestones, and error patterns;
  • the links between unclear speech and later reading difficulties;
  • foundational pre-reading skills (like phonological awareness and print awareness);
  • how to teach the alphabet to your child;
  • how to teach children to read;
  • the benefits of shared reading and audiobooks; and
  • school readiness communication skills.  

This family guide focuses on helping preschoolers to get ready to read at big school.

Well-developed language skills – listening and talking skills – are also vital for school readiness. You can read more about how to help your preschooler’s oral language development in our free developmental language guide for families. It contains lots of practical strategies and tips about the importance of play, language stimulation techniques. 

We hope you find these resources helpful.

Download it below.

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Too many children can’t read. We know what to do. But how should we do it?

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The goal is clear.

You wouldn’t know it from Twitter, but literacy researchers, teachers, speech-language pathologists, education psychologists, and reading tutors all want the same thing when working with someone who can’t read. 

We want them to be able to read. More specifically, we want them to understand what they read.

What we disagree about is how we should teach reading. 

The stakes are high

When we get it wrong, students suffer the most. But, actually, we all pay for it:

  • Illiteracy costs the global economy more than $1 trillion a year in direct costs.
  • Low literacy is a major contributor to inequality.
  • Low literacy increases the likelihood of workplace accidents, medication errors, involvement in crime  and welfare dependency (World Literacy Foundation, 2015).
  • Even in rich countries, around 20% of 15-year olds can’t read well enough to participate effectively in life (OECD, 2016).

Individually, and as a group, we can do better.

The science is solid. Gaps remain.

A growing body of peer-reviewed research evidence (sometimes called ‘the science of reading’) tells us a lot – but not everything –  about how we should teach reading. But, too often, ideological, political and professional differences distort or drown out the key ideas. Too often, teachers, speech pathologists, and others are not taught the science of reading in university or college. Too often, sunk costs and other biases, training gaps, and resource and time limitations get in the way of us putting the science to work. 

We can all get better at teaching reading. We need to be honest about what we know, and don’t know. We need to reflect on the limits of our own skills and resources and invest in reducing them. We need to listen to feedback. We need to read new research.  

It’s hard work. But we must do it. 

We owe it to our students. Our job is to:

  • know which approaches work best;
  • explain why they work to others, including students, teachers and parents;
  • know how to teach reading by working on the right things at the right time;
  • stay open and honest about the many things we don’t know;
  • keep questioning what we’re doing, keep learning, and be prepared to abandon practices no longer supported by evidence;
  • measure our results; and
  • keep improving our knowledge, systems, processes, techniques and resources to seek better results.

Teaching reading: how? 

We’ve written at length about what works. 

In this article, we outline how we go about translating reading science into practice – explaining what we do – recognising that we still have much to learn. That we all have much more to learn. We’ve tried to focus on evidence-based practices, rather than broad theories or ideologies, but we’ve referred to some of the key mental models we use when necessary to explain why we do (or don’t) do something.  

We organised our thoughts on this very important topic after reading a great paper by Professor Anne Castles and colleagues (a citation and link to the full text of the article appear below), and reflecting on our clinical experiences and changing practices over the years.

The basic recipe (with messy ingredients)

Let’s start at…the start. To read well, students need to learn:

To teach reading well, you need to know how these skills typically develop over time. You need at least some idea of how they interact with each other. You then need to apply that knowledge to the student in front of you.

We think our practices are supported by evidence. But we’re open to different views and criticism. We will – no doubt – abandon some practices and adopt others as we learn more. Where possible, we have linked to articles we have written summarising the evidence we rely on to support our practices.

How we support preschoolers to set the stage for later reading success 

(a) Oral language and speech development are essential for later reading success

We are hard wired to understand oral language and to speak it. Most (but not all) of us learn to do it without needing to be taught. Parents, early educators and others can play a big role in helping to stimulate early language development by using language stimulation strategies, and engaging activities like play and simply exploring the world. We written hundreds of articles about promoting oral language and speech development. (We’ve created quite the rabbit hole of information, if you have the time.)

(b) Early treatment of speech and language disorders is very important

A child’s oral language competencies (listening and talking) are highly predictive of school readiness and success. And many (but not all) preschoolers with unclear speech go on to have problems with reading. Early intervention is important for children with language disorders and speech sound disorders. But it’s never too late to seek help.

(c) Some phonemic awareness skills are important for later reading

Many preschoolers, including some children with speech and language disorders,  need extra help to figure out, for example, that the first sound in ‘pot’ is /p/, or that the last sound in ‘pot’ is /t/, and that the sounds /p/, /ɒ/ and /t/ can be blended together to make the word ‘pot’. These skills can be taught to preschoolers. For school-aged children, we do not teach phonemic awareness in isolation. Instead, we build phonemic awareness skills through letter-sound and early decoding exercises. In other words, we teach sounds with letters, and sound blending and segmenting skills with written words. Read more here.

(d) Letter knowledge is an important precursor to learning letter-sound links 

Here are some things you should know when teaching the alphabet to your child.

(e) Increasing print awareness can help preschoolers prepare for reading

Here is a summary of some of the research.

(f) Read quality picture books with preschoolers every day

Here’s how to do it. Here’s why you should do it. This practice should continue well into primary school.

(g) Read nonfiction to your preschoolers to build world knowledge

Read more non-fiction books to your preschoolers. Here’s why.

(h) Listen to audio books and high quality read-alouds with your child

We include some suggestions here. This practice should also continue into primary school, and we make some specific recommendations of audiobooks, with links, for school age children here (Kindergarten and Year 1) and here (Years 2-6).  

How we support school-aged students and adults

(1) Reading needs to be taught.

Unlike with talking and listening, we are not biologically primed to read. Everyone needs to be taught. But some children need more help than others.

(2) Use the ‘Simple View of Reading’.

When we look at a student’s reading strengths and challenges, we apply the ‘Simple View of Reading’. You can watch our short video summarising what we think about here. Or you can read a longer article we have written here. In summary, we see the ultimate goal – reading comprehension – as the product of two elements: Word Reading x Listening (language) Comprehension.

(3) Beginners are not experts. 

Beginning piano players can’t play Chopin’s Etude Op. 10 No 4. Beginning artists can’t paint The Lady with the Ermine. I’ve been reading, nerdishly, for more than 40 years. Why would we expect a beginning reader to read like we do: automatically and effortlessly, understanding what we read, as we read it? If you can’t read the words on the page, you can’t understand what you are reading, even with excellent oral language skills. So we have to start with the squiggles on the page.

(4) Unlike, say with Chinese or Japanese, English has an alphabetic writing system.

In alphabetic systems like English, the speech sounds (phonemes) of the language are represented by letters or groups of letters (graphemes). Most children need to be taught these letter-sound links because they don’t pick them up without being taught. Early in reading development, reading comprehension is highly constrained by decoding limitations. Poor decoding can be a bottleneck that stops students from understanding what they are reading about. 

(5) Systematic phonics instruction.

There is a strong scientific consensus on the effectiveness of systematic phonics instruction during the initial period of reading instruction (Castles et al., 2018).  

(6) Systematic phonics systems teach letter-sound links in an ordered way. 

In English, we have 26 letters that, in different combinations, are used to represent the roughly 44 phonemes (speech sounds) we use (depending on our dialect). There are many evidence-based letter-sound sequences around. In our clinic, we used to use the UK Letter-Sound sequence. But we have now adopted the Sounds-Write letter-sound Sequence because it is logical. This sequence teaches children the basic code first (including the sounds most commonly linked to the 26 letters of the alphabet), and then an extended code of frequent letter combinations and the sounds most commonly associated with them, e.g. <ai>, <oo>, <er>, <oy>, <ew>.

(7) One sound per letter to start with.  

In English, some letters and letter combinations are linked to more than one speech sound. For example, <c> is linked to /k/ in ‘kangaroo’ but /s/ in ‘city’; <g> is linked to /g/ in ‘get’ but /dʒ/  ‘giraffe’; <ch> is linked to /tʃ/ in ‘chicken’, /k/ in school, and /ʃ/ in ‘chef’); and, infamously, the letter combination ‘ough’ is linked to at least six different speech sounds (e.g. ‘though’, ‘through’, ‘rough’, ‘cough’, ‘thought’, ‘thou’). 

Before 2016, we followed the Spalding approach of explicitly teaching multiple sounds linked to letters and letter-sounds. But, since then we have opted – initially – to teach the sound most commonly associated with each letter or letter combination, and to later teach context-sensitive rules once children have mastered the basic mappings. 

For example, once beginning readers have mastered the basic mappings, we will teach them that <c> is linked to /s/ in words where the <c> is followed by <i>, <e> or <y> (as in ‘circle’, ‘ceiling’ or ‘cycle’), and that <oo> is linked to  /ʊ/ when followed by /d/, e.g. ‘hood’, ‘stood’, and ‘good’. We have found, clinically, that many children (including some children with working memory, speech or language disorders) have difficulty mapping different sounds to letters; and some children rote learn the multiple sounds, but cannot then apply them when decoding words. We have also found that starting out with a limited set of letter-sound links, puts many children on the path to independent reading earlier than if we dedicate too much time to teaching context-sensitive and less common links early. 

(8) We take a synthetic phonics approach to systematic phonics instruction.

I wish it had a better name. Synthetic doesn’t mean ‘fake’. It means that we teach children early to blend individual phonemes together to make words. Another word for blending is ‘synthesise’, which is where we get the term ‘synthetic phonics’.

Note: we don’t wait until children have mastered all their letter-sound links to start reading words. As soon as they have mapped the first five letter-sound links in our sequence (<a>, <i>, <m>, <s>, <t>), we practice blending the related sounds together in different combinations, so we can read words like ‘mat’ and ‘sat’ and ‘tim tam’). (There are other approaches to phonics instruction. One is called analytic phonics, which teaches children to break down whole words into parts. We’ve seen some evidence that synthetic phonics is better, e.g. Johnson & Watson, 2004, 2005, but I would love to see more evidence and am keeping an open mind.) 

(9) We consolidate early decoding skills with encoding (spelling) practice, following the same letter-sound sequence.

There’s good evidence it helps to improve phonological awareness skills, including letter-sound links and word reading skills, which you can see summarised here. We are big fans of the inexpensive Spelfabet resources to support this practice, although you can make your own.

(10) We focus on real words in reading instruction.

Nonword reading and writing tests are a great way to test a child’s phonological awareness, and to figure out if a child is learning to decode words phonically. That’s why we support the Phonics Check.

But, for most students, we focus on real words. Children with small vocabularies can find it hard to know whether a word is ‘real’ or not, and we’d rather spend the time helping them to build their vocabularies. One caveat: some children with excellent language skills are able to pretend they are decoding, when in fact they are guessing from context, from pictures or because they are reading predictable books (e.g. ‘I see a square. I see a circle. I see a triangle.’). For these children, we sometimes use non-words in instruction to help them to break the habit of guessing words. 

(11) We are not against supplementing early phonics with 100 or so high frequency ‘sight words’.

Most alphabetic writing systems have at least some degree of spelling-to-sound irregularity. English includes many high frequency words that are highly unusual. Teaching sight words is controversial, and some people think it confuses children. The evidence doesn’t support these concerns. There is a case for teaching children the pronunciations of a small number of high frequency sight words directly, including words like ‘the’, ‘come’, ‘have’, ‘said’. One study shows that teaching the 64 most common letter-sound mappings combined with 100 or so of the most frequent sight words allows children to read aloud 90% of the words in texts they typically encounter, again promoting independent reading (Solity & Vousden, 2009).

Many evidence-based reading programs, like MultiLit, include sight word lists. We think that sight word learning is likely to be most successful when children have basic letter knowledge.

(12) We think that there is a role in early reading for decodable books.

Decodable books are texts written for children that consist mostly of words that they can read correctly using the letter-sound links they have learned and some high frequency sight words like ‘the’ and ‘said’. These books give children an opportunity to practice what they have learned and to experience success in reading independently. 

We use decodable books while children are learning the basic and extended codes. Some of our favourites include the InitialLit, Moon Dogs, SPELD SA, and Talisman readers. We have also made our own without pictures, and mapped to the Sounds Write Sequence to check that children are reading (and not guessing from pictures). We’ve made them available for free.

Once children have acquired basic decoding skills, we fade out decodable books, and move on to books with a wider variety of vocabulary and knowledge, in part to support ongoing language development, and in part to keep children motivated to read about the things that interest them the most. 

(13) We supplement early reading lessons with access to high quality audio books and books. 

As noted above, during the early years of primary school, we should continue to expose children to high quality books to support oral language development and later reading skills. There is no reason why this can’t happen at the same time as early phonics instruction, and both practices are supported by evidence. 

(14) For skilled readers, we know word reading involves more than just alphabetic decoding (but you have to walk before you can run).

Although the focus on our reading work with beginner readers is on letter-sound links and blending speech sounds to make words, we know that skilled readers use more than just decoding. There are two key processes in word reading: one that involves effortful phonics-based decoding, and another that involves gaining access to meaning directly from the spelling.

In skilled readers, both processes are used: we use the (more efficient) direct access from spelling method for familiar words, and (effortful) decoding for new and unfamiliar words. For example, when reading the Castle et al., 2018 article, I was flying through, until I hit the word ‘pseudohomophone’. I had to pause and decode this word using both my knowledge of the extended code letter sound links (<ps> is sounded out as /s/, <ph>, as /f/) and my morphological awareness skills (e.g. knowing the meanings of pseudo-, homo- and -phone). More on morphological awareness in a minute.

(15) As children become skilled and get more reading practice, the need to decode word-by-word decreases.

When you see a young reader go from laborious word-by-word decoding, and start to read fluently, it seems like a miracle. Complex computational ‘dual pathway’ models far beyond my ken, like the DRC model (Coltheart et al., 2001), the Triangle Model (Harm & Seidenberg, 2004) and the CDP+ model (Perry et al., 2010) recognise that reading involves both knowledge of learned words and knowledge of the relationship between spelling and sounds. We all want kids to recognise words rapidly and automatically without having to decode them sound-by-sound. We all want kids to read independently as soon as possible.

The self-teaching hypothesis (e.g. Share, 1995) suggests that the act of decoding itself provides opportunities for children to become more familiar with the spelling of words. As children build mental representations of words, cognitive resources are freed up for comprehension. Through repeated exposure to words, a child develops word-recognition optimised for reading for meaning. 

What seems to matter most are increasing a child’s exposure to print, getting lots of experience reading, increasing the frequency of times a child reads particular words over time, and the diversity of contexts in which they read particular words. You can read more about the importance of reading fluency here.

(16) For some readers who have mastered the basic and at least some of the extended code, teaching morphological awareness can help to increase reading skills.

This includes explicitly teaching children things like the spellings of high frequency prefixes and suffixes, and Greek and Latin roots of words.  You can read more about morphological awareness here. Importantly, for beginning readers, we think it is better to prioritise letter-sound links and basic decoding skills. But some people disagree – the science is not settled – and we are keeping an open mind. We see an important role for early oral morphological awareness and explicit grammar instruction for many children, including many children with language disorders, including targeting Brown’s 14 morphemes.

(17) Do what it takes to motivate children to read! 

The most effective pathway to fluent word reading is print experience: children need to see as many words as possible, as frequently as possible in print. There are extreme variances here.

One older (pre-digital era) study of Year 5 children found that children at the 10th percentile read about 60,000 words a year; those at the 50th percentile read 900,000 words; and those at the 90th percentile read more than 4 million words a year (Anderson et al., 1988). This contributes to the Matthew Effect: where good readers keep getting better, and poor readers fall further behind over time (Stanovich, 1986). 

So how do we motivate children to read? We have written about reinforcements in detail here. Some behavioural scientists suggest external rewards can help (e.g. iPad time for doing enough reading), but other experts suggest that external rewards can in some circumstances reduce the intrinsic (internal) motivation to do the activity (here reading) for its own sake (e.g. Deci et al. 1999). Effective practical strategies suggested by Willingham (1997) and others include to: 

  • increase availability of reading matter about topics of personal interest, e.g. comics, car manuals, sports magazines, movie tie in novels, movie scripts, YouTube scripts, reading movies from subtitles (with no sound), DIY books, etc;
  • make reading materials highly visible and easy to pick up. This is why we have piles of books scattered throughout our clinic, free to borrow, including reception areas and clinic rooms; and
  • allow you child to go on ‘library sprees’ where the student can borrow any book they want (within reason and subject to parent discretion!).

For more strategies, read this.

(18) The better students become at reading, the more they want to read.

This seems obvious. But children are motivated to read more when they know they are good at it (e.g. Willingham, 2017). Ideally, we want students to see themselves as readers.

(19) Reading comprehension is really complex. It is not a single idea and cannot be explained by one model. 

To understand what you are reading, you need a whole host of skills:

(20) Don’t forget to keep working on higher level language and other language skills

These include academic vocabulary and evidence-based study skills.  

In skilled readers, the correlation between oral language and reading comprehension is almost perfect, meaning oral language limitations will limit reading comprehension (and vice-versa). 

(21) Some people with reading difficulties benefit from compensatory strategies.

For some people, e.g. with severe dyslexia or otherwise protracted and severe reading difficulties, consider compensatory strategies like text-to-speech and speech-to text tools and, of course, audiobooks. Read more about these strategies here. 

Clinical bottom line

To help children and adults to read, we should:

  • foster oral language development, including of vocabulary, semantics, phonology, word forms, sentence level syntax, narratives and nonfiction books in the preschool and school years; 
  • start reading instruction by understanding that the English writing system is alphabetic: letter-sound links and the ability to blend speech sounds to form words are crucial to develop more advanced reading skills;
  • recognise that early decoding problems can be a major bottleneck in the early reading comprehension, and that even modest improvements in decoding can make a big difference to a student’s understanding;
  • encourage children to read as much and as widely as possible to increase fluent, automatic word-reading;
  • recognise that reading comprehension – the ultimate goal of learning to read – is very complex. Reading comprehension problems can be caused by decoding problems, oral language problems, or both;
  • carefully assess people with reading difficulties, so that we know where the breakdowns are happening and can develop evidence-based plan to address them; and
  • keep up-to-date with the research evidence, and apply it – even when it means abandoning long-standing practices.   

Principal source: Castles, A., Rastle, K., Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51.  

This is one of the most influential, practical papers I have read in the last couple of years.  Even better, it’s available for free via Sage Journals. In my view, this paper should be required reading for all reading professionals. (Note that any errors of interpretation above are mine and mine alone.)

Related articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Why poor kids are more likely to be poor readers (and what we can do about it)

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Over the school holidays, I’ve been reading some influential business books in preparation for a course I’m giving. By definition, these books were penned by highly literate, highly educated authors. Writers who have enjoyed great financial and life success. 

A pervasive theme in these books is the idea that you can “Think Yourself Rich” ™. The sentiment seems innocent, inspiring even. But, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. For, if you flip it around, it insinuates something atrocious – that, if you are not rich, you have somehow failed to think hard enough about it to escape poverty.

If only life were that simple!

Good books can change your mind

When I was 22, I stumbled on Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I read it in a single, sunny day in a pretty park in the fairy-tale town of Český Krumlov. It’s a terrific, powerful, troubling, hilarious, and devastating read. It changed my view on many things, including poverty. 

Consider this quote (ostensibly about Americans, but applicable to most of us):

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure trove for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for the poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.”

Poverty and reading outcomes

Now, why am I writing about poverty on a speech pathology blog?  And just what does poverty have to do with reading?

Well, it turns out poverty has a huge, well-known, and negative impact on literacy achievement in all English-speaking countries. In Australia, you can look at any number of stats to see it. Here are just a few:

  • In 2009, 13.9% of Australian children in the lowest socioeconomic quintile were assessed as “developmentally vulnerable” in language and cognitive skills, compared to 4.7% of kids in the highest quintile (Australian Early Development Index Survey, 2009).
  • In 2009, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) team assessed the literacy of 15 year-olds in Australia and several other countries. They found 25% of 15 year old young adults in the lowest socioeconomic quartile scored in the lowest literacy band or below, compared with 5% of the children in the highest quartile (Thomson & Bartoli, 2010).
  • In 2015, PISA again assessed the literacy of 15 year-olds. For Australian students, they found: 
    • students in the highest socioeconomic quartile achieved (on average) significantly higher literacy scores than students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile: representing over one proficiency level or around three years of schooling! The score for students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile was significantly lower than for students across the OECD; and
    • only 5% of students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile were high performers compared to 8% of students in the second socioeconomic quartile, 12% in the third socioeconomic quartile and 21% in the highest socioeconomic quartile (Thomson et al., 2016). (You can read more about these results – here  and here.)

Why?

Well first, let’s look at what we mean by “socioeconomic status” (SES). 

It doesn’t mean “not much money”; and different studies use different definitions. For example, two measures used by the OECD to represent socioeconomic background are:

  • the highest level of the father’s and mother’s occupation; and/or
  • the index of economic, social and cultural status, based on three indices: the highest occupational status of parents; the highest educational level of parents in years of education; and home possessions. 

Other studies use self-reported, sometimes slightly weird measures, such as the number of books in the family home (e.g. The Progress in Reading Literacy Studies, or PIRLS).

What’s becoming clear is that SES (however defined) is just a proxy –  a stand-in – for other things that are more likely to affect literacy directly (e.g. Fergusson et al., 2008). It’s also becoming clearer that a student’s achievement is predicted not just by their own SES but by other factors, too.

So what are some factors that can affect literacy outcomes for low SES students?

Researchers Dr Jennifer Buckingham, Professor Kevin Wheldall and Dr Robyn Beaman-Wheldall published a wonderful paper on this back in 2013 outlining some key ideas. I’ve read it several times, and I think about it a lot when I’m working on improving services, or giving advice to families, students and teachers.

So here are 10 factors that may explain (at least in part) why low SES is a significant risk factor for poor reading outcomes. If you are like me, you won’t be able to stop thinking about things we could try to help fix the problem. There are some great minds working on it. But all of us working with kids with reading difficulties have a part to play.

(1) Differences in early pre-literacy skills

  • Kids from low SES backgrounds tend, on average, to demonstrate lower skills in phonological awareness and oral language (including vocabulary) (e.g. Henning et al., 2010; Hart & Riseley, 2003). Both skills are key elements to early literacy.
  • Early literacy is a strong predictor of a child’s literacy performance throughout their school life (e.g. Claessens et al., 2009). Reading ability is not set at 5 years of age – there is a lot of movement in the primary school years – but low SES students are more likely than high SES students to remain poor readers if they start school as poor readers.

This research is the main reason I support high quality, free preschool instruction (including phonological awareness and vocabulary training), for all low SES children (and, in fact, for all children).

(2) Genetic factors – potential versus achievement

You can’t change your genes. And genetic factors play a big part in determining a student’s potential. But the extent to which that potential is realised depends on the student’s environment. High SES students tend to be limited by their innate abilities. But, for many low SES kids, environmental factors can get in the way of students reaching their true potential (e.g. Turkheimer et al., 2003; and McGrath et al., 2007).

In our clinic, we set high expectations for every student we meet. A few people think we sometimes push too hard, and there may be some truth to that. But our goal is always to help students reach their potential, never to settle. 

(3) Home factors

  • Parent attitudes/encouragement: It turns out that values and parenting practices are stronger factors than income (over a basic level) or parents’ education levels (Hattie, 2009). In other words, low SES kids’ reading skills can be supported by parents having high educational aspirations and expectations for their kids, and encouraging their kids to read and to reason (e.g. Fan & Chen, 2001; Fergusson et al., 2008; and Wilder, 2013). This isn’t a case of thinking yourself literate. It’s more about developing a student’s motivation to read, and building a self-concept as a reader and for self-regulated learning (e.g. Guthrie et al., 1999; Petscher, 2010, Katzir et al., 2009; and Xu et al., 2010). Thus, parents’ and students’ expectations are strong predictors of later achievement (Chowdry et al., 2011).
  • Books in the house: an Australian study suggests that having books in the home has a greater impact on children whose parents had the lowest levels of education than children with university-educated parents. (Evans et al., 2010)

We work with parents to instill high expectations for school. We also have a free book borrowing program and encourage families to join and use the local library. 

(4) Time spent reading/print exposure/reading for pleasure, with the focus on fiction and non-fiction books (rather than magazines, comics or newspapers)

  • The link between reading time and reading achievement is important for students of all abilities. Even reading just 10 minutes a day outside of school can have a significant, positive effect on reading skills for below average and average readers (e.g. Taylor et al., 1990). Some researchers think that having dedicated reading time at home is more directly related to creating a positive home environment for reading, than simply reading itself (McKool, 2007). 
  • Other researchers think that the amount of print exposure is more reliable than how much time kids spend reading (e.g. Mol & Bus, 2011).
  • Differences in time spent reading for enjoyment appear to translate into literacy performance (e.g. Thomson & De Bortoli, 2010). Reading books outside of school time – fiction and non-fiction – is a predictor of vocabulary growth (Lawrence, 2009). Interestingly, reading magazines, comics and newspapers seem to have very little or even negative effects on reading performance and vocabulary! (Lawrence, 2009; Thomson & De Bortoli, 2010).
  • With reading skills, good readers get better, and poor readers slip further behind – the so-called Matthew Effect. Kids who don’t master the basics tend to read less than peers who can decode easily (see below).

In our reading intervention programs, we encourage both structured practice of fundamental skills, including through decodable books, as well as less structured reading for pleasure. Regular library visits where the student gets to pick any book they want, along with providing recommendations based on a student’s reading skills and interests, can make a big difference!   

(5) Physical health and sleep

  • Kids in the lowest SES quartile are twice as likely to be rated as developmentally vulnerable in terms of physical health and well-being (Centre for Community Child Health and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, 2009).
  • Poor health can impact school attendance (e.g. Pahel & Lee, 2011).
  • Some low SES kids are at a heightened risk of early onset, chronic otitis media, which can cause hearing loss and affect speech and language development (even if the effects are temporary) (e.g. Winskel, 2006).
  • On average, lower SES kids tend to get less sleep than higher SES kids (El-Sheikh et al., 2010). There is some evidence that insufficient sleep may affect cognitive functioning, intellectual ability, language comprehension, letter-word recognition and passage comprehension (e.g. Eide & Showalter, 2012).

For preschoolers at risk for communication and reading disorders, we inform parents about the importance of adequate sleep and sleep routines, with a view to establishing routines well before ‘big school’ starts. For older students, we counsel them about the importance of sleep and limiting things like blue light exposure before bed. 

(6) Behavioural problems?

The link between SES and behaviour is complex and controversial. There is some evidence that the proportion of kids assessed as developmentally vulnerable increases as SES decreases. Kids with developmental language disorders are at heightened risk of behavioural difficulties. But the direction(s) of the relationship(s) between SES and behaviour at different points of development are not clear, and it usually not possible to establish cause and effect. 

(7) School attendance and mobility

  • There is a clear positive relationship between school attendance and literacy achievement from Kindergarten and Year 1 (e.g. Attendance Works, 2011).
  • Children from low SES backgrounds have, on average, lower attendance rates and a higher prevalence of chronic absenteeism (missing more than 10% of the school year), which places them at a higher risk for reading failure. 
  • Moving schools is also correlated with reading – kids who change schools a lot are at a higher risk of lower reading achievement throughout primary school and high school. The relationship between moving schools and reading is stronger for low SES families (e.g. Burkam et al., 2009).

This research explains, in part, why so many schools in our area strongly discourage long school absences – especially in Kindergarten and Year 1. We agree with them.

(8) School-level SES is more important than student-level SES

  • Now this is an important point: In most OECD countries, the literacy performance of 15 year-olds is more strongly related to the SES of the school than the individual student (OECD, 2010).
  • A strong body of research supports the idea that school-level SES is more important than student-level SES (e.g. Sirin, 2005).
  • School SES is likely to be a proxy for other factors:
    • students with low SES are more often found in lower quality schools than students with high SES (e.g. Cassen & Kingdom, 2004); and
    • the academic context of the school may be more important than SES – things like teacher expectations of students, how safe kids feel at the school, curriculum rigour, and homework completion (e.g. Marks, 2009).

Families need to know about this research so they can make informed choices. For families with a choice of local schools (and it’s worth remembering, many families don’t have a choice), the school with the higher SES may be the better option for reading and academic outcomes.

(9) Teaching quality

  • Note we’re not talking about teacher quality.
  • Teaching quality includes lesson content and the teaching philosophy used by teachers at the school. Things like direct instruction, teacher-student relationships, reciprocal teaching and feedback are rated as “quality teaching” by students (Hattie, 2009).
  • Among other things, there are some clear implications for initial reading instruction (see below).

(10) Initial Reading Instruction

  • Effective early reading instruction in the early years is critical to help “close the gap” between high SES and low SES kids. Research shows that the best reading programs develop the Big 5 skills: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and language comprehension (e.g. Rose, 2006). You can read more about these principles here. 
  • Systematic, synthetic phonics instruction is important, especially for children at risk and from low SES backgrounds (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000); and children who begin school with poor phonological awareness and other pre-literacy skills – again low SES students are over-represented in this population (e.g. Foorman et al., 1998; Sonnenschein et al., 2010).
  • Oral language skills also need to be developed, especially vocabulary and comprehension skills (e.g. Adams, 1990; Teale et al., 2007).

Families deserve to know whether their child’s future school trains its teachers to implement evidence-based reading instruction practices. Although many schools in our area deliver evidence-based reading instruction based on the principles above, some do not, and poor reading instruction is particularly detrimental to students from low SES backgrounds.

Clinical bottom line

Having a low SES background does not condemn students to be poor readers. However, low SES students are at a higher risk of reading difficulties than high SES students; and we are beginning to understand why. 

Evidence is growing that high quality preschool and early school phonological awareness, oral language and evidence-based literacy instruction can play a major role in narrowing literacy gaps. We need to support both more research teasing out these contributing factors and “boots on the ground” implementation of high quality reading instruction in all schools. 

Finally – and, yes, this needs to be said – we should never judge families or students on their backgrounds. In the real world, you can’t think yourself rich, regardless of what the self-help business gurus say.

Principal source: Buckingham, J., Wheldall, K., & Beaman-Wheldall, R. (2013). Why poor children are more likely to become poor readers: the school years. Australian Journal of Education, 57(3), 190-213.  

If you want to read more about Vonnegut’s views on poverty, I recommend this excellent, free article from Open Culture.)

Related articles:

Image: https://tinyurl.com/y599yjwe

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Check out our therapy and provider resources Go to our shop