The Science of Reading

The Science of Reading

The Science of Reading is a movement within educational circles to apply a more rigorous scientific method to understanding how people learn to read, so that teachers can be better informed about how to teach learners how to read. One definition explains the Science of Reading movement as “a corpus of objective investigation and accumulation of reliable evidence about how humans learn to read and how reading should be taught” (The International Literacy Association). This involves studying how reading operates, develops, is taught, shapes academic and cognitive growth, affects motivation and emotion, interacts with context, and impacts context in turn. It also includes genetic, biological, environmental, contextual, social, political, historical, and cultural factors that influence the acquisition and use of reading.

Within this movement there is debate regarding best practices and new areas of research inquiry, with one current debate centering on what constitutes scientific evidence, how much value should be placed on scientific evidence as opposed to other forms of knowledge, and how preservice teachers should be instructed to teach reading. This involves discussion around conflicting views in epistemology between constructivists and positivists on the basic mechanisms associated with reading development.

Constructivists insist that learners construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information, and a multitude of realties are constructed through lived experiences and interactions with others. This view sees reading as a natural act akin to learning a language, and emphasizes giving students enough opportunity to discover meaning through experiences in literacy-rich environment. It also encourages students to engage in a psycholinguistic guessing game in which readers use graphic, semantic, and syntactic knowledge to guess the meanings of printed words.

Contrasting this view is the post positivist view, a form of scientific study of the social world where the goal is to formulate abstract and universal laws of social universe and test these laws against collected data systematically to form an approximated understanding of reality. This view makes strong distinctions between innate language learning and effortful learning required to acquire reading skills, and argues for explicit instruction to help foster an understanding of how the written code is mapped onto language.

The Science of Reading provides compelling evidence for the teaching of reading that can be used to inform teachers of best practices, including but not limited to the following facts:

·    Orthographic depth impacts speed at which a language is learned to be read

·    Decoding skills and linguistic comprehension make independent contributions to the prediction of reading comprehension across diverse populations of readers

·    Decoding and linguistic comprehension account for almost all variance in reading comprehension

·    Importance of decoding skill in explaining variance in reading comprehension decreases across grades, importance of linguistic comprehension increases 

·    By the time students are in high school, linguistic comprehension and reading comprehension essentially form single dimension

·    Knowledge of alphabetic principle (i.e., how letters and sounds connect) and knowledge of morphophonemic nature of English necessary to create high-quality lexical representations essential to accurate and efficient decoding

·    Prior to formal reading instruction, young students develop phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge, other early literacy skills related to later decoding skills following formal reading instruction

·    Longitudinal studies indicate that linguistic comprehension skills from early childhood predict reading comprehension at end of elementary school

·    Prior to formal reading instruction, young students develop phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge, other early literacy skills related to later decoding skills following formal reading instruction

·    Longitudinal studies indicate that linguistic comprehension skills from early childhood predict reading comprehension at end of elementary school

Such a body of compelling evidence allows teachers to make informed decisions regarding effective practices. To discover more on the Science of Reading find the following reference. There is a wide fo variety of issues that the science of reading explores that will prove useful for both researchers and teachers alike.

Petscher, Y., Cabell, S.Q., Catts, H.W., Compton, D.L., Foorman, B.R., Hart, S.A., Lonigan, C.J., Phillips, B.M., Schatschneider, C., Steacy, L.M., Terry, N.P., & Wagner, R.K. (2020). How the Science of Reading Informs 21st-Century Education. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), S267– S282. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.352

Motivation: four steps

Motivation: four steps

by Rhona Snelling

 ‘Motivation is a state of cognitive and emotional arousal, which leads to a conscious decision to act and gives rise to a period of sustained intellectual and/or physical effort in order to attain a previously set goal.’ (Williams and Burden, 1997)

 This is a favourite definition of mine that captures the essence of motivation. But how does this translate into our classrooms? How can we create and maintain motivation in our students?

1 Foster a supportive learning environment

Think about the environment of your classroom in a holistic sense, from welcoming students at the door or via the camera, the time and length of the lesson, your facial expressions and body language, how and when you give feedback, the dynamics between students … and countless other variables specific to your own context. Do everything you can to ask – and observe – what makes your students feel comfortable in your lesson. Without this, there will be an absence of motivation, engagement, and, ultimately, attendance. But with this, you give full respect to each of your students alongside a genuine commitment to their learning.

2 Select your tasks wisely

Give due time and consideration to your lesson plan – not just the overall aims/objectives, staging or flow, but each individual task that makes up the different stages of your lesson. Is there a range of task types to suit as many of your students as possible? For example, if your neurodivergent students require a more reflective ‘heads down’ (or camera temporarily off) task; is that in your lesson plan? Or could you offer a choice of activities now and again, so students can select an activity that appeals to them? Research shows that choice and autonomy result in greater motivational effort (Locke, 1968).

3 Encourage English outside the classroom

If your students are not living or working in the L2 environment, then their exposure to the L2 (outside of your lessons) is likely to be low. Can you encourage them to find and enjoy L2 in their ‘real life’? Could they watch a Netflix series with English sub-titles (to learn new lexis and practise reading)? Or lip-synch to an English song (to practise the physical mechanics of phonology)? Could they do some extensive reading using graded readers or authentic material? Could you start a book club or film club for some additional (and semi-informal) English practice? Or a WhatsApp chat group or an Instagram account for your class?

4 Ascertain and pursue goals

The jewel in the motivational crown is the goal – from small and short-term (not using L1 in a lesson or speaking five times in a lesson) to large and long-term (getting a high score at IELTS or a new job using the L2). And they could be somewhere in the middle: writing an online review, confidently using future tenses, accurately producing /ð/ and /θ/, and so on. Invite your students to envision their ‘future L2 self’ (Dörnyei, 2005). Then work together to plan progress towards that personal goal – it’s the ultimate formative assessment. Don’t forget that lives and goals change, so evaluate progress and fine-tune whenever necessary.

Sources:

Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Locke, E. A. (1968). ‘Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives.’ Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 3 (2).

Williams, M. and Burden, R. L. (1997). Psychology for Language Teachers: A Social Constructivist Approach. Cambridge University Press.