Tuesday 19 August 2008

Reading is a Two Part Process.

Paper 5

The Quantum Literacy Theory proposes that

In common with all other skills, reading skill is independent of intellectual capacity and is solely a consequence of a specific amount of successful practice, the quantum of which, in common with all other normally distributed phenomena, varies between individuals.

Anyone who accepts that the reading process consists of (1) a mechanical part (decoding) and (2) a meaning part (comprehension) surely has to concede that as long as the mechanical part has not been mastered, the meaning part cannot even begin to start. The mechanical part is starting point of the reading process. It is the skills part of sub-vocalising the text to produce ‘words’ in the mind which the brain can then begin to comprehend.

The failure of our profession to have produced a working definition of reading means that we each of us define it idiosyncratically and as long as we each define reading idiosyncratically, there will be those who reject this portrayal of the reading process. There is nothing wrong in this except that it is incumbent on those who have an alternative concept of the reading process to share their ideas and so take our understanding of the reading process forward in the interests of the almost 90,000 or so children who leave school each year, unable to read.

Until I am offered a satisfactory alternative, I am stuck with a reading process which has a mechanical or ‘skills part’ and a meaning or ‘intellectual part.’ The ‘intellectual part’ is what reading is all about – we do not read because we like the sounds the letters make; we are motivated to read in order to access the intellectual content which is encoded in the text. The mechanical part of the process is self-evidently a skill and in common with all skills, will become a reflex reaction, only when given a sufficient quantity of successful practice. How else is it to be achieved?

As long as the poor reader’s reaction to text involves thinking about the sounds made by the letters and letter combinations, the mind of that individual is not free to receive the intellectual content. The mind is only freed to receive the intellectual content of text when the reaction to that text has become a reflex reaction and the only strategy which can bring that about is a quantity of successful practices. Reading is after all, a receptive activity – the brain receives meaning. It is only reading aloud which is an expressive activity. Reading aloud is an expressive activity during which the meaning of text is expressed or communicated.

The Quantum Theory of Literacy fully explains our failure to deliver literacy to one fifth of the population and it tells us how to achieve a more productive education system if that is what we really want. In a fiercely competitive world, we cannot affort to throw away the potential contributions of so many people.

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