Paper 2
Reading and the Quantum Theory of Literacy.
Reading is something that children are supposed to be taught in school. We know that our education system only succeeds in four out of five cases and in spite of massive annual cash injections, shows no sign of improving on this atrocious state of affairs.
The reading process has two obvious parts. Firstly there is the purely mechanical ‘skills part’ of sub-vocally recreating words from the written/printed text being read and secondly there is the purely ‘intellectual’ part of understanding the meanings which the words represent.
For the purposes of this proposal, only the mechanical ‘skills part’ of the reading process is being discussed. In this context therefore, reading is a skill and there are two things that we know for certain about all skills. Skills can only be acquired by means of a series of successful practices and skills, given sufficient successful practise, become a reflex reaction viz. they are executed automatically without the need to think about them. The competent piano player does not have to think about the notes in any piece of music being played and the competent juggler does not have to think about the balls he or she is juggling. Similarly, the competent reader does not have to think about the sounds made by each of the letters in the words being read – that ‘skills part’ of the reading process is automatic. The problem faced by poor readers is that because they are poor readers, they can never get the quantity of reading successful practise which is necessary to make the ‘skills part’ of the process, an automatic, reflex reaction to the text.
The Quantum Literacy Theory proposes therefore that Reading competence/fluency is the consequence of a specific amount of successful reading practice, the quantum of which varies between individual children. In order to become competent readers, about one fifth of all children require a quantum of successful reading practise, significantly greater than that required by other children. The fact that these children fail to become competent readers before leaving school, is proof positive of the failure of the education system to have provided them with an appropriate quantum of successful reading practise.
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7 comments:
There are children who can vocalise text without understanding it. How does that fit into the QLT?
Techer
The proportion of children who can vocalise text without comprehension is actually very small but it certainly does exist. This fact fits entirely with QLT because it demonstrates in the clearest way possible that the mechanical aspect of the reading process in not an intellectual activity and in no way related to IQ.
Eddie
And how does that contribute to solving the problem of the 90,000 or so children who leave school every year unable to read?
Teacher
The vast majority of those who leave school illiterate are not able to vocalise text. They would be able to comprehend the text if they could vocalise it. Their failing is not an intellectual one – it is a mechanical one. The fact that vocalising text is a mechanical skill and independent of intellect means that they have the capacity to learn the skill. It is their teachers who are failing to teach them what is in effect, a relatively simply mechanical skill. Ideally, it could and should have been taught in infant school using Synthetic Phonics strategies until the response to text became a reflex one.
Eddie
As the mother of a nine year old with a reading difficulty, I am confused by the contradictory and misleading ‘information’ I am being fed by the so-called professionals who are being paid to help my child’s inability to read. What is being proposed by the QLT in this blog only adds to my confusion. If learning to read is simply a matter of practicing a skill until it is mastered why do so many thousands of children leave school unable to read? My child has being having ‘reading practices’ on a daily basis since age 5 and his reading is still well behind the reading of other children of his age. How does this equate to a theory that says that the answer to my son’s problem is ‘Carry on practicing!’ and all will come good in the end. I am not convinced.
Concerned Parent
QLT does not suggest that if your child ‘carries on practising’ all will come good in the end. On the contrary, it proposes that it is only a routine regime of SUCCESSFUL reading practices that can make the skills of vocalising text, a reflex reaction. Every day, ‘specialist’ teachers are listening to children with reading difficulties, stumbling through reading sessions and making what are nothing more than a series of contextual guesses because the child has no more productive strategies at his/her disposal. The fact that such practices are counter-productive is evidenced by a sustained lack of progress in reading and a parallel increase in damage to the child’s self-esteem. There are strategies for guaranteeing routinely successful reading practices but ‘specialist’ teachers prefer the ‘good old-fashioned methods’ which consistently succeed in delivering illiteracy to one child in five.
Teachers generally either subscribe to a simplistic ‘whole word’ or ‘phonics’ approach to the teaching of reading and the reality is that neither of these perceptions can deliver the high level of literacy which is the norm in many other countries. The ‘rule-based’ approach to deciphering text has so many exceptions that the use the word ‘rules’ in this context would be more appropriate in a TV comedy than as a technical term of a so-called ‘profession’. There are some 3750 exceptions’ in English spelling, all of which have to memorised individually and therein lies the difficulty. The skill of decoding the sounds associated with the alphabet has to be acquired in conjunction with these unavoidable realities of our language, a reality not shared by other more phonetic languages which have correspondingly fewer illiterates. The problem lies, not in learning the forty-four ‘rules’ but in learning the 3750 exceptions, the very existence of which is denied by the right wing zealots in Education who would impose their destructive and dangerous will on all schools. A UK child has to learn the ‘rules’ of spelling AND the 3750 ‘exceptions.’
Most competent readers acquired their intuitive appreciation of these 3750 variations, not by rote learning but within the reinforcing experience of routinely successful reading sessions. This option is not available to about one fifth of the population whose short term memory seemingly declines to pass these ‘exceptions’ into permanent memory other than via a greater than average quantum of successful reading experiences. QLT simply acknowledges that learning to vocalise text successfully is a skill and, contrary to the view of many so-called ‘specialist’ teachers, unrelated to intelligence. As with all skills, it is the product of an amount of successful practice, the quantum of which is a normally distributed variable.
Eddie
This is what I have always believed and like many others, in my desperation to help to change things, I went along with the Synthetic Phonics ideas. The question I have now is how can I ensure that my failing nine years olds can have the routine of successful reading sessions which commonsense says they need, if they cannot read?
Teacher
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