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Pearson - rapid Plus how to support reading for KS4 success

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Pearson - rapid Plus how to support reading for KS4 success

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Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

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Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Founded in 2011, Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done.

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Ep 14: English as an Additional Language

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Ep 14: English as an Additional Language

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Evidence into Action is a podcast from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). This podcast welcomes experts in the field of education - fantastic researchers with important things to say, alongside a wealth of brilliant teachers and school leaders. Our mission is straightforward: to tackle the most important educational topics and offer you plenty of evidence-based ideas to reflect on and, hopefully, be able to put into action.

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Ep 14: English as an Additional Language | Evidence into Action

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In this instalment, hosts Alex Quigley and, EEF Senior Content Manager, Kirsten Mould, are joined by guests including experts in linguistics and education, along with education leaders, giving their perspective, as they discuss how best to support pupils with English as an Additional Language.

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Giving your ESOL learners the best chance to pass Functional Skills English

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Giving your ESOL learners the best chance to pass Functional Skills English

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English CPD available till end March 2022

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English CPD available till end March 2022

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Giving your ESOL learners the best chance to pass Functional Skills English (Code: C1399)

Part B 29/03/2022 16:00 - 18:00

GCSE English Writing: CPD Training for Teachers (asynchronous) (Code: C1310) The course is based on a really interesting study, Aspects of Writing, published by Cambridge Assessment in 2016. It provides a fascinating analysis of the language that students actually use during GCSE exams.

Words are magnificent: increasing learners’ word building and vocabulary skills (Code: C1233) -  Express your interest, 2 hours
Assessment in English: knowing your learners' starting points (Code: C1270) Express your interest, 2 hours

Creative writing in GCSE and the challenges (Code: C1236) 28/03/2022 10:00 - 12:00, 2hours

To PEE or not to PEE?: helping GCSE learners to write about reading (Code: C1235) 23/03/2022 14:00 - 16:00, 2 hours
Developing grammar for reading and writing (Code: C1245) Express your interest, 2 hours
1st of 2 linked webinars – see 2nd Investigating grammar: supporting your learners to understand how texts work

Developing our learners' phonic skills (Code: C1268) Express your interest, 2 hours
Developing problem-solving, investigative and collaborative approaches to reading (Code: C1287) - Express your interest, 2 hours
Developing Speaking and Listening for Functional Skills English (Code: C1271) Express your interest, 2 hours
Developing writing: teacher modelling and collaborative writing techniques (Code: C1272)  Express your interest, 2hours
Helping GCSE resit learners to craft and control creative writing (Code: C1274) 07/04/2022 09:30 - 11:30, 2 hours
Helping post-16 learners to read with understanding and resilience (Code: C1275) - Express your interest, 2 hours

Improving Reading in Functional Skills English (Code: C1384), Express your interest

Integrating English into vocational training (Code: C1248) - 20/04/2022 15:00 - 17:00, 2hrs

Introduction to Assessment for Learning for English (Code: C1313) Express your interest, 1hour.

Investigating grammar: supporting your learners to understand how texts work (Code: C1276) Express your interest,  2nd of 2 linked webinars 1st is Developing grammar for reading and writing

Post-16 English learners: how to meet their needs (Code: C1282) Express your interest, 2hours
Marking, assessing and feeding forward in English (Code: C1281) Express your interest, 2hours Linked to Using formative assessment for planning
Overcoming barriers to learning English (Code: C1277) - Express your interest, 1 hour
Phonics: an introduction to the key principles of post-16 phonics (Code: C1247) - Express your interest, 1 hour
Phonics: strategies for improving reading and writing (Code: C1280) Express your interest, 2 hours
Planning for deep learning in English (Code: C1234) Express your interest, 2 hours

Problem-solving and Creative Thinking in English (Code: C1380) 30/03/2022 10:00 - 12:00, 2hrs

Teaching learners how to plan and write non-fiction text for GCSE and Functional Skills exams (Code: C1279) - Express your interest, 2 hours
Success in speaking and listening (Code: C1269) - Express your interest, 2 hours

Using formative assessment for planning English (Code: C1278) - express your interest, 2 hours Linked to Marking, assessing and feeding forward in English

Words are crucial: developing vocabulary for fluency in reading (Code: C1246) Express your interest, 2 hours

English Functional Skills teaching (Level 5 module) (Code: C1303) 10 sessions of 2 hours, 16:00 - 18:00. Now on waiting list - please do sign up if you are interested.

English GCSE Re-sits: Develop your Practice (Level 5 module)  Express your interest

Sharing Sessions approximately monthly 1 hour,

Phonic surgery 31/03/2022 16:00 - 17:00

Other support

Foundation Online Learning modules

The  multi-modal and pdf guide ‘Improving the delivery of maths and English in apprenticeships’ is still available on the Excellence Gateway.

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Typos, tricks and misprintsWhy is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology

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Typos, tricks and misprintsWhy is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology

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English spelling is ridiculous. Sew and new don't rhyme. Kernel and colonel do. When you see an ough, you might need to read it out as 'aw' (thought), 'ow' (drought), 'uff' (tough), 'off' (cough), 'oo' (through), or 'oh' (though). The ea vowel is usually pronounced 'ee' ( weak, please, seal, beam) but can also be 'eh' ( bread, head, wealth, feather). Those two options cover most of it - except for a handful of cases, where it's 'ay' ( break, steak, great). Oh wait, one more... there's earth. No wait, there's also heart.

The English spelling system, if you can even call it a system, is full of this kind of thing. Yet not only do most people raised with English learn to read and write it; millions of people who weren't raised with English learn to use it too, to a very high level of accuracy.

Admittedly, for a non-native speaker, such mastery usually involves a great deal of confusion and frustration. Part of the problem is that English spelling looks deceptively similar to other languages that use the same alphabet but in a much more consistent way. You can spend an afternoon familiarising yourself with the pronunciation rules of Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish and many others, and credibly read out a text in that language, even if you don't understand it. Your pronunciation might be terrible, and the pace, stress and rhythm would be completely off, and no one would mistake you for a native speaker - but you could do it. Even French, notorious for the spelling challenges it presents learners, is consistent enough to meet the bar. There are lots of silent letters, but they're in predictable places. French has plenty of rules, and exceptions to those rules, but they can all be listed on a reasonable number of pages.

English is in a different league of complexity. The most comprehensive description of its spelling - the Dictionary of the British English Spelling System by Greg Brooks (2015) - runs to more than 450 pages as it enumerates all the ways particular sounds can be represented by letters or combinations of letters, and all the ways particular letters or letter combinations can be read out as sounds.

From the early Middle Ages, various European languages adopted and adapted the Latin alphabet. So why did English end up with a far more inconsistent orthography than any other? The basic outline of the messy history of English is widely known: the Anglo-Saxon tribes bringing Old English in the 5th century, the Viking invasions beginning in the 8th century adding Old Norse to the mix, followed by the Norman Conquest of the 11th century and the French linguistic takeover. The moving and mixing of populations, the growth of London and the merchant class in the 13th and 14th centuries. The contact with the Continent and the balance among Germanic, Romance and Celtic cultural forces. No language Academy was established, no authority for oversight or intervention in the direction of the written form. English travelled and wandered and haphazardly tied pieces together. As the blogger James Nicoll put it in 1990, English 'pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary'.

But just how does spelling factor into all this? It wasn't as if the rest of Europe didn't also contend with a mix of tribes and languages. The remnants of the Roman Empire comprised Germanic, Celtic and Slavic communities spread over a huge area. Various conquests installed a ruling-class language in control of a population that spoke a different language: there was the Nordic conquest of Normandy in the 10th century (where they now write French with a pretty regular system); the Ottoman Turkish rule over Hungary in the 16th and 17th centuries (which now has very consistent spelling rules for Hungarian); Moorish rule in Spain in the 8th to 15th centuries (which also has very consistent spelling). True, other languages did have official academies and other government attempts at standardisation - but those interventions have largely only ever succeeded at implementing minor changes to existing systems in very specific areas. English wasn't the only language to pick the pockets of others for useful words.

The answer to the weirdness of English has to do with the timing of technology. The rise of printing caught English at a moment when the norms linking spoken and written language were up for grabs, and so could be hijacked by diverse forces and imperatives that didn't coordinate with each other, or cohere, or even have any distinct goals at all. If the printing press had arrived earlier in the life of English, or later, after some of the upheaval had settled, things might have ended up differently.

It's notable that the adoption of a different and related technology several hundred years earlier - the alphabet, in use from the 600s - didn't have this disorienting effect on English. The Latin alphabet had spread throughout Europe with the diffusion of Christianity from the 4th century onward. A few European vernacular languages had some sort of rudimentary writing system prior to this, but for the most part they had no written form. For the first few hundred years of English using the Latin alphabet, its spelling was pretty consistent and phonetic. Monks and missionaries, beginning around 600 CE translated Latin religious texts into local languages - not necessarily so they could be read by the general population, but so they could at least read aloud to them. Most people were illiterate. The vernacular translations were written to be pronounced, and the spelling was intended to get as close to the pronunciation as possible.

Often the languages these monks and missionaries were trying to transcribe contained sounds that Latin didn't have, and there was no symbol for the sound they needed. In those cases, they might use an accent mark, or put two letters together, or borrow another symbol. Old English, for example, had a strange, exotic 'th' sound, for which they originally borrowed the thorn symbol (þ) from Germanic runes. They later settled on the two-letter combination th. For the most part, they used the Latin alphabet as they knew it, but stretched it by using the letters in new ways when other sounds were required. We still use that sound, with the th spelling, in English today.

English was at home in the kitchen, the workshop, the marketplace, but less sure of itself in other registers

Writing was a specialised skill handled by dedicated scribes. They were trained by other scribes, who in turn passed on their spelling conventions. Different monasteries might have had different styles or habits for representing English sounds, and there were dialects and variations in pronunciation in the spoken language as well - but a written standard and eventually a whole literature emerged.

That tradition was broken after the Norman invasion in 1066. For the next 300 years or so, with a few exceptions, written English disappeared entirely. French was the language of the conquerors, and became the language of the state and all its official activities. Latin remained the language of the Church and education. English was the spoken language of daily life for most people, but the social class that had previously maintained and developed the written standard for English - landholders, religious leaders, government officials - had all been replaced.

English began its return as a written language in the 14th century. Over generations, it had crept back in among the nobility, as well as the clergy, although French and Latin were still the languages of educated and official pursuits. By then, English had changed. A few centuries of language evolution had led to different pronunciations. And Old English writing habits had been lost. As English started to make its written comeback, these people found themselves not only trying to figure out how to spell English words but also reaching for English ways to say educated, official things. English was completely at home in the kitchen, the workshop, and the marketplace, but less sure of itself in other registers. Grabbing the nearest convenient French word was often the solution. Things such court proceedings, government decrees, property ownership documents and schooling relied heavily on French vocabulary to fill in the gaps where English was out of practice. Words such as govern, judge, office, punish, money, contract, number, action, student and many others became part of the vocabulary of English official life - and then of everyone, as most people had some sort of interaction with officialdom.

Prior to the Norman conquest, Old English predominated, a thoroughly Germanic cousin of Dutch and German. To a speaker of Modern English today, it's nearly unrecognisable as English, and requires translation to understand. In the next few hundred years after the conquest, it evolved into Middle English - still Germanic, but less thoroughly so, as grammatical endings disappeared and French vocabulary flowed in. Middle English looks much more like the English we know.

By the time written English started coming back, around 1300, there was no general standard for spelling. People, taken from French peuple, might be spelled peple, pepill, poeple or poepul. Beauty, from French beauté, might be bewtee, buute or bealte. It didn't help matters that, at the time, French also had inconsistent spelling. All the vernaculars of Europe were on early, wobbly footing with respect to developing a consistent standard as they moved toward their own written tradition and away from Latin as the only choice. Then came the printing press.

Moveable type was invented in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg c 1450. It involved making letters from metal alloys and setting them in a print tray-bed, inking them, and then pressing paper over the top to make an imprint - saving hours compared with laborious manual transcription. The earliest works printed with this new technique were in Latin, but printers soon spotted the potential market for books in vernacular languages, and began making them in great numbers. English got off to an early start: an enterprising merchant named William Caxton set up the first English press in 1476. This followed the success of an English translation he had printed while working in Bruges. There were no style guides, no copyeditors, no dictionaries to consult.

Moveable type was a wonderful invention: once the type had been set, you could print off as many copies as you wanted. But setting the letters, or pieces of type, into lines, and then pages, was intense, specialised labour. You had to spend years learning the trade. For his new press, Caxton brought typesetters back with him from the Continent, and some didn't even speak English all that well. They set type working from manuscripts that already had quite a bit of variation, and the overriding priority was getting them set quickly.

Some standards did spread and crystallise over time, as more books were printed and literacy rates climbed. The printing profession played a key role in these emergent norms. Printing houses developed habits for spelling frequent words, often based on what made setting type more efficient. In a manuscript, hadde might be replaced with had; thankefull with thankful. When it came to spelling, the primary objective wasn't to faithfully represent the author's spelling, nor to uphold some standard idea of 'correct' English - it was to produce texts that people could read and, more importantly, that they would buy. Habits and tricks became standards, as typesetters learned their trade by apprenticing to other typesetters. They then often moved around as journeymen workers, which entailed dispersing their own habits or picking up those of the printing houses they worked in.

Some spellings got entrenched by being printed over and over again in widely distributed texts, very early on

Standard-setting was only partly in the hands of the people setting the type. Even more so, it was down to a growing reading public. The more texts there were, the more reading there was, and the greater the sensibility about what looks right. Once that sense develops, it can be a very powerful enforcer of norms. These norms in the literacy of English speakers today are so well entrenched that simple adjustments are very jarring. If ai trai tu repreezent mai akshuel pronownseeayshun in raiteeng, yu kan reed it, but its difikelt and disterbeeng tu du soh. It just looks wrong, and that feeling of wrongness interrupts the flow of reading. The fluency of reading depends on the speed with which you visually identify the words, and the speed of identification increases with exposure. The more we see a word, the more quickly we recognise it, even if its spelling doesn't match the sound.

Some spellings got entrenched this way, by being printed over and over again in widely distributed texts, very early on. The word ghost, which had been spelled and pronounced gast in Old English, took on the gh spelling under the influence of Flemish-trained compositors. It was such a commonly encountered word in English text, particularly in the phrase holy ghost and other translations of Latin spiritus, that it just began to look right.

Other spellings arose, and were then cemented through the power exerted by the visual shape of similar words. The existence of would and should, for example, brought about the spelling of could. Would and should were once pronounced with the 'l' sound, as they were the past-tense forms of will and shall. Could, however, was never pronounced with an 'l'; it was the past tense of can. Could was coude or cuthe. Then the visual power of would and should attracted could to their side. At printing's rise, the 'l' sound was already often absent from the pronunciation of would and should, so the 'l' was less a cue to pronunciation than to word type. Could is a modal verb, same as would and should. There was no explicit intention to make them look the same, but the frequency of their appearance nudged them toward ending up that way.

Visual patterns strengthened their hold on spelling in other languages, too. The many homophones and silent letters in French arose from letters that represented sounds that used to be pronounced, but hung on in the writing system after they were no longer spoken. And since French was a Romance language with its roots in Latin, and literacy in French often went hand-in-hand with literacy in Latin, Latin spellings could reinforce French spellings that had lost phonetic justification. For example, in speech, cent and sang might be pronounced the same, but there was also the implicit knowledge that cent came from centum and sang came from sanguinum. This Latin connection served as a reference point that helped stabilise French spelling, even when it was disconnected from pronunciation.

Had the Norman invasion not interrupted the literary tradition of Old English, we might have ended up with a similar situation - a spelling system with silent letters and shifted sound values, but grounded in the spellings of their earlier forms. Old English would have continued to be the basis of the writing tradition that would have later been set into type. Instead, we had a number of parts, moving and changing independently from each other, often with no anchor at all.

What's more, in the years when printing was slowly establishing and fortifying spelling habits, English was undergoing what's now called the Great Vowel Shift. In broad terms, over the course of a few centuries, sounds changed and vowels moved around. Words such as name and make, for example, once had an 'ah' vowel as they do in German name and machen, or English father. During the Great Vowel Shift, it moved to more of an 'eh' vowel as in bed, and eventually to the 'ay' where it is today. But the words affected in this way continue to be spelled with the 'a' of father.

Words that ended up with an oo spelling generally used to be pronounced with a long 'o' sound. Moon and book both used to sound something like moan and boke; the two o's, quite logically, represented a long 'o', before moving to an 'u' sound, as in June. However, sometimes the long vowel became a short vowel: eg, the more lax 'u' vowel, as in push. Moon (also goose, food, school) ended up with the June vowel, while book ( foot, good, stood) with the push vowel. These changes happened at different times in different places. For some words ( roof), the change hasn't completely gone through, and still wavers (at least in my own Midwestern US dialect) between the two pronunciations. In some places in Scotland and the north of England, moon, book, goose and foot still have the same vowel.

The changes that came to be grouped under the Great Vowel Shift were gradual and went unnoticed as they were happening. When an English speaker sat down to write something at the end of the Middle Ages, the way they wrote it could depend on where they lived and what the dialectal pronunciation of vowels was there. It would also depend on what they had read and incorporated into their spelling habits. When a printer was setting type for that writing, they had their own pronunciation and spelling preferences. When a piece of writing was set in type and spread to other towns, it would be received by people of varying literacy levels, and that would influence how it was incorporated into their habits. In other words, there was tremendous variation at each of these waystations on the journey to being read. When a text was set in type and distributed, it had the effect of propagating the habit it represented, but how much it propagated depended on how widely it was distributed and where. Which specific aspects of the habit would stick and which fall away? The answer could be some or none. The result, ultimately, is a very irregular habit.

Writing attaches to language in the way that the fork is a technology that attaches to our eating habits

If English had been later to the technology of printing, further behind in the expansion of literacy, it might have been able to approach the development of its spelling system with a cleaner slate and a more stable idea of what was to be represented. But when a tool comes along, you don't wait to figure out the optimal way to use it or worry about what the effects of using it might eventually be. Instead, you just start.

When a technology spreads, so does a habit of using it. Before we had printing, we had writing. Can we go back further? Isn't human language itself a technology? This is arguable, a philosophical question. I would say no. In any case, language is much, much closer to our very natures as humans than is any invented or discovered tool passed along for practical problem-solving. Put a group of humans without a language together (as has happened in some cases with Deaf communities) and they will do language. A language will emerge from what they do.

But they won't necessarily come up with writing. Writing is unquestionably a technology. It attaches to language in the way that the fork is a technology that attaches to our eating habits. Eating is undeniably a necessary part of our nature. The fork is a recent, unnecessary (no matter how useful) innovation. That analogy doesn't go much further. There are very few things that capture the relation between language (the behaviour) and writing (the technology that represents the behaviour). It's hard to find a good analogy. The point is that the eating happens whether we have the fork or not. Language happens whether we have writing or not.

When we first got the technology of writing, the people who used it represented a tiny fraction of the speaking population, in most cases for hundreds of years. Throughout the history of writing, most people have been illiterate. It was the technology of printing that made it possible to put writing into widespread use. The written word got cheaper and more plentiful. People had the access and exposure necessary to learn, practise and become literate. That access and exposure was created, in stages, by the competing and conflicting demands of history. That history and its lumps, bumps, silent letters and all, was pressed in with metal and ink.

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Why is the English spelling system so weird and inconsistent? | Aeon Essays

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English spelling is ridiculous. Sew and new don't rhyme. Kernel and colonel do. When you see an ough, you might need to read it out as 'aw' (thought), 'ow' (drought), 'uff' (tough), 'off' (cough), 'oo' (through), or 'oh' (though). The ea vowel is usually pronounced 'ee' ( weak, please, seal, beam) but can also be 'eh' ( bread, head, wealth, feather).

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March 2022

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Teach with confidence

Support your students' progress and development through post-16 GCSE English Language.

Expert-led resources

Our Spotlight teaching resource packs will allow you to focus your students on the things that make the most difference.

Produced in partnership with Jonny Kay, an expert in post-16 GCSE English and TES columnist and author, these resources look at the four questions with the highest marks across paper 1 and 2. They will highlight key ideas, themes and common mistakes, helping your students understand what examiners look for.

Each of our teaching resource packs contain:

Download your expert-led resources:

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Support your students' progress and development through post-16 GCSE English Language. Our Spotlight teaching resource packs will allow you to focus your students on the things that make the most difference. Produced in partnership with Jonny Kay, an expert in post-16 GCSE English and TES columnist and author, these resources look at the four questions with the highest marks across paper 1 and 2.

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FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING

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FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING

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FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING | Studies in Second Language Acquisition | Cambridge Core

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Today, the EEF has released a brand new episode of ​'Evidence into Action', our podcast which explores important areas of educational research, and how it is being put into practice in schools. In this new instalment, our expert panel discuss the evidence around the importance of fluency in teaching children to read.

Regular host Alex Quigley is joined by our Literacy Content Specialist, Sarah Green, in discussion with:

Tim Rasinski, Professor of Literacy Education and author of ​"The Megabook of Fluency" (Start - 29:50);

Julie Phazey, Primary School Headteacher (29:50 - 39:52); and

Louise Quinn, Secondary School Deputy Headteacher and Senior Leader in Education (39:52 - End).

For quick and easy access to future episodes, search for ​'Evidence into Action' in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts and make sure you subscribe there.

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the eef has released a brand new episode of ‘evidence into action’

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our podcast which explores important areas of educational research

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and how it is being put into practice in schools. in this new instalment

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our expert panel discuss the evidence around the importance of fluency in teaching children to read. regular host alex quigley is joined by our literacy content specialist

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professor of literacy education and author of “the megabook of fluency” (start – 29:50); julie phazey

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primary school headteacher (29:50 – 39:52); and louise quinn

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secondary school deputy headteacher and senior leader in education (39:52 – end).  for quick and easy access to future episodes

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search for 'evidence into action' in apple podcasts

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or google podcasts and make sure you subscribe there.

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New episode of 'Evidence into Action' - "Teaching reading: Developing...

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Today, the EEF has released a brand new episode of ​'Evidence into Action', our podcast which explores important areas of educational research, and how it is being put into practice in schools. In this new instalment, our expert panel discuss the evidence around the importance of fluency in teaching children to read.

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Engaging & Motivating GCSE English & Maths Resit Learners

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Engaging & Motivating GCSE English & Maths Resit Learners

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Prephonological spelling and its connections with later word reading and spelling performance

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Prephonological spelling and its connections with later word reading and spelling performance

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Highlights

*

Some preschool children write words in ways that do not make sense based on sound.

*

Prephonological spellings reveal some knowledge of graphotactics: how letters combine.

*

These spellings do not necessarily reflect lack of alphabet knowledge or phonological awareness.

*

Prephonological spelling near the end of preschool presages poorer reading and spelling later on.

Abstract

Before children are able to invent phonologically plausible spellings of words, they may produce strings of letters that do not seem to be motivated by the sounds in words. To examine the nature of these prephonological spellings and their relationship to later literacy performance, we administered a test in which children spelled a series of words using preformed letters, together with other literacy-related tests, to 106 U.S. 3- to 5-year-olds who had not received formal literacy instruction. We then followed the children into the first years of school, administering standardized spelling and word reading tests yearly for the subsequent 3 years. We used quantitative procedures to identify children who were prephonological spellers at Time 1. Although these children did not use phonologically plausible letters at a rate above that expected by chance, their spellings demonstrated some knowledge about common letters and digrams-graphotactic knowledge. The prephonological spellers also showed some knowledge of the alphabet and some phonological awareness, indicating that these skills do not suffice for phonological spelling. Children who were prephonological spellers at Time 1 were poorer readers and spellers at the later testing points, on average, than children who were not. This result reveals the continuity between children's early spelling attempts and their later literacy skills and the importance of phonology in spelling. We did not find, as Kessler et al. [ Journal of Learning Disabilities (2013), Vol. 46, pp. 252-259] did in a study where children wrote words by hand, that better graphotactic knowledge among prephonological spellers is associated with better spelling during later years.

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Prephonological spelling and its connections with later word reading and spelling performance

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Some preschool children write words in ways that do not make sense based on sound. * Prephonological spellings reveal some knowledge of graphotactics: how letters combine. * These spellings do not necessarily reflect lack of alphabet knowledge or phonological awareness. * Prephonological spelling near the end of preschool presages poorer reading and spelling later on.

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Lost in Translation? Challenges in Connecting Reading Science and Educational Practice Mark S. Seidenberg, Matt Cooper Borkenhagen, Devin M. KearnsFirst published: 16 September 2020

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Lost in Translation? Challenges in Connecting Reading Science and Educational Practice Mark S. Seidenberg, Matt Cooper Borkenhagen, Devin M. KearnsFirst published: 16 September 2020

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Can the science of reading contribute to improving educational practices, allowing more students to become skilled readers? Much has been learned about the behavioral and brain bases of reading, how ...

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For you, as a skilled speller, writing the words BOAT and NOTE is trivial. You don't give the task a second thought: BOAT is spelled B-O-A-T and NOTE is spelled N-O-T-E. You don't have to identify the sounds (phonemes) in these words, and then match those sounds with letters before you write them.

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Here Are The Seven Letters That Do Not Exist in The English Alphabet Anymore

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Here Are The Seven Letters That Do Not Exist in The English Alphabet Anymore

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The Latin alphabet for English once included 7 extra characters, some of which did not have Latin origins. But down the road, they fell out of use. Here is a list of the letters that once existed in the English alphabet. We also included a list of other letters that were believed to constitute part of the alphabet but were actually not in the alphabet.

1. Ash

The letter ash represented a short vowel sound. It's something between a and e, thus the symbol above. Examples of the ash are found in words such as c at, a pple, etc.

2. Eth

Eth stood for the voiced th sound as in this. But it was originally interchangeable with the voiceless th sound as in think.

3. Ethel

Ethel once represented a pronunciation somewhere between o and e, though it was originally pronounced like oy. Back at the days of ethel the word diarrhea was spelled diarrhœa.

4. Thorn

Thorn was the voiced <th> sound; there wasn't a strict distinction between þ and ð.

5. Wynn

Wynn represented the /w/ sound. Previously, two u's were used (or two v's, depending on the person's handwriting; u and v were the same letter back then), but Wynn was adopted to make it a single letter. It proved unpopular, and we returned to the usage of two u's. Then the two u's merged into w.

6. Yogh

Yogh used to indicate the velar fricative /x/, which is no longer used in most dialects of English. It is a sound in words like Bach or the Scottish word loch. You can also find it in borrowed words from other languages, such as Hebrew words like Chanukah or Challah. Yogh was abandoned in favor of using the letters gh. Later, the gh became silent or pronounced as [f] ( light, thorough, laugh).

7. Ampersand

Ampersand ,believe it or not was considered part of the English alphabet. It first appeared in an alphabet listing in 1011,and faded out some time in the mid 19th Century. But it never represented a sound of the alphabet and was never used in words. It was at the end of the alphabet, and when the alphabet was recited by children, it would end with x, y, z and per se 'and' which got slurred into "ampersand".

Notes about other "letters that were never really in the alphabet" or were debatable:

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Here Are The Seven Letters That Do Not Exist in The English Alphabet Anymore.

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The Latin alphabet for English once included 7 extra characters, some of which did not have Latin origins. But down the road, they fell out of use. Here is a list of the letters that once existed in the English alphabet.

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Why Wordle Works, According to Desmos Lesson Developers

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Why Wordle Works, According to Desmos Lesson Developers

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Why Wordle Works, According to Desmos Lesson Developers

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How to win at Wordle using linguistic theoryDavid Shariatmadari

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How to win at Wordle using linguistic theoryDavid Shariatmadari

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How to win at Wordle using linguistic theory | David Shariatmadari

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The key to success is understanding the rules that govern how sounds fit together, says author David Shariatmadari

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Nicky Pear

Cubitt Town Junior School

The training has been consistently excellent and has given me the tools and confidence to lead oracy across my school. We also worked with Voice 21 for a full academic year at school, and they tailored their input and training to our specific needs. Again, all of this was well planned, thorough and helpful.

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Voice 21 - The national oracy education charity

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Nicky Pear Cubitt Town Junior School The training has been consistently excellent and has given me the tools and confidence to lead oracy across my school. We also worked with Voice 21 for a full academic year at school, and they tailored their input and training to our specific needs.

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It’s vital that the books we read in our formative years reflect the rich diversity of the society we live in. That’s why we at Penguin have joined forces with The Runnymede Trust to explore how to support schools to make the teaching and learning of English literature more inclusive. We want to inc…

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This site is dedicated to teachers in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) industry who are interested in evidence-based language teaching and learning practices.

Secondary research

Phase 1 of the TESOLgraphics project focuses on producing infographic summaries of secondary research in Applied Linguistics and TESOL.

​Secondary research, or (systematic) evidence synthesis, refers to academic publications which summarise research findings from numerous (ranging from a dozen to many more) primary studies on the same topic. Secondary research is useful to TESOL practitioners who want to catch a glimpse of the latest development of research.

Making research findings accessible to teachers

This project focuses on secondary research in TESOL. We aim to make secondary research easy to read and understand to ESL, EFL, EAP teachers. We do so by producing infographic summaries of selected secondary research which you can finish reading in 5 minutes.

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This site is dedicated to teachers in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) industry who are interested in evidence-based language teaching and learning practices. Phase 1 of the TESOLgraphics project focuses on producing infographic summaries of secondary research in Applied Linguistics and TESOL.

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The reading framework Teaching the foundations of literacy July 2021 

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The reading framework Teaching the foundations of literacy July 2021 

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National English Network, Claire Callow and Lianne Abraham

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National English Network, Claire Callow and Lianne Abraham

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The user has sent too many requests
in a given amount of time.

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Dr Clive Upton

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The Special Collections department of the library holds a substantial amount of material relating to Yorkshire dialect, much of which was published in the last century and earlier. For example, there is a large selection of local Yorkshire almanacs, bound copies of all back issues of Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, and a collection of John Hartley's Yorkshire Tales.

Archive material incorporates a large number documents and manuscripts formerly held by the University's Institute of Dialect and Folk-Life Studies. Included are the original fieldworkers' notebooks completed during the Survey Of English Dialects (SED), and a selection of both MA and PhD theses. Sound recordings of the SED and any relevant cassettes associated with the dissertations are at present mainly held by the School of English.

Photocopies of SED fieldworkers' notebooks are also held at The National Centre for English Cultural Traditional (NATCECT), University of Sheffield.

Further details relating to Special Collections may be obtained by connecting to the department's web page.

Appointments to visit can be made by telephoning General Enquiries (0113 2335518) or by sending an e-mail. Seven days notice would be appreciated.

The Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture

This is a new three-year project which commenced in June 2002. The aim is to construct a web-based archive of "speech, customs, beliefs and practices of traditional English communities". Further details can be obtained by connecting to their website.

The Survey of Regional English (SuRE)

The purpose of SuRE, a combined project proposed by the universities of Leeds and Sheffield, is to conduct a detailed study of English dialects as they exist at the turn of the century. The intention is to obtain recordings of examples of informal speech for analysis in terms of phonology, grammar and lexis.

Essentially, subject to funding, the survey is to consist of two strands: firstly, a relatively short-term in-depth study of dialect across a network of predetermined locations within England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Eire; secondly, a simpler but ongoing investigation with data being supplied, on a continuing basis, by linguistic fieldworkers wherever, whenever and whatever they are studying.

In recording the information thus accumulated, full use will be made of the present levels and capabilities of Information Technology. The outcome will be a substantial computerized linguistic database which will be available to not only those individuals involved in its creation but to future generations of linguists.
Collection of Data
A fresh approach is to be taken regarding the collection of data. It is intended that information should be obtained by using socially paired informants. Rather than employing an interviewing style, the fieldworker will encourage discussion of the dialect words so that the interaction will be more in the form of a casual conversation.

Central to this new method of data collection are a number of forms; Sense Related Network sheets (SRNs) and an Identification Questionnaire (IdQ).
SRNs
There are three versions of this form covering different networks of interrelated words. All have been designed to be visually pleasing and "user-friendly" so that participants will actually want to fill them in. The informants are given the SRNs five days prior to the interview to allow them ample opportunity to consider the dialect words they use. These words are entered in the spaces provided on the form.

The SRNs are also a means of promoting informal discussion, providing an opportunity to record a spoken version of the informants' responses and giving rise to the possible occurrence of lexical items not included in the forms themselves.
The IdQ
Used in conjunction with the above-mentioned forms, this questionnaire contains fifteen questions designed to evoke, relative to the SRNs, a comparatively protracted response. Primarily, the purpose of the IdQ is to obtain information concerning participants' attitudes to language and identity, but it also provides a safeguard against minimal responses to the SRNs.
Under Consideration
Some thought is being given to the employment of:

the use of word or sentence lists. These would provide control of phonological features and assist in the study of stylistic variation.

the introduction of a more formal grammatical element similar to the questionnaire employed in the Survey of British Dialect Grammar.

The Current Position
Funding is still been sought for this project. However, some progress has been made; Carmen Llamas has completed Middlesbrough and work has started in relation to Southampton (Kate Wallace) and the Black Country (Esther Asprey). The field is open for other interested researchers to take part in a new and challenging initiative.
Further Information
Further information about this project may be obtained by e-mail. from:

Dr Clive Upton
School of English
University of Leeds
Leeds
LS2 9JT
Sources
Kerswill, P., Llamas, C. and Upton, C. (1998) The first Sure moves: early steps towards a large dialect database. In Clive Upton and Katie Wales (eds), Dialectal Variation in English: Proceedings of the Harold Orton Centenary Conference 1998. Leeds Studies in English Vol. 30, 1999

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The Special Collections department of the library holds a substantial amount of material relating to Yorkshire dialect, much of which was published in the last century and earlier. For example, there is a large selection of local Yorkshire almanacs, bound copies of all back issues of Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, and a collection of John Hartley's Yorkshire Tales.

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Humans have communicated their thoughts, ideas, and feelings through poetry throughout history. At its best, it tells us new truths about the human experience. However, it's often presented as hard to understand without expert knowledge.

On this course, you'll build your confidence in reading and enjoying poetry.

Whether you're a poetry fanatic or you're eager to learn, you'll learn tools for approaching the study of poetry, ways to express your appreciation of poetry, and ways to find new riches in your favourite poems.

This course will also give you guidance on developing your own poetic voice when writing verse.

Assessments (and subsequent certificates) are optional and carry a fee, with the exception of people with a York username for whom they are free.
Sign up now - York Account holders
(York Account holders sign-up includes offer holders, staff and current students).
Guidance for York account holders enrolling on FutureLearn courses (PDF , 272kb)

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Poetry - Study at York, University of York

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Humans have communicated their thoughts, ideas, and feelings through poetry throughout history. At its best, it tells us new truths about the human experience. However, it's often presented as hard to understand without expert knowledge. On this course, you'll build your confidence in reading and enjoying poetry.

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Hooked on Bad PedagogicsSchools could see vast improvements in academic performance if they took education research seriously.

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Hooked on Bad PedagogicsSchools could see vast improvements in academic performance if they took education research seriously.

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Three cueing

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Many fields suffer from the persistence of received ideas that are unsupportable, but the problem is especially severe in American education. In many cases, systematic research has illustrated that common current practices could be vastly improved on, but such improvements have not been implemented widely.

A 2019 report by Emily Hanford for American Public Media, "At a Loss for Words," described how millions of students in the United States were still being taught to read using a flawed approach known as "three-cueing." This method, Hanford writes, sprang from a 1967 paper that theorized that fluent readers recognized words not merely from their spellings but also from "contextual" factors such as sentence structure and accompanying illustrations. Primary education, the theory held, should teach students using the same process: not "sounding out" words but using only isolated phonetic components, such as a first letter, and combining these with contextual clues.

As Hanford describes, subsequent psychological research disproved the underpinnings of the three-cueing theory. It was actually less fluent readers who relied more on contextual clues while reading. Fluent readers may not have to sound out words explicitly, but that's only because they were so practiced at associating sound to spelling that the whole process was automatic. Students taught with the three-cueing system, furthermore, often made bewildering mistakes while reading basic books, coming up with sentences that fit stereotyped grammatical patterns and the illustrations but diverged wildly from what was actually written.

One would hope that this debate would have been resolved by now. The three-cueing system, for instance, differs only mildly from older ideas about how to teach reading through "whole language," which Rudolf Flesch fiercely attacked in his influential 1955 defense of phonics instruction, Why Johnny Can't Read. Flesch noted, for instance, that the 1949 book Children Learn to Read gave a list of "seven different ways to recognize new or partly known words," which included "the use of picture clues" and "the use of context clues" and, only last, "phonetic and structural analysis of the word." And a number of systematic studies have found substantial benefits to phonics instruction, including for racial-minority students and as an intervention with low-performing students.

The debate over phonics-which Flesch's work should have put to rest 66 years ago-reflects a broader problem. Consider Direct Instruction, an elementary teaching methodology developed in the 1960s by Siegfried Engelmann based on his experiences working with disadvantaged primary schoolchildren in Illinois. Direct Instruction delivers consistently positive results, and no better concise introduction to its ideas exists than several articles that Shepard Barbash has written for City Journal. Direct Instruction lesson plans teach a specific skill through explicit demonstration from the instructor and choral call-and-response with students; lessons follow careful scripts that teachers should not deviate from. By contrast, as Barbash describes, most early-childhood teachers take a different approach. "Central to the typical early-childhood educator's worldview," he writes, "are three ideas: that it's better for young children to learn through play than through work; that children learn best and are happiest when they can help direct the pace and content of their own learning; and that a child's mental abilities develop at a natural pace that adults cannot do much to accelerate."

Direct Instruction succeeds with disadvantaged children, whose "language deficit" motivated Engelmann's emphasis on oral call-and-response. A recent 2018 meta-analysis of hundreds of studies on Direct Instruction found universally positive effects. Even more promisingly, after several months of follow-up, the beneficial effects of Direct Instruction programs showed only insubstantial signs of fading away-a common problem with educational interventions, in which many promising-seeming interventions have only temporary benefits.

At least phonics and Direct Instruction have footholds in regular teaching, which cannot be said of another useful invention: spaced repetition. One of the oldest fields of research in psychology, dating back to Hermann Ebbinghaus's calculations of " forgetting curves " in the late nineteenth century, is the quantification of memory: How likely is someone to remember a piece of information, such as a fact or a word in a foreign language, after reviewing it some number of times and then waiting for some period? Research in this field consistently concludes that "spaced" practice is superior to "massed" practice-that is, retention of old material requires continual review at intervals after originally learning it. This is the opposite of typical school lectures, which often explore material over a short period and then leave it behind until a review session.

Research on spaced practice, moreover, has produced one undeniably practical offshoot: "spaced-repetition software," such as the free program Anki. Spaced-repetition software maintains a deck of virtual flashcards and shows users each day a subset of cards that they are likely to have forgotten. Almost any school subject that rests largely on the acquisition of a body of factual knowledge-for instance, history, geography, biology-could be improved by structuring courses around spaced practice and the use of spaced-repetition software, allowing students to retain vastly more information with the same amount of instruction and study time.

Yet spaced repetition has remained relatively obscure. I myself learned about Anki only from online hobbyist language-learning communities, which almost universally recommend it for building vocabulary. (I can also attest to its efficacy: after just one year of daily Russian vocabulary reviews with Anki and only casual study beyond that, I can now-with some difficulty-read nonfiction such as Russian-language Wikipedia. I made significantly less progress with the same amount of effort invested in studying German, a much easier language for English speakers, through Duolingo.) One of the few exceptions is medical school, where use of Anki to review for exams is widespread.

Why have clearly effective pedagogical techniques not seen universal or even broad use? One culprit is a set of deeply ingrained received ideas. The education profession has been averse to rote learning since the time of John Dewey, and even before; techniques such as spaced repetition, though effective, are undeniably tedious. Flesch speculated that the 1950s reluctance to teaching phonics-grounded in spurious notions of developmental "reading readiness"-stretched back to Rousseau's Émile, the founding text of progressive education, which argued that children should never be made to learn things for which they do not feel ready.

Trends in education schools to emphasize teachers' political mission over their pedagogical one-and even to dismiss the notion that teachers' principal job is to teach a set of concrete, testable skills-make it unlikely that these ideas will get dislodged in the near future. Harvard's education school, for instance, recently updated the website advertising its master's degree to note that "the case for transformative education has never been stronger" and promises students immersion in a community with "a deep commitment to social justice." A recent New York Times article about the low efficacy of remote learning in teaching basic skills such as reading and mathematics quoted a professor at the University of Washington's education school who called concerns about learning loss "premised on a set of racialized assumptions" and advocated instead that schools refocus on lessons that students learned-in the Times 's paraphrase-"about loss and grief, about racism and resistance, about cooking and family traditions at home."

Whatever the case, it is clear that better teaching methods could improve American students' performance in many domains. Conscientious teachers and school board members-not to mention parents considering educational options for their children beyond the neighborhood public school-would do well to take note.

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Many fields suffer from the persistence of received ideas that are unsupportable, but the problem is especially severe in American education. In many cases, systematic research has illustrated that common current practices could be vastly improved on, but such improvements have not been implemented widely.

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The Essential Linnea Ehri  A Research-Based Explanation of How Children Learn to Read Words

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The Essential Linnea Ehri  A Research-Based Explanation of How Children Learn to Read Words

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This is a fabulous article

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Updated: Feb 25, 2022

With 160 published papers, Linnea Ehri has been one of the most influential and cited reading scientists in the past 40 years. One of 14 members of the U.S. National Reading Panel (1997-2000), she served as Chair of both the Phonemic Awareness and the Phonics subgroups of the Panel. (The full report of the Panel can be found .)

Ehri earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of California in Berkeley. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where she was a member of the faculty in Educational Psychology and in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Since the 1970s she has conducted scientific research on how children learn to read. Her findings have provided support for the theory described below. For a portrayal of the course of her research findings and their implications for instruction, see .

Ehri distinguishes 4 ways to read words:

"The first three ways help us read unfamiliar words. The fourth way explains how we read words we have read before. One way is by decoding, also called phonological recoding. We can either sound out and blend graphemes into phonemes, or we can work with larger chunks of letters to blend syllabic units into recognizable words. Another way is by analogizing. This involves using words we already know to read new words - for example, using the known word, bottle, to read throttle. Another way is by prediction. This involves using context and letter clues to guess unfamiliar words. The fourth way of reading words is by memory or sight. This applies to words we have read before. We can just look at the words and our brain recognizes them."[1] [boldface mine]

[: If you're unfamiliar with the terms "decode," "blend," "encode," "segment," "grapheme," or "phoneme," you can find easy-to-understand definitions . Understanding these terms is a necessity for reading this blog.]

"Given that there are multiple ways to read words, consider which way makes text reading most efficient. If readers know words by sight and can recognize them automatically as they read text, then word reading operates unconsciously. In contrast, each of the other ways of reading words requires conscious attention. If readers attempt to decode words, to analogize, or to predict words, their attention is shifted from the text to the word itself to identify it, and this disrupts comprehension, at least momentarily. It is clear that being able to read words automatically from memory is the most efficient, unobtrusive way to read words in text. Hence, building a sight vocabulary is essential for achieving text-reading skill." [2]

If you're a skilled reader, you'll likely read every word in this blog effortlessly - by sight. A mere glimpse of each word will immediately link to that word's pronunciation and meaning. The brain's ability to do this is astonishing. How does it happen?

"Consider the feat that skilled readers perform when they read words by sight. They are able to recognize in an instant any one of many thousands of words. They recognize one unique word and bypass many other similarly spelled words. For example, consider all the words that must be overlooked to read the word "stick" accurately: not only stink, slick, and slink, which have similar shapes as well as letters, but also sting, sling, string, as well as sick, sing, and sink. Moreover, skilled readers can remember how to read new sight words with very little practice. Memorizing arbitrary associations between the shapes and meanings of words cannot explain how skilled readers do what they do. Sight word reading must involve remembering letters in the words. These alone are the distinctive cues that make one word different from all the others." [3]

But without connecting that specific sequence of letters to something already in the brain, sight word learning would be a difficult and onerous task, something akin to memorizing sequences of arbitrary digits, such as phone numbers. Here's where orthographic mapping comes into play.

Orthographic Mapping (hereafter: OM) might be an unknown term for some readers. The prefix ortho means "correct," while graphy has to do with writing. So a word is orthographic if it is spelled or written according to accepted convention ( Cambridge Dictionary). The word "mapping" implies a word's spelling is connected or associated with something else - and that is indeed the case.

"Words that have become sight words are read from memory. Sight of the word immediately activates both pronunciation and meaning. To build sight words, OM is required. Readers must form connections between spellings and pronunciations of specific words by applying knowledge of the general writing system. When readers see a new word, and say or hear its pronunciation, its spelling becomes mapped onto its pronunciation and meaning. It's the connections that serve to 'glue' spelling to pronunciations in memory." [4]

"It is in performing this grapheme-phoneme analysis for individual words that the spellings of words penetrate and become attached to readers' knowledge of spoken words in a way that links written language to the central mechanisms [in the brain] governing spoken language." [5]

In her recent study showing how grapheme-phoneme analysis is critical even for a transparent language (Portuguese), Ehri sums up the situation for learning to read English this way. Note the emphasis on decoding:

"Learning to decode involves transforming graphemes into phonemes and blending them to pronounce words with recognizable meanings (Beck, 2006). Share (2008b) described decoding as a self-teaching mechanism that readers can apply to unlock the identities of unfamiliar words as they are reading text. Ehri (1992, 1998, 2014) proposed a connectionist theory and presented evidence to show how decoding enables readers to store written words in memory so that the words can be read by sight. When readers apply their grapheme-phoneme knowledge to decode new words, connections are formed between graphemes in written words and phonemes in spoken words. This bonds the spellings of those words to their pronunciations and meanings and stores all of these identities together as lexical units in memory. Subsequently, when these words are seen, readers can read the words as single units from memory automatically by sight. Decoding letter by letter is no longer needed to read the words." [boldface mine] [6]

Examples given by Ehri are the words ISLAND and SWORD where only the S and W, respectively, remain unsecured [7]. Elsewhere [8], Ehri suggests that assigning spelling pronunciations to words with silent letters or unstressed vowels can help to connect and secure these letters in memory, for example, pronouncing LISTEN as "lis - ten" rather than "lis - in," or CHOCOLATE as "choc - o - late" rather than "choc - lut."

Before a child ever begins the process of learning how to read, thousands of what Ehri calls amalgams already exist in the child's memory - one amalgam for every word in the child's spoken or listening vocabulary. Each amalgam contains, at a minimum, two identities: the word's pronunciation and the word's (semantic) meaning. Some amalgams may already contain morphological (word roots and affixes) and syntactic (grammatical function in sentences) identities as well. OM can be viewed as a process whereby written words (spellings) are added to the amalgams already in memory.

"In order for written words to be added to the amalgams in memory, readers must bond spellings to pronunciations by applying their knowledge of letter-sound relations to connect letter units to sound units within specific words...The first few times a student reads a word, these connections are formed and stored in memory. Subsequently, when the word is seen, these connections are activated in memory to read the word. Once words' identities are amalgamated in memory, readers can read them as whole units quickly and automatically with all of their identities activated. When practiced in this way, words become recognized from memory by sight. This supplants the need for guessing or decoding words." [9]

Sight words, properly learned via OM, penetrate the brain's language system and provide a visual, but now alphabetic, representation of speech phonemes:

"According to amalgamation theory, when students learn to read and spell words, a visual alphabetic representational system for speech is acquired and used to store words in memory. Letters in spellings come to penetrate and represent phonemes in pronunciations in the brain." [10]

Now let's take a look at the skills necessary for specific spellings to be added to the amalgams already in memory. In other words, let's look at what skills are needed for OM to take place.

1. Letter recognition (shapes, names, upper versus lower case).

2. Knowledge of letter-sound relationships, not only for the 24 consonant sounds of English, but also for the 20 vowel sounds. In her research, Ehri refers to these relationships as "alphabetic knowledge," "grapheme-phoneme correspondences," or "grapheme-phoneme relations."

3. Two specific phonemic awareness skills needed for decoding and spelling words: blending separate phonemes to form whole spoken words, and segmenting whole spoken words into constituent phonemes. Decoding requires blending the sounds of letters to read words. Encoding requires segmenting the phonemes in spoken words to spell them. [ Note: For Ehri, the ability to segment spoken words into phonemes is facilitated by helping beginners detect the sequence of mouth positions and movements involved in producing those phonemes, for example, segmenting "bat" by feeling the lips closed for /b/, then open for the vowel, then the tongue tapping the roof of the mouth for /t/.]

4. Repeated practice using decoding and encoding skills to read and spell words.

Here's Ehri in her own words. Note her reference to David Share, one of Ehri's peers. (The two have known each other throughout their careers and have communicated on a regular basis.) Share would certainly agree with the above 4 prerequisites. (See my blog on his Self-Teaching Hypothesis .)

"To form connections and retain words in memory, readers need some requisite abilities. They must possess phonemic awareness, particularly segmentation and blending. They must know the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the writing system...Then they need to be able to read unfamiliar words on their own by applying a decoding, analogy, or prediction strategy. Application of these strategies activates orthographic mapping to retain the words' spellings, pronunciations, and meanings in memory. David Share referred to this as a self-teaching mechanism. With repeated readings that activate orthographic mapping, written words are retained in memory to support reading and spelling." [11] [boldface mine]

Six years later, Ehri says it this way:

"Acquisition of sight word learning ability requires that students learn regularities of the writing system beginning with grapheme-phoneme relations, phoneme segmentation, and decoding skill, so graphemes become connected to phonemes within spellings of specific words in memory." [12]

Ehri specifies the type of instruction necessary to ensure that the skills needed for OM are explicitly taught. Notice the phrase "produced or heard." The student himself can produce the word, by decoding it, or the word can be produced for him, in which case he will need segmentation skills.

"Use of alphabetic [letter-sound] knowledge to connect spellings to pronunciations and retain sight words in memory is an internal process that is activated spontaneously when words are seen and their pronunciations are produced or heard...What sort of instruction produces spontaneous OM? First, it entails teaching students the knowledge and skills that enable connections to be activated when words are seen and read. This includes teaching the writing system, beginning with grapheme-phoneme relations, teaching phonemic segmentation, and teaching a decoding strategy for reading novel words. Second, it entails having students practice using these skills to read and spell words." [13]

"Share (2004) reported that even one exposure to words enabled Israeli third graders to retain information about the spellings of specific words in memory, and this memory persisted a month later. Sight word learning this rapid and lasting is possible only because readers possess a powerful mnemonic system in the form of alphabetic knowledge that is activated when words are read."

"To summarize, readers learn to process spellings of words as phonemic maps that lay out elements of their pronunciations visually. Beginners become skilled at computing these mapping relations spontaneously when they read new words. This is the critical event for sight word learning. Grapheme-phoneme connections provide a powerful mnemonic system. They provide the glue that bonds letters in written words to their pronunciations in memory along with meanings. Once the alphabetic mapping system is known, readers can build a vocabulary of sight words easily." [14] [boldface mine]

Naturally, the above skills needed for OM take time to develop. And, at least initially, sight words accruing from OM build up slowly, word by word. Ehri describes 4 phases that students typically go through on their journey from immature to mature forms of reading and spelling. Take a look at how Ehri portrays these 4 phases in her most recent research paper:

"Ehri (2005) portrayed the development of decoding and sight word reading as a sequence of overlapping phases, each characterized by the predominant type of connection readers form to link spellings of words to their pronunciations in memory."

"Development begins with small graphophonemic units that later become consolidated into larger syllabic units. In the pre-alphabetic phase, nonphonological visual cues may be formed but are idiosyncratic and easily forgotten. Use of systematic alphabetic cues emerges in the partial alphabetic phase when readers form partial grapheme-phoneme connections, such as initial and final letters, to store words in memory. However, readers in this phase lack the ability to decode novel words."

"In the full alphabetic phase, knowledge of the major grapheme-phoneme relations and decoding skill are acquired and enable readers to form more complete grapheme-phoneme connections to fully bond spellings to pronunciations in memory. This makes word reading much more accurate. In the consolidated alphabetic phase, grapheme-phoneme subunits are consolidated into larger graphosyllabic and graphomorphemic units that readers can use to decode multisyllabic words and to form connections that secure the words in memory." [15] [boldface mine]

Note how she views these phases as applying not only to sight word development, but to decoding skill as well. Decoding, as we'll see, is the primary (though not the only) way orthographic mapping occurs.

Note, too, there is one non-phonetic, pre-alphabetic, initial phase, followed by 3 alphabetic phases: partial, full, and consolidated. Let's take a look at each of these phases in turn.

I won't spend much time here. Ehri herself describes this phase as the "default" phase of learning to read. It's the way children will attempt to "read" before they've had any competent instruction. Here are some examples:

A child "reads" the word TRASH when the word is affixed to a trash can, but can't read the word in isolation.

A child "reads" the word "McDonald's" if it's attached to golden arches, but can't read it if the arches are absent.

A child "reads" the word STOP but can do so only if it's embedded in a red octagon.

A child "reads" an entire favorite story - but does so by heart.

A child remembers the word SPOON as the word with 2 "eyes" in the middle, but then may "misread" words such as MOON, SOON, BROOM, GOOF, FOOD, and WOOD as the word SPOON.

A child "reads" a word by naming an accompanying picture on the page. For example, the word WHEELS might be depicted by a car, but then a child "misreads" WHEELS as CAR.

What's true about pre-alphabetic reading is that, however it's done, it makes no use of the sound value of any letters in the word's spelling.

"Because most written words do not contain easily remembered cues, children in this phase are essentially nonreaders. Of course, they can pretend read stories they have heard many times, and they can guess words from pictures. However, all of their feats of reading are performed by using cues that do not involve the alphabetic system." [16]

Let's move on to Ehri's 3 alphabetic phases. It's here that genuine reading begins to occur, and that genuine sight words begin to accrue.

"Segmentation training enabled students to function at the partial alphabetic phase in their word reading. In contrast, students who received no segmentation training showed little ability to read words on posttests and, hence, remained at the pre-alphabetic phase. These results support the claim that letter knowledge and phoneme segmentation skill are central in enabling readers to move from the pre-alphabetic phase to the partial alphabetic phase of word reading development." [17]

Remember how the pre-alphabetic child (above) might remember SPOON as the word with two "eyes"? In the partial phase, the scenario might look like this. The child comes across the word SPOON in a simple text. The child knows some letter-sound correspondences, including those for S and N. Let's say the child predicts the word SPOON successfully from context, or from a picture, or from the word's first and last letters. (Or, if all that fails, perhaps the teacher simply tells him the word.)

In any case, now the child has the pronunciation of SPOON in his head and the spelling of SPOON right in front of him. Will SPOON become a sight word for him? It might, but only if he has some basic segmentation skills. He needs to be capable of hearing the "sss" sound at the beginning of the word and the "nnn" sound at the end. If he can hear those two sounds, and make the connections between them and the letters S and N, SPOON can become an imperfect sight word for him.

Worse, if the child predicts the word incorrectly (and receives no correction) or if he does not have simple segmentation skill which allows him to hear /s/ and /n/ in the spoken word, he will have learned nothing in this encounter with the written word SPOON. Next time he sees it, he'll be starting from scratch. Ehri says it this way:

"Children progress to the partial alphabetic phase when they learn the names or sounds of alphabet letters and use these to remember how to read words. However, they form connections between only some of the letters and sounds in words, often only the first and final letter sounds, which are easier to detect, for example, the letters s and n to read SPOON...They may confuse similarly spelled words such as SPIN and SKIN having the same boundary letters. They are limited to forming partial connections because they are unable to segment the word's pronunciation into all of its phonemes. Also they lack full knowledge of the alphabetic system, especially vowels. Because of this, partial phase readers have much difficulty decoding unfamiliar words." [19]

It's easy for a child to get stuck in this partial alphabetic phase - even for years at a time. How? He can be in a reading program that doesn't teach all the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences in a systematic manner - especially those having to do with the 20 vowel sounds of English. He can be in a program that delays, teaches poorly, or never teaches, the strategy of transforming graphemes into phonemes, and then blending those phonemes to decode unknown words into complete pronunciations with recognizable meanings.

Such children are forever "predicting" what the word might be, based on partial alphabetic cues or context cues. And such word-guessing can quickly become an unbreakable habit. "Not only novice beginning readers but also older children with a reading disability qualify as partial alphabetic phase readers." [20] The relevant question here is: Do readers get stuck in the partial alphabetic phase due to poor instruction, and/or due to some congenital condition such as dyslexia? And, in either case, how do we help such children?

Ehri has no expectation for how long this partial alphabetic phase might last. "If beginners quickly acquire the skills necessary for the next phase, they may not exhibit partial alphabetic stage reading." In other words, "Instructional method influences how long beginners show evidence of the partial alphabetic stage." [21]

The full alphabetic phase emerges when beginners acquire more complete knowledge of the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the writing system, plus the crucial skill of decoding [22] [23] [24]. With these 2 skills firmly in place, complete connections can be made between all the letters seen in the written forms of words and all the phonemes detected in their pronunciations.

A distinguishing characteristic of full phase readers is "the ability to decode words never read before, by blending letters into a pronunciation. This knowledge enables full-phase readers to form fully connected sight words in memory." [25] Sixteen years later, Ehri says it this way: "Decoding letters into blended sounds helps readers figure out words they have not read before. Reading them a few times moves the words into memory so they can be read by sight." [26] [Note: Ehri states some version of this in nearly every one of her research papers. Decoding - blending all a word's sounds, left to right, into a complete pronunciation - leads to orthographic mapping, and to fully-connected sight words in memory.]

The advantages to students in this phase are enormous. Sight words are no longer "imperfect." SPOON won't be confused with SKIN, or SPIN, or any of the other similarly-spelled words listed above. That's because now, all 4 graphemes in SPOON (S, P, OO, N) have consciously been linked to the 4 phonemes which, when blended together, form the word SPOON.

Does segmenting also have a role in this full alphabetic phase? It does. In the previous phase, partially-connected (imperfect) sight words could be created only if the student had some segmentation skill. That's because decoding was not yet a possibility in the partial phase. The question here is this: Can a student segment her way into a fully-connected sight word instead of using decoding as just described?

She can. But if decoding is not used, then someone other than the student herself must pronounce the word (or she must correctly guess it). Assuming this is done, and assuming she has full segmenting ability (can detect all a word's phonemes) and has knowledge of the graphemes symbolizing these phonemes, she can then make the complete connections necessary for accurate sight word creation. The very act of seeing graphemes in a word's spelling helps her detect the separate phonemes in the word's pronunciation.

: In reading your various articles, my understanding of OM is that it is neither tied exclusively to decoding (blending/synthesis), nor to encoding (segmenting/analysis). Rather, OM is a connection-making process. The connections need to be at the phoneme/grapheme level (at least initially, prior to the consolidated phase) and the connections that need to be made explicit are between the graphemes seen in a printed word's spelling and the phonemes heard in that word's pronunciation.

: In the partial phase, Phase 2, decoding is not yet possible, so naturally, segmentation is the only way the partial connections can be made. The teacher says the word, and the student must have enough letter knowledge and phonemic awareness segmentation skill to make "some" salient connections - typically between the initial letter in the printed word and the initial phoneme heard.

: This is an improvement over Phase 1 but is still subject to all kinds of errors, chiefly because the connections are only partial. (A lot of words, for example, start with B, or start with B and end in T)

: When (and if) a student finally becomes capable of through-the-word decoding, Phase 3 begins to open up for him. Now, for the first time, complete "connections" can be explicitly examined by him - indeed, must be explicitly examined by him so that he can pronounce the word. In Phase 3, it seems to me - and in line with David Share's Self-Teaching Hypothesis - that blending/synthesis becomes the chief mechanism for OM, rather than the segmenting/analysis of the previous partial phase.

: Yes. When readers decode words on their own, this enables them to form connections and retain the spelling-pronunciation bonds in memory. But also if readers encounter a new word and someone reads it to them, or the context allows them to predict the word accurately, connections can be formed as well, provided students' grapheme-phoneme knowledge is activated and applied to that word. In our orthographic facilitation of vocabulary learning studies, we found that simply exposing students to the spellings of new words as they heard their pronunciations and meanings, without drawing attention to spellings, enhanced their ability to remember pronunciations when no spellings were present. Students recalled pronunciations much better in this condition than when they were not shown spellings as they studied the words. In the spelling exposure condition, decoding was not necessary because the words were pronounced as soon as they were seen. We argue that grapheme-phoneme connections were activated spontaneously when the words were heard and seen. In one study though, we found that having students actively decode the spellings produced greater memory for pronunciations than simple exposure to the words. So decoding enhances memory. [boldface mine]

Directly above, Ehri makes reference to "orthographic facilitation of vocabulary studies." In one such study [27], low SES urban first graders were compared to see how well they learned new vocabulary under 3 different conditions:

"In the decoding condition, students sounded out and blended spellings during study and feedback periods but not when memory for pronunciations and meanings was tested. In the exposure-only condition, spellings were shown, but no attention was drawn to them. In the no exposure condition, words were learned without spellings but were spoken extra times. Students practiced recalling words over several test trials with feedback. Results revealed that students who decoded spellings learned pronunciations and meanings better than students who were only exposed to spellings. Seeing spellings enhanced learning more than not seeing them."

"These findings support the theory that exposure to spellings activates grapheme-phoneme connections to better secure spellings to pronunciations along with meanings in memory. These connections are activated implicitly when spellings are simply exposed, but the connections are strengthened when spellings are explicitly decoded...Students should be shown spellings and should decode them." [28] [Boldface mine]

Decoding, not segmenting, is the key to building a large sight word vocabulary. Decoding, not segmenting, is the key to David Share's Self-Teaching Hypothesis. While it's true that either decoding or segmenting (in conjunction, of course, with letter-sound knowledge) can create a fully-connected sight word in the full alphabetic phase, only decoding is capable of creating the 50,000 sight word lexicon of the skilled reader.

The full alphabetic phase gradually (and automatically) morphs into the consolidated alphabetic phase as more and more fully-connected sight words are retained in memory.

As sight words accumulate for a given reader, letter patterns that recur in multiple words start to consolidate in memory. These letter strings represent the same phoneme blend when they're decoded. Soon, the reader begins to recognize them by sight. Though not words, these fragments become consolidated units in memory. Such units can be rimes (-EST, -ANK, -OAST, -UST), prefixes (ANTI-, PRE-, NON-, UN-), or suffixes (-ING, -MENT, -NESS, -TION).

Suppose the same student subsequently comes across the unknown word CHEST. Decoding will now happen faster because only 2 entities must be blended, /ch/+/est/, rather than four, /ch/+/e/+/s/+/t/. Quickly, CHEST becomes a new sight word for this student. The same thing will happen when PEST, NEST, REST, and ZEST are first encountered.

You can see how this consolidation process will allow sight words to start accumulating rapidly in this fourth and final phase. The student is now on his way to becoming a skilled reader - someone fully capable of building a 50,000 sight word mental dictionary by the time he's off to college.

Where to begin? Since this is already a lengthy blog, I will focus on just two areas.

Having read thus far, the reader can now perhaps better appreciate why trying to teach children to read via onset-rime before teaching them to analyze and map those rimes at the phoneme-grapheme level is not supported by reading science. Onset-rime involves reading words using larger, consolidated chunks of graphemes forming the rime unit, for example, -ENT in TENT, RENT, and SENT. It's a form of reading by analogy. It belongs in Ehri's fourth and final stage where rimes become "consolidated" after having been analyzed on the grapheme-phoneme level.

Nonetheless, in many Balanced Literacy classes, onset-rime is taught in the partial alphabetic phase, before decoding is even a possibility. How do educators suppose this can work? Let's look at an example of what would actually have to happen.

First, the child must somehow memorize a word (let's say it's TEACH) as an unanalyzed whole, that is, before any work is done at the grapheme-phoneme level. T is considered the onset; the vowels and everything following the vowels are the rime - in this case EACH. TEACH is now supposed to act as the "keyword" that will unlock the entire rhyming EACH family.

Suppose the child now comes across the unknown word BEACH. How is she to read it? She must recall the sight word TEACH, subtract the T sound (tuh?), replace it with a B sound (buh?) and read the new word. But how is she to recall TEACH? She doesn't (yet) know the sound of BEACH, so she can't recall TEACH by its rhyming relationship to BEACH. She must recall TEACH by noticing that the two words both end in the same letter sequence E-A-C-H. How likely is that to happen? Also, how likely is it that a student in the partial alphabetic stage will have the phonemic awareness skill, or the working memory capacity, to substitute a B sound for the T sound?

It gets worse. This 300 total covers only single-syllable words. Many more rimes exist only in multi-syllable words (e.g. ULT in ADULT, RESULT, and CONSULT; ECT in DEFECT, RESPECT, and SELECT).

Why do teachers attempt early onset-rime instruction? Many simply don't know better. They're unfamiliar with Ehri's research. Worse, their professors at whatever teacher college they attended were also unaware of Ehri. Many teachers genuinely believe that since children can hear and distinguish syllables easier than they can hear and distinguish phonemes, syllables (including rimes) should be taught prior to grapheme-phoneme decoding.

Portuguese is a more transparent language than English. Portuguese syllable structure is simpler than English syllable structure. There are fewer monosyllables in Portuguese, and the boundaries between syllables are clearer, so it is easier for beginners to detect the separate syllables in spoken words and map them onto spellings. Nonetheless, Ehri's most recent study showed that, even in Portuguese, "teaching students to decode using small grapheme-phoneme units was much more efficient than teaching students to decode using larger syllabic units." [30] In other words, "small grapheme-phoneme units emerge first and are needed to form larger syllabic units." [31]

Here's what Ehri thinks:

"It is important to note that sight word reading during the partial alphabetic phase is an imperfect process that occurs among beginners who lack full knowledge of the alphabetic system and phonemic segmentation skill. There are no expectations about how long this phase will last. If beginners quickly acquire the skills necessary for the next phase, they may not exhibit phonetic cue [partial stage] reading." [32]

Ehri calls attention to the fact that German-speaking Austrian children show little evidence of undergoing the partial alphabetic phase. She speculates:

"This may be the case because German is a transparent writing system, so decoding is relatively easy to learn. In addition, from Day 1 in school, Austrian children receive systematic phonics instruction that teaches them the alphabetic system." [33]

Ehri also notes that Portuguese-speaking children taught with a whole-word method did exhibit partial alphabetic reading, while those taught with a phonics method did not. The latter group started right in with decoding.

"Instructional method influences how long beginners show evidence of the partial alphabetic phase and how quickly they acquire use of full grapheme-phoneme connections." [34]

Referring to her own phase theory, Ehri says:

"We expected that teaching students in the pre-alphabetic phase to decode [simple] syllables by sounding out and blending grapheme-phoneme constituents would enable these students to read more like readers in the full alphabetic phase, whereas teaching students to decode whole syllables and single grapheme-phoneme relations would limit these students' movement to the partial alphabetic phase." [emphasis added] [35]

Ehri's expectations were confirmed in her recent instructional study comparing three ways Brazilian beginners are taught to read words. The three ways are: decoding at the grapheme-phoneme level, decoding at the level of whole syllables, and teaching grapheme-phoneme relations, but without decoding. Those taught how to decode at the grapheme-phoneme level far surpassed the other two groups:

"Present findings support these views. Students taught to use grapheme-phonemes to read CV syllables far outperformed the other two groups on posttests in decoding longer pseudowords, in remembering how to read a set of 12 longer words over several learning trials, and in recalling their spellings more accurately." [36]

So the partial alphabetic phase, according to Ehri, can be short-to-nonexistent, or it can be quite lengthy. The main determinant is "instructional method."

"Sight words" would be understood as words to be learned consciously through rote-memorization, rather than learned automatically through OM. Lists of such words would be given out to students and their families to be memorized.

"Look at the picture" would be viewed as a "strategy for word-solving."

Beginners would be expected to read whole words, whole syllables, and rimes before they acquired knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences and decoding skill.

Phonemic awareness training would be done without letters, even though both reading and spelling obviously involve letters.

Beginners would be encouraged to guess the identity and pronunciation of a word based on its context, position in the sentence, and/or its first letter. It would be called three-cueing.

Children would be provided with reading materials that have lots of words they can't possibly read. That way they could practice their three-cueing strategy.

Meaning, rather than the alphabetic code, would be emphasized at the start of instruction even though knowledge of that code forms the basis for extracting meaning from print.

"Discovery" would take precedence over explicit teaching when aspects of the code are finally taught.

In teaching the code, more emphasis would be placed on easier-to-learn consonant sounds than is placed on those 20 harder-to-learn vowel sounds, even though vowel sounds occur in every syllable.

How would Ehri evaluate such an instructional method? Well, as Chair of the Phonemic Awareness Subcommittee for the U.S. National Reading Panel, she produced a final report that said, no less than 15 times: phonemic awareness training should consist in blending and segmenting - and both should be done with letters.

"Our findings challenge instructional approaches claiming that beginners can learn to read whole words before they have acquired knowledge of grapheme-phoneme relations. Without this knowledge, students would remain in the pre-alphabetic phase. Our findings challenge the view that prereaders will move into reading through exposure to and practice in reading authentically written, meaningful storybooks without much attention paid to teaching them foundational skills. Without this, progress will be halting and limited. Students may not function beyond the partial alphabetic phase. Our findings challenge the strategy of teaching students that guessing words using syntactic and semantic cues is better than decoding words using graphic cues. Guessing does not build students' lexical memory to support word-reading accuracy and automaticity." [37]

What, then, would an instructional method look like if the goal was to minimize, or even eliminate, the time children spend as partial alphabetic readers? We can begin to answer this question using a simple process of elimination. The instructional method we seek would not, per Ehri, employ word-guessing. (Even Balanced Literacy guru Jennifer Serravallo recently came to this conclusion.) It would not, per Ehri, use early onset-rime or any other type of analogy phonics.

So the instructional method we're looking for - if our goal is to minimize time spent in the partial phase - can't include guessing from pictures, guessing from context, guessing from the first letter, early onset-rime, analogy phonics, or analytic phonics. What remains? I can think of only a single method: systematic synthetic phonics.

Taught using synthetic phonics, students waste no time on word-guessing, on rote-memorization of sight words, on phonemic awareness training without letters, or on discovery learning. Instead, they start learning letter-sound relationships, explicitly taught by a competent teacher, on Day 1. As soon as some (say, 7-10) of those relationships are mastered, students are taught how to decode words using those letters and sounds.

Segmentation is also taught in synthetic phonics, not so much for its use in the "imperfect" partial alphabetic stage, but for its use in spelling and, as Ehri points out, for its use in creating fully-connected sight words when the word is not decoded, but rather is pronounced for the student.

One of the prerequisites for OM to occur is practice. This, too, is an essential part of synthetic phonics - a method that fully embraces decodable readers. Here's Ehri: "Decodable books provide beginners with practice in applying the grapheme-phoneme relations that they have learned to decode words and to build their sight vocabularies." [39]

"The ability to decode new words marks entry into the full alphabetic phase. A synthetic procedure for decoding words is to say the phoneme corresponding to each grapheme and then blend them to pronounce the word. Learning this procedure is hindered when schwa vowels are added to stop consonants and have to be deleted during blending." [40]

(For more information on the schwa sound, see .) Here's an example of what Ehri is saying: To successfully read the word CAT, a student might attempt to blend "cuh" + "ah" + "tuh." But CAT is not a blend of these 3 sounds. The student must eliminate the "uh" part of both "cuh" and "tuh" in order to successfully decode CAT. Some students have difficulty doing this. So Ehri and a colleague, Selenid M. Gonzalez-Frey, conducted a study [41] to see if this difficulty might be overcome. Note this study is done with kindergartners (Year 1 of formal schooling in the US).

"We compared two methods of teaching decoding to kindergartners in the partial phase who knew letter sounds but could not decode nonwords. Students were taught to decode CVC nonwords containing continuant consonants, which allowed phonemes to be stretched and connected without interruption from schwa vowels ("sssaaannn"). Students in the connected condition were taught to stretch and pronounce phonemes without breaking the speech stream before blending. Students in the segmented condition were taught to stretch and say each phoneme but to break the speech stream between phonemes ("sss-aaa-nnn") before blending. Following learning to criterion, students completed a transfer test to decode 20 CVCs with stop consonants that are harder to blend because of intrusion from schwa vowels when stops are pronounced in isolation. Results showed that during training, kindergartners who received connected practice learned to decode the nonwords more quickly, and on the transfer test, they read nonwords with stops more accurately than the segmented group. An error analysis revealed that breaking between phonemes caused students in the segmented condition to forget initial phonemes during blending. These findings suggest how to teach decoding more effectively to help students move into the full alphabetic phase." [42] [Boldface mine.]

One country (so far) in the English-speaking world has formally adopted synthetic phonics as the way to teach beginners to read. That country is England. The decision was due to the 2006 which concluded:

"Because our writing system is alphabetic, beginner readers must be taught how the letters of the alphabet, singly or in combination, represent the sounds of spoken language (letter-sound correspondences) and how to blend (synthesize) the sounds to read words, and break up (segment) the sounds in words to spell. They must learn to process all the letters in words and 'read words in and out of text'. Phonic work should teach these skills and knowledge in a well defined and systematic sequence." [Paragraph 45]

"Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much strengthened by a synthetic approach, the key features of which are to teach beginner readers: * grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondences (the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence * to apply the highly important skill of blending (synthesizing) phonemes in order, all through a word to read it * to apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell * that blending and segmenting are reversible processes." [Paragraph 51]

I'll end this blog by asking Ehri to sum up her own long and successful career researching how children learn to read. I especially like this quote because it so clearly shows the centrality of decoding in Ehri's thinking.

"In sum, the theory and research presented in this article show that teaching students to decode unfamiliar words and enabling students to store spellings of familiar words bonded to their other identities in memory should be central goals of beginning reading instruction. Decoding is a means of getting spellings of words into memory so they can be read by sight. Being able to connect letters in spellings to sounds in pronunciations spontaneously when spellings of words are seen and heard also serves to retain words in memory. Both decoding and letter-sound mapping skills require knowledge of the alphabetic writing system. Gradual acquisition of this knowledge propels students through the alphabetic phases to become skilled readers." [43] [Boldface mine.]

Please note: Stephen Parker's FREE stand-alone phonics books for reading teachers and parents can be downloaded .

Dr. Linnea Ehri who read the initial drafts of this blog and offered many suggestions, all of which have been incorporated into this final draft.

Dr. Pamela Snow, friend and mentor these past 3 years. Without her, there would be no Parker Phonics. Dr. Snow also offered many helpful suggestions for this blog.

Sir Jim Rose, for his constant encouragement and for his assistance promoting this blog throughout his circles of influence - especially in England.

[2] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p170.

[5] Ehri, (1998) "Grapheme-Phoneme Knowledge," p14.

[6] Sargiani, R., Ehri, L.C., & Maluf, M.R. (in press). Teaching beginners to decode consonant-vowel syllables using grapheme-phoneme subunits facilitates reading and spelling compared to teaching whole syllable decoding. Reading Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.432 . p2-3.

[7] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p171.

[8] Ehri, L.C. (2020). The science of learning to read words: A case for systematic phonics instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), S45-S60. Special Issue: The Science of Reading: Supports, Critiques, and Questions . https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/rrq.334. p4 .

[9] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p2-3.

[10] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p10.

[11] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p7.

[12] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p3.

[13] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p19.

[14] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p172.

[15] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p3.

[16] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p173.

[17] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p10.

[18] Ehri, L.C. (2005). Development of sight word reading: Phases and findings. In M. Snowling & C. Hulme,(Eds.), The science of reading, a handbook(pp. 135-154). UK: Blackwell. p145.

[19] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p173.

[20] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p174.

[21] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p145.

[22] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p146.

[23] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p184.

[24] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p16.

[25] Ehri, (1998) "Grapheme-Phoneme Knowledge," p21.

[26] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p5.

[28] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p11.

[29] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p8.

[30] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p15.

[31] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p16.

[32] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p145.

[33] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p145-146.

[34] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p146.

[35] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p4.

[36] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p16.

[37] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p13.

[38] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p13.

[39] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p11.

[40] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p9.

[42] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p8.

[43] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p13-14.

With 160 published papers, Linnea Ehri has been one of the most influential and cited reading scientists in the past 40 years. One of 14 members of the U.S. National Reading Panel (1997-2000), she served as Chair of both the Phonemic Awareness and the Phonics subgroups of the Panel. (The full report of the Panel can be found .)

Ehri earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of California in Berkeley. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where she was a member of the faculty in Educational Psychology and in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Since the 1970s she has conducted scientific research on how children learn to read. Her findings have provided support for the theory described below. For a portrayal of the course of her research findings and their implications for instruction, see .

Ehri distinguishes 4 ways to read words:

"The first three ways help us read unfamiliar words. The fourth way explains how we read words we have read before. One way is by decoding, also called phonological recoding. We can either sound out and blend graphemes into phonemes, or we can work with larger chunks of letters to blend syllabic units into recognizable words. Another way is by analogizing. This involves using words we already know to read new words - for example, using the known word, bottle, to read throttle. Another way is by prediction. This involves using context and letter clues to guess unfamiliar words. The fourth way of reading words is by memory or sight. This applies to words we have read before. We can just look at the words and our brain recognizes them."[1] [boldface mine]

[: If you're unfamiliar with the terms "decode," "blend," "encode," "segment," "grapheme," or "phoneme," you can find easy-to-understand definitions . Understanding these terms is a necessity for reading this blog.]

"Given that there are multiple ways to read words, consider which way makes text reading most efficient. If readers know words by sight and can recognize them automatically as they read text, then word reading operates unconsciously. In contrast, each of the other ways of reading words requires conscious attention. If readers attempt to decode words, to analogize, or to predict words, their attention is shifted from the text to the word itself to identify it, and this disrupts comprehension, at least momentarily. It is clear that being able to read words automatically from memory is the most efficient, unobtrusive way to read words in text. Hence, building a sight vocabulary is essential for achieving text-reading skill." [2]

If you're a skilled reader, you'll likely read every word in this blog effortlessly - by sight. A mere glimpse of each word will immediately link to that word's pronunciation and meaning. The brain's ability to do this is astonishing. How does it happen?

"Consider the feat that skilled readers perform when they read words by sight. They are able to recognize in an instant any one of many thousands of words. They recognize one unique word and bypass many other similarly spelled words. For example, consider all the words that must be overlooked to read the word "stick" accurately: not only stink, slick, and slink, which have similar shapes as well as letters, but also sting, sling, string, as well as sick, sing, and sink. Moreover, skilled readers can remember how to read new sight words with very little practice. Memorizing arbitrary associations between the shapes and meanings of words cannot explain how skilled readers do what they do. Sight word reading must involve remembering letters in the words. These alone are the distinctive cues that make one word different from all the others." [3]

But without connecting that specific sequence of letters to something already in the brain, sight word learning would be a difficult and onerous task, something akin to memorizing sequences of arbitrary digits, such as phone numbers. Here's where orthographic mapping comes into play.

Orthographic Mapping (hereafter: OM) might be an unknown term for some readers. The prefix ortho means "correct," while graphy has to do with writing. So a word is orthographic if it is spelled or written according to accepted convention ( Cambridge Dictionary). The word "mapping" implies a word's spelling is connected or associated with something else - and that is indeed the case.

"Words that have become sight words are read from memory. Sight of the word immediately activates both pronunciation and meaning. To build sight words, OM is required. Readers must form connections between spellings and pronunciations of specific words by applying knowledge of the general writing system. When readers see a new word, and say or hear its pronunciation, its spelling becomes mapped onto its pronunciation and meaning. It's the connections that serve to 'glue' spelling to pronunciations in memory." [4]

"It is in performing this grapheme-phoneme analysis for individual words that the spellings of words penetrate and become attached to readers' knowledge of spoken words in a way that links written language to the central mechanisms [in the brain] governing spoken language." [5]

In her recent study showing how grapheme-phoneme analysis is critical even for a transparent language (Portuguese), Ehri sums up the situation for learning to read English this way. Note the emphasis on decoding:

"Learning to decode involves transforming graphemes into phonemes and blending them to pronounce words with recognizable meanings (Beck, 2006). Share (2008b) described decoding as a self-teaching mechanism that readers can apply to unlock the identities of unfamiliar words as they are reading text. Ehri (1992, 1998, 2014) proposed a connectionist theory and presented evidence to show how decoding enables readers to store written words in memory so that the words can be read by sight. When readers apply their grapheme-phoneme knowledge to decode new words, connections are formed between graphemes in written words and phonemes in spoken words. This bonds the spellings of those words to their pronunciations and meanings and stores all of these identities together as lexical units in memory. Subsequently, when these words are seen, readers can read the words as single units from memory automatically by sight. Decoding letter by letter is no longer needed to read the words." [boldface mine] [6]

Examples given by Ehri are the words ISLAND and SWORD where only the S and W, respectively, remain unsecured [7]. Elsewhere [8], Ehri suggests that assigning spelling pronunciations to words with silent letters or unstressed vowels can help to connect and secure these letters in memory, for example, pronouncing LISTEN as "lis - ten" rather than "lis - in," or CHOCOLATE as "choc - o - late" rather than "choc - lut."

Before a child ever begins the process of learning how to read, thousands of what Ehri calls amalgams already exist in the child's memory - one amalgam for every word in the child's spoken or listening vocabulary. Each amalgam contains, at a minimum, two identities: the word's pronunciation and the word's (semantic) meaning. Some amalgams may already contain morphological (word roots and affixes) and syntactic (grammatical function in sentences) identities as well. OM can be viewed as a process whereby written words (spellings) are added to the amalgams already in memory.

"In order for written words to be added to the amalgams in memory, readers must bond spellings to pronunciations by applying their knowledge of letter-sound relations to connect letter units to sound units within specific words...The first few times a student reads a word, these connections are formed and stored in memory. Subsequently, when the word is seen, these connections are activated in memory to read the word. Once words' identities are amalgamated in memory, readers can read them as whole units quickly and automatically with all of their identities activated. When practiced in this way, words become recognized from memory by sight. This supplants the need for guessing or decoding words." [9]

Sight words, properly learned via OM, penetrate the brain's language system and provide a visual, but now alphabetic, representation of speech phonemes:

"According to amalgamation theory, when students learn to read and spell words, a visual alphabetic representational system for speech is acquired and used to store words in memory. Letters in spellings come to penetrate and represent phonemes in pronunciations in the brain." [10]

Now let's take a look at the skills necessary for specific spellings to be added to the amalgams already in memory. In other words, let's look at what skills are needed for OM to take place.

1. Letter recognition (shapes, names, upper versus lower case).

2. Knowledge of letter-sound relationships, not only for the 24 consonant sounds of English, but also for the 20 vowel sounds. In her research, Ehri refers to these relationships as "alphabetic knowledge," "grapheme-phoneme correspondences," or "grapheme-phoneme relations."

3. Two specific phonemic awareness skills needed for decoding and spelling words: blending separate phonemes to form whole spoken words, and segmenting whole spoken words into constituent phonemes. Decoding requires blending the sounds of letters to read words. Encoding requires segmenting the phonemes in spoken words to spell them. [ Note: For Ehri, the ability to segment spoken words into phonemes is facilitated by helping beginners detect the sequence of mouth positions and movements involved in producing those phonemes, for example, segmenting "bat" by feeling the lips closed for /b/, then open for the vowel, then the tongue tapping the roof of the mouth for /t/.]

4. Repeated practice using decoding and encoding skills to read and spell words.

Here's Ehri in her own words. Note her reference to David Share, one of Ehri's peers. (The two have known each other throughout their careers and have communicated on a regular basis.) Share would certainly agree with the above 4 prerequisites. (See my blog on his Self-Teaching Hypothesis .)

"To form connections and retain words in memory, readers need some requisite abilities. They must possess phonemic awareness, particularly segmentation and blending. They must know the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the writing system...Then they need to be able to read unfamiliar words on their own by applying a decoding, analogy, or prediction strategy. Application of these strategies activates orthographic mapping to retain the words' spellings, pronunciations, and meanings in memory. David Share referred to this as a self-teaching mechanism. With repeated readings that activate orthographic mapping, written words are retained in memory to support reading and spelling." [11] [boldface mine]

Six years later, Ehri says it this way:

"Acquisition of sight word learning ability requires that students learn regularities of the writing system beginning with grapheme-phoneme relations, phoneme segmentation, and decoding skill, so graphemes become connected to phonemes within spellings of specific words in memory." [12]

Ehri specifies the type of instruction necessary to ensure that the skills needed for OM are explicitly taught. Notice the phrase "produced or heard." The student himself can produce the word, by decoding it, or the word can be produced for him, in which case he will need segmentation skills.

"Use of alphabetic [letter-sound] knowledge to connect spellings to pronunciations and retain sight words in memory is an internal process that is activated spontaneously when words are seen and their pronunciations are produced or heard...What sort of instruction produces spontaneous OM? First, it entails teaching students the knowledge and skills that enable connections to be activated when words are seen and read. This includes teaching the writing system, beginning with grapheme-phoneme relations, teaching phonemic segmentation, and teaching a decoding strategy for reading novel words. Second, it entails having students practice using these skills to read and spell words." [13]

"Share (2004) reported that even one exposure to words enabled Israeli third graders to retain information about the spellings of specific words in memory, and this memory persisted a month later. Sight word learning this rapid and lasting is possible only because readers possess a powerful mnemonic system in the form of alphabetic knowledge that is activated when words are read."

"To summarize, readers learn to process spellings of words as phonemic maps that lay out elements of their pronunciations visually. Beginners become skilled at computing these mapping relations spontaneously when they read new words. This is the critical event for sight word learning. Grapheme-phoneme connections provide a powerful mnemonic system. They provide the glue that bonds letters in written words to their pronunciations in memory along with meanings. Once the alphabetic mapping system is known, readers can build a vocabulary of sight words easily." [14] [boldface mine]

Naturally, the above skills needed for OM take time to develop. And, at least initially, sight words accruing from OM build up slowly, word by word. Ehri describes 4 phases that students typically go through on their journey from immature to mature forms of reading and spelling. Take a look at how Ehri portrays these 4 phases in her most recent research paper:

"Ehri (2005) portrayed the development of decoding and sight word reading as a sequence of overlapping phases, each characterized by the predominant type of connection readers form to link spellings of words to their pronunciations in memory."

"Development begins with small graphophonemic units that later become consolidated into larger syllabic units. In the pre-alphabetic phase, nonphonological visual cues may be formed but are idiosyncratic and easily forgotten. Use of systematic alphabetic cues emerges in the partial alphabetic phase when readers form partial grapheme-phoneme connections, such as initial and final letters, to store words in memory. However, readers in this phase lack the ability to decode novel words."

"In the full alphabetic phase, knowledge of the major grapheme-phoneme relations and decoding skill are acquired and enable readers to form more complete grapheme-phoneme connections to fully bond spellings to pronunciations in memory. This makes word reading much more accurate. In the consolidated alphabetic phase, grapheme-phoneme subunits are consolidated into larger graphosyllabic and graphomorphemic units that readers can use to decode multisyllabic words and to form connections that secure the words in memory." [15] [boldface mine]

Note how she views these phases as applying not only to sight word development, but to decoding skill as well. Decoding, as we'll see, is the primary (though not the only) way orthographic mapping occurs.

Note, too, there is one non-phonetic, pre-alphabetic, initial phase, followed by 3 alphabetic phases: partial, full, and consolidated. Let's take a look at each of these phases in turn.

I won't spend much time here. Ehri herself describes this phase as the "default" phase of learning to read. It's the way children will attempt to "read" before they've had any competent instruction. Here are some examples:

A child "reads" the word TRASH when the word is affixed to a trash can, but can't read the word in isolation.

A child "reads" the word "McDonald's" if it's attached to golden arches, but can't read it if the arches are absent.

A child "reads" the word STOP but can do so only if it's embedded in a red octagon.

A child "reads" an entire favorite story - but does so by heart.

A child remembers the word SPOON as the word with 2 "eyes" in the middle, but then may "misread" words such as MOON, SOON, BROOM, GOOF, FOOD, and WOOD as the word SPOON.

A child "reads" a word by naming an accompanying picture on the page. For example, the word WHEELS might be depicted by a car, but then a child "misreads" WHEELS as CAR.

What's true about pre-alphabetic reading is that, however it's done, it makes no use of the sound value of any letters in the word's spelling.

"Because most written words do not contain easily remembered cues, children in this phase are essentially nonreaders. Of course, they can pretend read stories they have heard many times, and they can guess words from pictures. However, all of their feats of reading are performed by using cues that do not involve the alphabetic system." [16]

Let's move on to Ehri's 3 alphabetic phases. It's here that genuine reading begins to occur, and that genuine sight words begin to accrue.

"Segmentation training enabled students to function at the partial alphabetic phase in their word reading. In contrast, students who received no segmentation training showed little ability to read words on posttests and, hence, remained at the pre-alphabetic phase. These results support the claim that letter knowledge and phoneme segmentation skill are central in enabling readers to move from the pre-alphabetic phase to the partial alphabetic phase of word reading development." [17]

Remember how the pre-alphabetic child (above) might remember SPOON as the word with two "eyes"? In the partial phase, the scenario might look like this. The child comes across the word SPOON in a simple text. The child knows some letter-sound correspondences, including those for S and N. Let's say the child predicts the word SPOON successfully from context, or from a picture, or from the word's first and last letters. (Or, if all that fails, perhaps the teacher simply tells him the word.)

In any case, now the child has the pronunciation of SPOON in his head and the spelling of SPOON right in front of him. Will SPOON become a sight word for him? It might, but only if he has some basic segmentation skills. He needs to be capable of hearing the "sss" sound at the beginning of the word and the "nnn" sound at the end. If he can hear those two sounds, and make the connections between them and the letters S and N, SPOON can become an imperfect sight word for him.

Worse, if the child predicts the word incorrectly (and receives no correction) or if he does not have simple segmentation skill which allows him to hear /s/ and /n/ in the spoken word, he will have learned nothing in this encounter with the written word SPOON. Next time he sees it, he'll be starting from scratch. Ehri says it this way:

"Children progress to the partial alphabetic phase when they learn the names or sounds of alphabet letters and use these to remember how to read words. However, they form connections between only some of the letters and sounds in words, often only the first and final letter sounds, which are easier to detect, for example, the letters s and n to read SPOON...They may confuse similarly spelled words such as SPIN and SKIN having the same boundary letters. They are limited to forming partial connections because they are unable to segment the word's pronunciation into all of its phonemes. Also they lack full knowledge of the alphabetic system, especially vowels. Because of this, partial phase readers have much difficulty decoding unfamiliar words." [19]

It's easy for a child to get stuck in this partial alphabetic phase - even for years at a time. How? He can be in a reading program that doesn't teach all the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences in a systematic manner - especially those having to do with the 20 vowel sounds of English. He can be in a program that delays, teaches poorly, or never teaches, the strategy of transforming graphemes into phonemes, and then blending those phonemes to decode unknown words into complete pronunciations with recognizable meanings.

Such children are forever "predicting" what the word might be, based on partial alphabetic cues or context cues. And such word-guessing can quickly become an unbreakable habit. "Not only novice beginning readers but also older children with a reading disability qualify as partial alphabetic phase readers." [20] The relevant question here is: Do readers get stuck in the partial alphabetic phase due to poor instruction, and/or due to some congenital condition such as dyslexia? And, in either case, how do we help such children?

Ehri has no expectation for how long this partial alphabetic phase might last. "If beginners quickly acquire the skills necessary for the next phase, they may not exhibit partial alphabetic stage reading." In other words, "Instructional method influences how long beginners show evidence of the partial alphabetic stage." [21]

The full alphabetic phase emerges when beginners acquire more complete knowledge of the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the writing system, plus the crucial skill of decoding [22] [23] [24]. With these 2 skills firmly in place, complete connections can be made between all the letters seen in the written forms of words and all the phonemes detected in their pronunciations.

A distinguishing characteristic of full phase readers is "the ability to decode words never read before, by blending letters into a pronunciation. This knowledge enables full-phase readers to form fully connected sight words in memory." [25] Sixteen years later, Ehri says it this way: "Decoding letters into blended sounds helps readers figure out words they have not read before. Reading them a few times moves the words into memory so they can be read by sight." [26] [Note: Ehri states some version of this in nearly every one of her research papers. Decoding - blending all a word's sounds, left to right, into a complete pronunciation - leads to orthographic mapping, and to fully-connected sight words in memory.]

The advantages to students in this phase are enormous. Sight words are no longer "imperfect." SPOON won't be confused with SKIN, or SPIN, or any of the other similarly-spelled words listed above. That's because now, all 4 graphemes in SPOON (S, P, OO, N) have consciously been linked to the 4 phonemes which, when blended together, form the word SPOON.

Does segmenting also have a role in this full alphabetic phase? It does. In the previous phase, partially-connected (imperfect) sight words could be created only if the student had some segmentation skill. That's because decoding was not yet a possibility in the partial phase. The question here is this: Can a student segment her way into a fully-connected sight word instead of using decoding as just described?

She can. But if decoding is not used, then someone other than the student herself must pronounce the word (or she must correctly guess it). Assuming this is done, and assuming she has full segmenting ability (can detect all a word's phonemes) and has knowledge of the graphemes symbolizing these phonemes, she can then make the complete connections necessary for accurate sight word creation. The very act of seeing graphemes in a word's spelling helps her detect the separate phonemes in the word's pronunciation.

: In reading your various articles, my understanding of OM is that it is neither tied exclusively to decoding (blending/synthesis), nor to encoding (segmenting/analysis). Rather, OM is a connection-making process. The connections need to be at the phoneme/grapheme level (at least initially, prior to the consolidated phase) and the connections that need to be made explicit are between the graphemes seen in a printed word's spelling and the phonemes heard in that word's pronunciation.

: In the partial phase, Phase 2, decoding is not yet possible, so naturally, segmentation is the only way the partial connections can be made. The teacher says the word, and the student must have enough letter knowledge and phonemic awareness segmentation skill to make "some" salient connections - typically between the initial letter in the printed word and the initial phoneme heard.

: This is an improvement over Phase 1 but is still subject to all kinds of errors, chiefly because the connections are only partial. (A lot of words, for example, start with B, or start with B and end in T)

: When (and if) a student finally becomes capable of through-the-word decoding, Phase 3 begins to open up for him. Now, for the first time, complete "connections" can be explicitly examined by him - indeed, must be explicitly examined by him so that he can pronounce the word. In Phase 3, it seems to me - and in line with David Share's Self-Teaching Hypothesis - that blending/synthesis becomes the chief mechanism for OM, rather than the segmenting/analysis of the previous partial phase.

: Yes. When readers decode words on their own, this enables them to form connections and retain the spelling-pronunciation bonds in memory. But also if readers encounter a new word and someone reads it to them, or the context allows them to predict the word accurately, connections can be formed as well, provided students' grapheme-phoneme knowledge is activated and applied to that word. In our orthographic facilitation of vocabulary learning studies, we found that simply exposing students to the spellings of new words as they heard their pronunciations and meanings, without drawing attention to spellings, enhanced their ability to remember pronunciations when no spellings were present. Students recalled pronunciations much better in this condition than when they were not shown spellings as they studied the words. In the spelling exposure condition, decoding was not necessary because the words were pronounced as soon as they were seen. We argue that grapheme-phoneme connections were activated spontaneously when the words were heard and seen. In one study though, we found that having students actively decode the spellings produced greater memory for pronunciations than simple exposure to the words. So decoding enhances memory. [boldface mine]

Directly above, Ehri makes reference to "orthographic facilitation of vocabulary studies." In one such study [27], low SES urban first graders were compared to see how well they learned new vocabulary under 3 different conditions:

"In the decoding condition, students sounded out and blended spellings during study and feedback periods but not when memory for pronunciations and meanings was tested. In the exposure-only condition, spellings were shown, but no attention was drawn to them. In the no exposure condition, words were learned without spellings but were spoken extra times. Students practiced recalling words over several test trials with feedback. Results revealed that students who decoded spellings learned pronunciations and meanings better than students who were only exposed to spellings. Seeing spellings enhanced learning more than not seeing them."

"These findings support the theory that exposure to spellings activates grapheme-phoneme connections to better secure spellings to pronunciations along with meanings in memory. These connections are activated implicitly when spellings are simply exposed, but the connections are strengthened when spellings are explicitly decoded...Students should be shown spellings and should decode them." [28] [Boldface mine]

Decoding, not segmenting, is the key to building a large sight word vocabulary. Decoding, not segmenting, is the key to David Share's Self-Teaching Hypothesis. While it's true that either decoding or segmenting (in conjunction, of course, with letter-sound knowledge) can create a fully-connected sight word in the full alphabetic phase, only decoding is capable of creating the 50,000 sight word lexicon of the skilled reader.

The full alphabetic phase gradually (and automatically) morphs into the consolidated alphabetic phase as more and more fully-connected sight words are retained in memory.

As sight words accumulate for a given reader, letter patterns that recur in multiple words start to consolidate in memory. These letter strings represent the same phoneme blend when they're decoded. Soon, the reader begins to recognize them by sight. Though not words, these fragments become consolidated units in memory. Such units can be rimes (-EST, -ANK, -OAST, -UST), prefixes (ANTI-, PRE-, NON-, UN-), or suffixes (-ING, -MENT, -NESS, -TION).

Suppose the same student subsequently comes across the unknown word CHEST. Decoding will now happen faster because only 2 entities must be blended, /ch/+/est/, rather than four, /ch/+/e/+/s/+/t/. Quickly, CHEST becomes a new sight word for this student. The same thing will happen when PEST, NEST, REST, and ZEST are first encountered.

You can see how this consolidation process will allow sight words to start accumulating rapidly in this fourth and final phase. The student is now on his way to becoming a skilled reader - someone fully capable of building a 50,000 sight word mental dictionary by the time he's off to college.

Where to begin? Since this is already a lengthy blog, I will focus on just two areas.

Having read thus far, the reader can now perhaps better appreciate why trying to teach children to read via onset-rime before teaching them to analyze and map those rimes at the phoneme-grapheme level is not supported by reading science. Onset-rime involves reading words using larger, consolidated chunks of graphemes forming the rime unit, for example, -ENT in TENT, RENT, and SENT. It's a form of reading by analogy. It belongs in Ehri's fourth and final stage where rimes become "consolidated" after having been analyzed on the grapheme-phoneme level.

Nonetheless, in many Balanced Literacy classes, onset-rime is taught in the partial alphabetic phase, before decoding is even a possibility. How do educators suppose this can work? Let's look at an example of what would actually have to happen.

First, the child must somehow memorize a word (let's say it's TEACH) as an unanalyzed whole, that is, before any work is done at the grapheme-phoneme level. T is considered the onset; the vowels and everything following the vowels are the rime - in this case EACH. TEACH is now supposed to act as the "keyword" that will unlock the entire rhyming EACH family.

Suppose the child now comes across the unknown word BEACH. How is she to read it? She must recall the sight word TEACH, subtract the T sound (tuh?), replace it with a B sound (buh?) and read the new word. But how is she to recall TEACH? She doesn't (yet) know the sound of BEACH, so she can't recall TEACH by its rhyming relationship to BEACH. She must recall TEACH by noticing that the two words both end in the same letter sequence E-A-C-H. How likely is that to happen? Also, how likely is it that a student in the partial alphabetic stage will have the phonemic awareness skill, or the working memory capacity, to substitute a B sound for the T sound?

It gets worse. This 300 total covers only single-syllable words. Many more rimes exist only in multi-syllable words (e.g. ULT in ADULT, RESULT, and CONSULT; ECT in DEFECT, RESPECT, and SELECT).

Why do teachers attempt early onset-rime instruction? Many simply don't know better. They're unfamiliar with Ehri's research. Worse, their professors at whatever teacher college they attended were also unaware of Ehri. Many teachers genuinely believe that since children can hear and distinguish syllables easier than they can hear and distinguish phonemes, syllables (including rimes) should be taught prior to grapheme-phoneme decoding.

Portuguese is a more transparent language than English. Portuguese syllable structure is simpler than English syllable structure. There are fewer monosyllables in Portuguese, and the boundaries between syllables are clearer, so it is easier for beginners to detect the separate syllables in spoken words and map them onto spellings. Nonetheless, Ehri's most recent study showed that, even in Portuguese, "teaching students to decode using small grapheme-phoneme units was much more efficient than teaching students to decode using larger syllabic units." [30] In other words, "small grapheme-phoneme units emerge first and are needed to form larger syllabic units." [31]

Here's what Ehri thinks:

"It is important to note that sight word reading during the partial alphabetic phase is an imperfect process that occurs among beginners who lack full knowledge of the alphabetic system and phonemic segmentation skill. There are no expectations about how long this phase will last. If beginners quickly acquire the skills necessary for the next phase, they may not exhibit phonetic cue [partial stage] reading." [32]

Ehri calls attention to the fact that German-speaking Austrian children show little evidence of undergoing the partial alphabetic phase. She speculates:

"This may be the case because German is a transparent writing system, so decoding is relatively easy to learn. In addition, from Day 1 in school, Austrian children receive systematic phonics instruction that teaches them the alphabetic system." [33]

Ehri also notes that Portuguese-speaking children taught with a whole-word method did exhibit partial alphabetic reading, while those taught with a phonics method did not. The latter group started right in with decoding.

"Instructional method influences how long beginners show evidence of the partial alphabetic phase and how quickly they acquire use of full grapheme-phoneme connections." [34]

Referring to her own phase theory, Ehri says:

"We expected that teaching students in the pre-alphabetic phase to decode [simple] syllables by sounding out and blending grapheme-phoneme constituents would enable these students to read more like readers in the full alphabetic phase, whereas teaching students to decode whole syllables and single grapheme-phoneme relations would limit these students' movement to the partial alphabetic phase." [emphasis added] [35]

Ehri's expectations were confirmed in her recent instructional study comparing three ways Brazilian beginners are taught to read words. The three ways are: decoding at the grapheme-phoneme level, decoding at the level of whole syllables, and teaching grapheme-phoneme relations, but without decoding. Those taught how to decode at the grapheme-phoneme level far surpassed the other two groups:

"Present findings support these views. Students taught to use grapheme-phonemes to read CV syllables far outperformed the other two groups on posttests in decoding longer pseudowords, in remembering how to read a set of 12 longer words over several learning trials, and in recalling their spellings more accurately." [36]

So the partial alphabetic phase, according to Ehri, can be short-to-nonexistent, or it can be quite lengthy. The main determinant is "instructional method."

"Sight words" would be understood as words to be learned consciously through rote-memorization, rather than learned automatically through OM. Lists of such words would be given out to students and their families to be memorized.

"Look at the picture" would be viewed as a "strategy for word-solving."

Beginners would be expected to read whole words, whole syllables, and rimes before they acquired knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences and decoding skill.

Phonemic awareness training would be done without letters, even though both reading and spelling obviously involve letters.

Beginners would be encouraged to guess the identity and pronunciation of a word based on its context, position in the sentence, and/or its first letter. It would be called three-cueing.

Children would be provided with reading materials that have lots of words they can't possibly read. That way they could practice their three-cueing strategy.

Meaning, rather than the alphabetic code, would be emphasized at the start of instruction even though knowledge of that code forms the basis for extracting meaning from print.

"Discovery" would take precedence over explicit teaching when aspects of the code are finally taught.

In teaching the code, more emphasis would be placed on easier-to-learn consonant sounds than is placed on those 20 harder-to-learn vowel sounds, even though vowel sounds occur in every syllable.

How would Ehri evaluate such an instructional method? Well, as Chair of the Phonemic Awareness Subcommittee for the U.S. National Reading Panel, she produced a final report that said, no less than 15 times: phonemic awareness training should consist in blending and segmenting - and both should be done with letters.

"Our findings challenge instructional approaches claiming that beginners can learn to read whole words before they have acquired knowledge of grapheme-phoneme relations. Without this knowledge, students would remain in the pre-alphabetic phase. Our findings challenge the view that prereaders will move into reading through exposure to and practice in reading authentically written, meaningful storybooks without much attention paid to teaching them foundational skills. Without this, progress will be halting and limited. Students may not function beyond the partial alphabetic phase. Our findings challenge the strategy of teaching students that guessing words using syntactic and semantic cues is better than decoding words using graphic cues. Guessing does not build students' lexical memory to support word-reading accuracy and automaticity." [37]

What, then, would an instructional method look like if the goal was to minimize, or even eliminate, the time children spend as partial alphabetic readers? We can begin to answer this question using a simple process of elimination. The instructional method we seek would not, per Ehri, employ word-guessing. (Even Balanced Literacy guru Jennifer Serravallo recently came to this conclusion.) It would not, per Ehri, use early onset-rime or any other type of analogy phonics.

So the instructional method we're looking for - if our goal is to minimize time spent in the partial phase - can't include guessing from pictures, guessing from context, guessing from the first letter, early onset-rime, analogy phonics, or analytic phonics. What remains? I can think of only a single method: systematic synthetic phonics.

Taught using synthetic phonics, students waste no time on word-guessing, on rote-memorization of sight words, on phonemic awareness training without letters, or on discovery learning. Instead, they start learning letter-sound relationships, explicitly taught by a competent teacher, on Day 1. As soon as some (say, 7-10) of those relationships are mastered, students are taught how to decode words using those letters and sounds.

Segmentation is also taught in synthetic phonics, not so much for its use in the "imperfect" partial alphabetic stage, but for its use in spelling and, as Ehri points out, for its use in creating fully-connected sight words when the word is not decoded, but rather is pronounced for the student.

One of the prerequisites for OM to occur is practice. This, too, is an essential part of synthetic phonics - a method that fully embraces decodable readers. Here's Ehri: "Decodable books provide beginners with practice in applying the grapheme-phoneme relations that they have learned to decode words and to build their sight vocabularies." [39]

"The ability to decode new words marks entry into the full alphabetic phase. A synthetic procedure for decoding words is to say the phoneme corresponding to each grapheme and then blend them to pronounce the word. Learning this procedure is hindered when schwa vowels are added to stop consonants and have to be deleted during blending." [40]

(For more information on the schwa sound, see .) Here's an example of what Ehri is saying: To successfully read the word CAT, a student might attempt to blend "cuh" + "ah" + "tuh." But CAT is not a blend of these 3 sounds. The student must eliminate the "uh" part of both "cuh" and "tuh" in order to successfully decode CAT. Some students have difficulty doing this. So Ehri and a colleague, Selenid M. Gonzalez-Frey, conducted a study [41] to see if this difficulty might be overcome. Note this study is done with kindergartners (Year 1 of formal schooling in the US).

"We compared two methods of teaching decoding to kindergartners in the partial phase who knew letter sounds but could not decode nonwords. Students were taught to decode CVC nonwords containing continuant consonants, which allowed phonemes to be stretched and connected without interruption from schwa vowels ("sssaaannn"). Students in the connected condition were taught to stretch and pronounce phonemes without breaking the speech stream before blending. Students in the segmented condition were taught to stretch and say each phoneme but to break the speech stream between phonemes ("sss-aaa-nnn") before blending. Following learning to criterion, students completed a transfer test to decode 20 CVCs with stop consonants that are harder to blend because of intrusion from schwa vowels when stops are pronounced in isolation. Results showed that during training, kindergartners who received connected practice learned to decode the nonwords more quickly, and on the transfer test, they read nonwords with stops more accurately than the segmented group. An error analysis revealed that breaking between phonemes caused students in the segmented condition to forget initial phonemes during blending. These findings suggest how to teach decoding more effectively to help students move into the full alphabetic phase." [42] [Boldface mine.]

One country (so far) in the English-speaking world has formally adopted synthetic phonics as the way to teach beginners to read. That country is England. The decision was due to the 2006 which concluded:

"Because our writing system is alphabetic, beginner readers must be taught how the letters of the alphabet, singly or in combination, represent the sounds of spoken language (letter-sound correspondences) and how to blend (synthesize) the sounds to read words, and break up (segment) the sounds in words to spell. They must learn to process all the letters in words and 'read words in and out of text'. Phonic work should teach these skills and knowledge in a well defined and systematic sequence." [Paragraph 45]

"Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much strengthened by a synthetic approach, the key features of which are to teach beginner readers: * grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) correspondences (the alphabetic principle) in a clearly defined, incremental sequence * to apply the highly important skill of blending (synthesizing) phonemes in order, all through a word to read it * to apply the skills of segmenting words into their constituent phonemes to spell * that blending and segmenting are reversible processes." [Paragraph 51]

I'll end this blog by asking Ehri to sum up her own long and successful career researching how children learn to read. I especially like this quote because it so clearly shows the centrality of decoding in Ehri's thinking.

"In sum, the theory and research presented in this article show that teaching students to decode unfamiliar words and enabling students to store spellings of familiar words bonded to their other identities in memory should be central goals of beginning reading instruction. Decoding is a means of getting spellings of words into memory so they can be read by sight. Being able to connect letters in spellings to sounds in pronunciations spontaneously when spellings of words are seen and heard also serves to retain words in memory. Both decoding and letter-sound mapping skills require knowledge of the alphabetic writing system. Gradual acquisition of this knowledge propels students through the alphabetic phases to become skilled readers." [43] [Boldface mine.]

Please note: Stephen Parker's FREE stand-alone phonics books for reading teachers and parents can be downloaded .

Dr. Linnea Ehri who read the initial drafts of this blog and offered many suggestions, all of which have been incorporated into this final draft.

Dr. Pamela Snow, friend and mentor these past 3 years. Without her, there would be no Parker Phonics. Dr. Snow also offered many helpful suggestions for this blog.

Sir Jim Rose, for his constant encouragement and for his assistance promoting this blog throughout his circles of influence - especially in England.

[2] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p170.

[5] Ehri, (1998) "Grapheme-Phoneme Knowledge," p14.

[6] Sargiani, R., Ehri, L.C., & Maluf, M.R. (in press). Teaching beginners to decode consonant-vowel syllables using grapheme-phoneme subunits facilitates reading and spelling compared to teaching whole syllable decoding. Reading Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.432 . p2-3.

[7] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p171.

[8] Ehri, L.C. (2020). The science of learning to read words: A case for systematic phonics instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), S45-S60. Special Issue: The Science of Reading: Supports, Critiques, and Questions . https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/rrq.334. p4 .

[9] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p2-3.

[10] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p10.

[11] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p7.

[12] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p3.

[13] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p19.

[14] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p172.

[15] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p3.

[16] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p173.

[17] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p10.

[18] Ehri, L.C. (2005). Development of sight word reading: Phases and findings. In M. Snowling & C. Hulme,(Eds.), The science of reading, a handbook(pp. 135-154). UK: Blackwell. p145.

[19] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p173.

[20] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p174.

[21] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p145.

[22] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p146.

[23] Ehri, (2005) "Learning to Read Words," p184.

[24] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p16.

[25] Ehri, (1998) "Grapheme-Phoneme Knowledge," p21.

[26] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p5.

[28] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p11.

[29] Ehri, (2014) "Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition," p8.

[30] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p15.

[31] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p16.

[32] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p145.

[33] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p145-146.

[34] Ehri, (2005) "Development of Sight Word Reading," p146.

[35] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p4.

[36] Sargiani et al. (in press) "Teaching Beginners to Decode," p16.

[37] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p13.

[38] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p13.

[39] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p11.

[40] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p9.

[42] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p8.

[43] Ehri, (2020) "The Science of Learning to Read Words," p13-14.

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A Research-Based Explanation of How Children Learn to Read Words With 160 published papers, Linnea Ehri has been one of the most influential and cited reading scientists in the past 40 years. One of 14 members of the U.S. National Reading Panel (1997-2000), she served as Chair of both the Phonemic Awareness and the Phonics subgroups of the Panel.

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Functional English Resources to Share - Wakelet

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Open list of resources for Functional English, please add your own resources and recommendations

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Great War Poets – What Makes A Great War Poem?

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Great War Poets – What Makes A Great War Poem?

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For World Poetry Day (United Nations) and National Poetry Day, Blackpool Grand discusses with a fantastic panel who helped create the critically acclaimed stage production Regeneration, poetry and what they think makes a good war poem and a look at some of the great war poets.

The panel consists of Jacqui Rowe, First World War Poetry Digitial Archive founder Stuart Lee, and Napier University Literature Professor Alistair McCleery who have some words of wisdom for poetry hopefuls.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them...

Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen

Binyon Laurence Binyonwrote 'For the Fallen' in northern Cornwall in September 1914, just one month after the outbreak of the First World War. Listen to the great Sir John Gielgud reading Binyon's war poem.

What makes a good war poem?

What do you feel makes and good war poem?

Who is your favourite poet and why?

How important is the use of poetry to describe war?

What can poets do to improve their work?

Sassoon or Owen? and why?

Our Great War Poets

War Poets | Edmund Blunden

Born in London, raised in Kent and attended education at Christ's Hospital, Horsham, where he became a senior classical scholar. Later in life in 1914, he gained a Queen's College, Oxford, classics scholarship and a year later 1915 enlisted in the Royal Sussex Regiment. Blunden began writing poetry during his school time and continued writing while training with the regiment.
Between 1916-1918, he was engaged in what can only be described as some of the worst fightings of war, Somme and Ypres on the Western Front, awarded the Military Cross. His incredible service ended in 1918 and went into recovery back to Britain. Once back and recovered he accomplished an academic career and succeeded Rudyard Kipling as 'literary adviser' to the Imperial (later Commonwealth) War Graves Commission. He sadly died at 77.

War Poets | Robert Graves

Son of a British father and German mother he gained a (classical) scholarship at Oxford's St John's College (1914), obtaining a commission with the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
Sent to the Battle of Loos (France) in May 1915, and in July 1916, 3-weeks into the Battle of the Somme was badly wounded and reported dead. The notice of his death even appeared in The Times and his parents informed him before discovering he survived. He returned to the front but was later declared unfit for active service due to lung damage.
Graves while in France became a friend of a fellow officer named Sassoon (Siegfried). Sassoon's influence can be exhibited in Graves's early poems. Moving to Majorca he worked as a poet, scholar, dramatist, critic and novelist until dying aged of 90.

War Poets | David Jones

In WW1 Jones enlisted in the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a private. Spending his first year training before heading to France (1915). Surviving the start of the Battle of the Somme he sadly received a leg injury (1916) at Mametz Wood. Returning to action, he later developed trench fever in 1918 and left. He was unable to return before the war ended and was demobilised in 1919.
Following the war, Jones lived alone and in poverty/ill-health. His major new work, Parenthesis, followed his wartime experiences (taking over a decade to complete). Jones continued as an artist and poet for the rest of his life.

War Poets | Wilfred Owen

Owen was working as a private tutor (France). Returning to England and joining 'Artists' Rifles' in October 1915, then consequently into the Manchester Regiment posted to France (1916). In the following April following the harrowing conflict, he was diagnosed with the unknown at the time 'shell-shock', and sent back to Britain. While recovering at Craiglockhart War Hospital he met Sassoon. There he found his poetic expression and wrote the incredible poem, Anthem for Doomed Youth.
Owen was awarded the Military Cross (1918) but sadly died in action the same year.

War Poets | Siegfried Sassoon

Sassoon went to Clare College, Cambridge. Coming from a wealthy family he did not need to work but his poetry writing was a passion, publishing his first collection in 1906.
Sassoon enlisted in the Sussex Yeomanry. 1915 he was transferred to the infantry, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, where he met officer and poet, Robert Graves. In the same year, Sassoon was awarded the Military Cross for bravery, a trench raid on the Western Front. Following a wound, he returned home in 1917. Twelve weeks later, he made a public 'act of wilful defiance of military authority' he wrote protesting at the continuation of the war to his commanding officer. The Medical Board dismissed his protest and put it down to 'Shell-shock'. Appreciating that his protest failed, Sassoon re-joined the regiment returning to France. Notwithstanding being inadvertently shot by his very own sergeant, Sassoon lived through the war and wrote some of the greatest and most renowned literature based on his wartime experiences.

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Great War Poets - What Makes A Great War Poem? - Blackpool Grand Theatre

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For World Poetry Day (United Nations) and National Poetry Day, Blackpool Grand discusses with a fantastic panel who helped create the critically acclaimed stage production Regeneration, poetry and what they think makes a good war poem and a look at some of the great war poets.

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View recordings from our Festival of Education Friday Fests 2021. Over 200 free CPD sessions, seminars and debates covering a range of topics.

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Bob Cox

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Welcome to the website for 'Searching for Excellence Ltd", the home of Bob Cox, the author of the 'Opening Doors' series.
Latest News from Bob
We are well aware of the pressures on schools and families during this coronavirus crisis. Stay safe and keep well. It's an unprecedented time. You are doing an incredible job.

#NEW# Review on 'Opening Doors to a Richer English Curriculum 6-9' in 'The School Librarian'

For teachers looking to delve deeper into the teaching of English, exploring rich texts, this book is essential, with 15 units, seven on poetry and the rest on prose. Clear links are made to a range of texts that can be used to help pupils to develop their understanding and their writing. The examples of writing produced by children using the techniques in the book are inspirational and show the impact of using poems and prose that teachers may think too challenging. The link reading is a really useful list to ensure that pupils are gaining a wider range of reading. This book will really help to develop the teaching of English through quality reading. Through the use of these ideas pupils' vocabulary will develop along with their comprehension skills. Each unit in the book takes the teacher through the key reading strategies and how to engage the children. Pupils are encouraged to debate, put things in a continuum, and teachers are encouraged to use props, model the reading and start with quick writing tasks. There is also plenty of scope to differentiate to support those who find it challenging while stretching those pupils who are ready for further challenge. Opening Doors is an inspiring yet accessible book for teachers that will encourage wider reading in both teachers and pupils. Kate Keaveny

See below and the 'richer English' page here for more reviews and information on the training:
A Richer English Curriculum
#NEW# Two Webinars
Webinar for The National Association of Advisers in English
'New Visions for the Teaching of Poetry'

July 8th, 2020.

Webinar for Bucks Teacher Learning Day

'Opening Doors to Challenging Reading for ALL Learners'

From 9 am on July 2nd the webinar will be available.
https://www.connectingbucksschools.com/ntld-day-pre-recorded-sessions/
#NEW#

#Supporting Remote Learning and Home Educators#

We've been thinking about how to support both schools and parents and also provide additional resources for regular 'Opening Doors' users.

We are working on free online resources which will be independent in themselves but which will complement units in the 'Opening Doors' series!

The first one is inspired by unit 10 in 'Opening Doors to a Richer English Curriculum' called 'The Green Door', a short story by H.G. Wells. Please take a look and listen to the suggestions as you work through the slides. There is an introduction to 'Opening Doors' at the start if you need it. Enjoy!

We would like to thank Carl McCarthy and 'The Reading School' for hosting our work. Do scan the rest of his site for lots of fascinating ideas! Carl is on @moreteachertalk and at http://www.moreteachertalk.com

#NEW WEBINAR# Free to View Now.

I was privileged to contribute to a programme organised by The Chiltern Teaching Alliance! You can see my webinar here. Do contact me with any questions. The title is 'New Visions for Challenging English'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFdCKHv3TFI
Twitter comments included:

'Thank you Bob Cox for reminding us to challenge our students AND ourselves to challenging reading..brilliant session'

Arv Kaushal, Equality and Diversity (BAME) - Programme Lead at Chiltern Learning Trust

'You are a treasure of knowledge, reading and writing is a journey! Your books definitely need to be part of all colleges and universities, especially for student teachers and seasoned teachers.'

Teacher from Manhattan

#NEW BOOKS#

We are thrilled that the two new books are now published and you can follow the amazon link above within the box in the picture to read reviews under the product guide by Teresa Cremin, Mary Myatt and many more!

Links to purchase on amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bob-Cox/e/B00GNBMNEG?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1585476315&sr=8-1
USA
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B00GNBMNEG?_encoding=UTF8&node=2656022011&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader https://www.amazon.com/Bob-Cox/e/B00GNBMNEG/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
'From Han-Shan to Hardy, From Gaimon to Gray, this resource provides a cornucopia of poems and prose as the starting point for truly opening pupils' minds, deepening their knowledge of sophisticated writing and creating conditions for them to produce substantive, authentic writing of their own.' Mary Myatt, author of High Challenge, Low Threat, Hopeful Schools and Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence

We are thrilled that the foreword to the books is by Pie Corbett! Thanks Pie!

We hope the two new books will support your drive for challenging English for all pupils, pitched high but accessed by all.

This podcast will help you learn more about the thinking behind 'Opening Doors':
www.buzzsprout.com/859129/2723251
Thanks again to Carl McCarthy @moreteachertalk who is Executive Head at Frogmore Junior, Wheatfield and Windmill schools.

Also new is this brief video which will help you understand the distinctiveness of the new books 'Opening Doors to a Richer English Curriculum'
https://youtu.be/Ag9ris9YiW4
'Opening Doors to a Richer English Curriculum' for both ages 6-9 and 10-13 will have more on concepts, continuity and curriculum with a huge range of links past to present across the 15 units in each book. Thanks once again to my daughter Vicky for the illustrations and see
A Richer English Curriculum
for more on my co-authors Leah Crawford and Verity Jones! Thanks for the inspiration!
Book Launches and Presentations
It's been very exciting starting to speak at conferences and with schools using the fresh materials and ideas on concepts, depth and creativity. Some of the events in autumn 2019 and 2020 have included:

Reading Rocks South

St Matthews Birmingham and Herts for Learning book launches

The Oxford Reading Spree

The Ryefield Schools cluster in Uxbridge

Hampshire schools, including a major conference at Crofton Hammond Infants.

Mottingham Primary School

Coastlands School, Wales

The Write Time Project, York

SSIF/DFE project in Stoke

Thanks to everyone for inviting me and the opening doors team!
Would your school like to become an 'Opening Doors' hub or Learning Centre?
This involves advertising around your area for an ongoing course which facilitates classroom impact via one half-day session per term. It can be tailored to need. Please contact me if you are interested.

Future confirmed bookings include London (via Osiris), Birmingham, Stoke, Surbiton, Bracknell, Hampshire, Devon ( via Babcock International) etc. I shall also be presenting at an international conference in Paris!

A number of these are key-notes on the need for access to richer English for all pupils! Do let me know if you would like me to speak at your conference!
Impact
This year, I received many comments from moderators, verbally and in messages, about the impact of the opening doors strategies. It was very gratifying as so many teachers say to me that they learn in their classrooms every day after designing a challenging curriculum. See A Daily Diet of CPD! January 2019

Here is an example from a local authority moderator, Emily Weaver, on the impact of 'Opening Doors':
Just dropping you a quick line to say I have just undergone key stage 2 writing moderation as a moderator this year and what an absolute difference following your books and the opening doors approach to writing has had for end of key stage outcomes. They stood out hugely compared to other approaches and strategies by an absolute mile. Where people were using heritage texts as drivers for writing, the work, especially at the greater depth standard was superb.
Please check my twitter handle @BobCox_SFE as so many organisations are kind enough to post appreciation and pupils' work.

2019/20 travels included many areas of the UK. See A Richer English Curriculum. Apart from key-notes, for example at the National Association for the Teaching of English 'Primary Matters' Conference and the Brighter Futures English Conference in Reading, we also supported schools, LA's or MATs in ongoing ways. We have enjoyed working with Cheshire teachers from 2017-2019 via the Aspirer Research School and we are returning for a third time in 2019/20 such has been the impact. Here is a selection of comments:
"One of the best courses I've been on." "How to make challenging texts accessible to all children." "A shift in thinking regarding the English curriculum - using key concepts to ensure a clear, sequential progression. Pupils will have a thirst for tackling more complex texts, drawing on a wider vocabulary to write in a sophisticated way." "All children have accessed and so improved in both their understanding of texts and constructing high quality responses to questions and writing tasks. Thank you Bob, you've inspired both me and my class."

Searching for Excellence Support

Bob can support your school or speak at your conference on:
'Opening Doors to a Richer English Curriculum'. This will be relevant to key stages 1,2 or 3. 'Pitching High'. This will support strategies for ensuring the inclusion of all learners in a high quality curriculum Ongoing in-house support tailored to need.
'Searching for Excellence' offers experienced, professional support for the development of learning in schools. Since becoming a freelance educational consultant in 2007, Bob has worked with a range of schools cross-phase and has delivered inset at national, international and county conferences, often in a leading capacity. He has now supported over 500 schools in their "search for excellence".

2018/19 briefs included key notes in national conferences, for Hampshire and Leeds LA and across many clusters: Oldham, Macclesfield, York, the Isle of Man, The Isle of Wight, Kent and many, many more. Bob also worked with parents, teachers and pupils in Singapore!

If you are interested in support for a richer, deeper English curriculum and want advice on how it can be achieved with the resources to back it up, do contact Bob on bobcox@searchingforexcellence.co.uk

"All Bob's books should be in every school and used." 16th April 2017
Pie Corbett - teacher, author, storyteller and developer of Talk4Writing

On March 17th, 2017, Bob became an award winning author!

Bob's 'Opening Doors to Quality Writing' books have won an award in the 'educational book' category at The Educational Resources Awards! Here is
what the judges said:

"Described as two gems which provide innovative approaches to exploring quality texts as stimuli for children's writing. Judges described 'The Opening Doors to Quality Writing' series is an invaluable resource, particularly for non-specialist teachers. Excellent literary choices contained within very attractively produced books."

Bob accepted the award 'for all the amazing teachers opening doors for their pupils to language, literature and life chances'.

"Teachers that have used the books report enhanced confidence, a broader range of teaching strategies and a greater sense of enjoyment and achievement."
Martin Galway, Teaching and Learning Adviser (English), Herts for Learning Ltd

"Bob was a pleasure to work with and his professional, thoughtful approach was very popular with our delegates. His enthusiasm and love of classic texts was palpable and immediately engaging; many of our schools here in Leeds have now adopted his approach to ensure that this material is part of their reading and writing curricula." Steve Dawson, Leeds LA, key-note 2018
Reactions to the award include:
"Congratulations to Bob Cox, ERA award winner, for such a fine series of books on teaching writing. Essential resources for raising our game."
18th March 2017
There are now thousands of schools using Bob's 'going deeper' strategies! Bob and his team would like to work with you on an exciting journey using all kinds of quality reading - picture books, children's fiction and literary classics - to stimulate quality writing. We want to help spread the use of quality texts, poetry and literature in primary schools and across the transition phase to KS3!
"Well deserved Bob! I attended your training last year and this has had a huge impact on the expectations we have of our pupils and the quality and complexity of the texts we are using. Rarely have I been on training that has had such an impact on my practice - having done the job for nearly 20 years and been a consultant for part of that time."
Samantha Collier, Vice Principal, Hillcrest Academy For Gorse Academies Trust

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Latest News from Bob We are well aware of the pressures on schools and families during this coronavirus crisis. Stay safe and keep well. It's an unprecedented time. You are doing an incredible job.

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June21

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Gustav Freytag

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The structure of a text refers to the way in which events are organised inside the play as a whole. In the case of , the structure is strictly . This is where events are revealed to the audience/reader in the order in which they have happened. Sometimes events are described rather than shown (eg Macbeth becoming king). Others happen offstage (out of sight of the audience) for example, Duncan's murder.

The events of this play are organised into five acts, each containing a number of scenes. However, it is important to note that Shakespeare himself almost certainly did not organise the play in this way and that this structure would have been added later during the editing process when the plays were turned into published text after being performed that way.

The idea of the five-act structure is a useful one, though, as it follows the model designed by Gustav Freytag, a German author from the 19th-century. Having carefully studied classical drama, he suggested there were five stages in a tragic dramatic structure.

He named these stages: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and catastrophe.

How this applies to Macbeth is shown in the table:

Examining poetic structure

In a play such as , examining structure might also refer to the poetic structure which is used. As you will have observed, the majority of the writing in is in poetic form, though sometimes is used. There are three areas to look out for:

lines with a five-beat rhythm

lines with a four-beat rhythm

lines written in prose

Lines with a five-beat rhythm

This is how the majority of the play is written. It is often called or . Each line has five beats with an unstressed (x) followed by a stressed (/) syllable:

So fair - and foul - a day - I have - not seen

Try saying this aloud while tapping out the rhythm of the five beats to see how it works. The ends of lines are not generally rhymed which helps to maintain the flow of the speech and carry through the meaning of what the character is saying.

Sometimes a character is given an unfinished line to say. This is called a (even if it is less or more than half the five beats). It makes us think about why the line is incomplete - for instance, is it a hesitation or an interruption? Two (or more) characters may have a shared line where the five beats are divided up between them. This tends to quicken the pace of the speeches as characters overlap their words.

LADY MACBETH: Did not you speak?

MACBETH: When?

LADY MACBETH: Now?

As I descended?

Lines with a four-beat rhythm

To separate the Witches from other characters, they often speak with a different rhythmic pattern which only has four beats with (this time) a stressed (/) syllable followed by an unstressed (x) syllable:

Fair - is foul - and foul - is fair

Again, try saying this aloud while tapping out the rhythm of the four beats to see how it works. Generally this structure tends to speed up the rhythm in which the words are spoken and gives the whole thing a more "sing-song" quality - this is, of course, very appropriate for the Witches' chanting.

This type of speech is generally reserved for the more common characters (such as the Porter) or to indicate an extreme emotional state. When Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and she is starting to lose her mind, Shakespeare does not use blank verse as he would normally do for a noble character but uses straightforward prose instead:

Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O.

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Use of structure in Macbeth - Form, structure and language - AQA - GCSE English Literature Revision - AQA - BBC Bitesize

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Revise and learn about the form, structure and language of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth with BBC Bitesize GCSE English Literature (AQA).

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Phonological awareness & phonemic awareness

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Phonological awareness & phonemic awareness

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Improving literacy: supporting oral language development

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Improving literacy: supporting oral language development

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Are We Getting Shakespeare’s Rhythms All Wrong?

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Are We Getting Shakespeare’s Rhythms All Wrong?

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Have you ever gone to a performance of one of William Shakespeare's plays and found yourself confused about what an actor is going on about? Take heart. Mort Paterson is a Shakespearean actor and he writes that even he has the same problem sometimes.

"Even when all the words are audible, the thoughts and images packed into the verse seem to arrive as an intractable jumble," he writes. "Too often, after hearing a speech on stage or screen, have I turned to my companion and asked 'What did he/she just say?'-only to receive a shrug of incomprehension."

Schoolmasters in Shakespeare's own day discouraged it as too sing-songy to be appropriately "actorly."

It doesn't help, of course, that the plays' language is more than 400 years old. But Paterson argues that something else is going on as well. He writes that traditionalists call for Shakespeare's iambic pentameter to be spoken with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. But, he notes, that tends to sound unnatural. In fact, schoolmasters in Shakespeare's own day discouraged it as too sing-songy to be appropriately "actorly." Today, some actors and drama coaches find it's too difficult to stick with the alternating pattern, though many still advocate it, at least in theory.

Pronouncing Shakespeare's verse in iambic pentameter may make it difficult for an audience to understand what's being said, since it naturally leads to stresses on unimportant words. Take a line from Hamlet, written in a traditionalist unstressed-stressed pattern: "Thus CONscience DOTH make COWards OF us ALL." Our brains interpret the stress on minor words like "doth" and "of" to mark these words as important, which hinders comprehension.

Paterson also argues that some ideas about Shakespearean rhythms, which involve spacing out lines so that each stressed syllable takes up equal time, make for very unnatural speech patterns, even creating slight spaces in the middle of words. It also seems to go against the playwright's own intentions. Hamlet, for example, encourages the Players to speak their lines "trippingly on the tongue." And, in Henry IV, Hotspur complains about "mincing" recitation of lines: "'Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag."

On the other hand, Paterson rejects the idea of speaking Shakespeare's verse like prose, with no particular rhythm at all. Instead, he suggests that the "beats" of each line should be regular, and should be organized around important words.

This is a sort of idealized version of the way people naturally arrange the rhythms of their words when speaking. Paterson quotes linguist Dwight Bolinger, who argues that "rhythmic regularity is something that speakers unconsciously strive for, though it seldom turns out so neatly."

Paterson suggests that the performance of Shakespeare's verse by actors like Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh both conveys the meaning of the words and provides a pleasurable rhythmic cadence.

"It is like really good posture: we rarely see it, but when we do (as in ballet and sports) we admire it," he writes. "Thus for a performer on stage to speak with the semantic efficiency of rhythmic control indicates a character with whose admirable expressive qualities we can identify."
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Are We Getting Shakespeare's Rhythms All Wrong? | JSTOR Daily

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Have you ever gone to a performance of one of William Shakespeare's plays and found yourself confused about what an actor is going on about? Take heart. Mort Paterson is a Shakespearean actor and he writes that even he has the same problem sometimes.

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Overview

My interests are in the teaching and research of language and literacy. I am the Director of the Centre for Research in Writing and my commitment is to the bringing together of teaching, teacher education and research so that children and young people's experience of learning to be literate enables them to be confident, articulate citizens of the future, able to use language and literature for personal fulfilment and economic well-being.

Research group links

Research

Research interests

My research interests are principally in the field of language and literacy, with a particular focus upon the teaching of writing; gender and literacy; and talk. My research is conducted collaboratively with colleagues in the Centre for Research in Writing. We have been interested in exploring all aspects of writing and becoming a writer, including:

the role of grammar in the teaching and learning of writing, with a focus on functionally-oriented grammar making links between language and meaning;

children's metalinguistic understanding of writing and making language choices;

the role of talk in supporting metalinguistic understanding about writing;

composing processes in writing - children, young people and adults' understanding and management of the writing process;

teachers and children as writers.

Research projects

I have been involved in a large number of research projects, along with colleagues in the Centre for Research in Writing - all investigating writing and the teaching of writing. Please see below for a full list of all these research projects.

Research grants

Publications

Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year

Key publications

Myhill DA, Newman R (2019). Writing talk: Developing metalinguistic understanding through dialogic teaching. In Mercer N, Wegerif R, Mercer L (Eds.) Routledge International Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education, London: Routledge, 360-372. Abstract. Full text.

Myhill DA (2009). Becoming a Designer: Trajectories of Linguistic Development. In Beard R, Myhill DA, Riley J, Nystrand M (Eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Writing Development, London: SAGE, 402-414.

Publications by category

Books

Journal articles

Chapters

Reports

Internet publications

Publications by year

Myhill D (eds)(2020). Developing Writers Across the Primary and Secondary Years Growing into Writing. London, Routledge. Abstract.

Myhill D, Newman R, Watson A (2020). GOING META: DIALOGIC TALK IN THE WRITING CLASSROOM. AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERACY: SPECIAL ISSUE TALK AND INTERACTION, 43(1), 5-16. Abstract. Full text.

Cremin T, Myhill D (2019). Creative Writers as Arts Educators. Abstract.

Myhill D (2019). Rethinking Grammar as a tool for learning. In Alden Och K, Bigestans A (Eds.) Literraciter och flerspråkighet, Stockholm: Nationellt Centrum för svenska som andraspråk vid Instituionen för språkdidaktik. 69-79.

Lines H, Myhill D, Jones S (2019). The Relationship between Metalinguistic Understanding, Student Writing and Teaching. In Bazerman C, Pinzon BYG, Russell E, Rogers P, Pena LB, Narvaez E, Carlino P, Tapia-Ladino MCM (Eds.) Knowing Writing: Research across Borders, Bogota: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 115-134.

Banerjee P (eds)(2019). Transitions from Vocational Qualifications to Higher Education: Examining Inequalities. UK, Emerald Publishing Limited. Abstract.

Myhill DA, Newman R (2019). Writing talk: Developing metalinguistic understanding through dialogic teaching. In Mercer N, Wegerif R, Mercer L (Eds.) Routledge International Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education, London: Routledge, 360-372. Abstract. Full text.

Myhill DA, Jones SM, Lines HE (2018). Writing like a reader: developing metalinguistic understanding to support reading-writing connections. In Alves R (Ed) Reading Writing Connections. Abstract. Full text.

Cremin T, Lillis T, Myhill DA, Eyres I (2017). Professional Writers' identities: the perceived influence of formal education and early reading. In Cremin T, Locke T (Eds.) Writer Identity and the Teaching and Learning of Writing, London: Routledge, 19-36.

Myhill D, Watson A, Newman R (2017). Re-thinking grammar in the curriculum. In Egeland B, Olin-Scheller C, Tanner M, Tengberg M (Eds.) Tolfte nationella konferensen I svenska med didaktisk inriktning Textkulturer, 25-44-25-44.

Myhill DA (2017). 'The Dress of Thought':. Analysing Literature through a Linguistic Lens. In Goodwyn AC, Reid L, Scherff L (Eds.) International Perspectives on the Teaching of Literature in Schools Global Principles and Practices, Routledge, 18-28. Abstract. Full text.

Myhill D, Jones, Watson, Line (2016). Essential Primary Grammar. Abstract. Full text.

Myhill DA (2016). The effectiveness of explicit language teaching: Evidence from the research. In Giovanelli M, Clayton D (Eds.) Linguistics and the Secondary English Classroom, London: Routledge, 36-49. Full text.

Myhill DA (2015). Playing with language: grammar as a resource for writers. In Nestlog EB (Ed) Svenska ett Inkluderande Amne, Malmo: Svensklararforeningen, 135-155.

Myhill DA, Watson AM (2013). Creating a Language-Rich Classroom. In Capel S, Leask M, Turner T (Eds.) Learning to Teach in the Secondary School: a Companion to School Experience, London: Routledge, 403-413.

Myhill D, Jones S (2013). Language as putty: Framing a relationship between grammar and writing. In (Ed) International Perspectives on Teaching English in a Globalised World, 144-155.

Myhill DA (2013). Weaving Words: Students' Metalinguistic Understanding of Poetry Writing. In Dymoke S, Lambirth A, Wilson AC (Eds.) Making Poetry Matter: international research on poetry pedagogy, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Myhill DA (2012). Children's Patterns of Composition and their Reflections on their Composing Processes. In (Ed) Literacy Teaching and Education, London: Sage.

Fisher R, Myhill DA, Twist L (2011). Evaluation of Every child a Writer report 2: teaching and writing in ECAW classes. Department for Education, London.

Myhill DA (2011). Grammar for Designers: How Grammar Supports the Development of Writing. In Ellis S, McCartney E, Bourne J (Eds.) Insight and Impact:. Applied Linguistics and the Primary School, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 81-92.

Myhill DA (2011). Living Language, Live Debates: Grammar and Standard English. In Davison J, Daly C, Moss J (Eds.) Debates in English Teaching, London: Routledge, 63-77.

Jones SM, Myhill DA (2011). Policing Grammar: the Place of Grammar in Literacy Policy. In Goodwyn A, Fuller C (Eds.) The Literacy Game, London: Routledge, 45-62.

Cremin TC, Myhill DA (2011). Writing Voices: Creating Communities of Writers. London, Routledge.

Myhill DA (2011). 'The Ordeal of Deliberate Choice': Metalinguistic Development in Secondary Writers. In Berninger V (Ed) Past, present, and future contributions of cognitive writing research to cognitive psychology, Psychology Press/Taylor Francis Group, 247-274.

Jones S, Myhill D (2010). 'Troublesome boys' and 'compliant girls': gender identity and perceptions of achievement and underachievement. In Capel S, Leask M, Turner T (Eds.) Readings for Learning to Teach in the Secondary School, London: Routledge, 289-301.

Myhill DA (2010). Changing Classroom Pedagogies. In (Ed) Linguistics at School: Language Awareness in Primary and Secondary Education, Cambridge University Press, 92-106.

Myhill D (2010). Learning to write. In (Ed) Using Talk to Support Writing, 1-19.

Myhill D (2010). Linguistic development in children's writing: Changing classroom pedagogies. In (Ed) Linguistics at School: Language Awareness in Primary and Secondary Education, 106-122. Abstract.

Myhill DA, Myhill DA (2010). Rhythm and Blues: Making Textual Music with Grammar and Punctuation. In Wyse D, Andrews R, Hoffman J (Eds.) The International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching, London: Routledge, 170-181.

Myhill DA, Myhill DA (2010). Understanding Language Development. In Wyse D, Andrews R, Hoffman J (Eds.) The International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching, London: Routledge, 216-227.

Fisher R, Jones S, Larkin S, Myhill D (2010). Using Talk to Support Writing. London, Sage.

Myhill DA (2010). Ways of Knowing: Grammar as a Tool for Developing Writing. In Locke T (Ed) Beyond the grammar wars: a resource for teachers and students on developing language knowledge in the English/literacy classroom, London: Routledge, 129-148.

Myhill D, Milsom R (2010). Writing aloud - the role of oral rehearsal. In (Ed) Using Talk to Support Writing, 64-81.

Myhill, D.A. (2009). Becoming a Designer: Trajectories of Linguistic Development. In Beard R, Myhill D (Eds.) Handbook of Writing Development, London: Sage Publications.

Myhill DA (2009). Becoming a Designer: Trajectories of Linguistic Development. In Beard R, Myhill DA, Riley J, Nystrand M (Eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Writing Development, London: SAGE, 402-414.

Beard, R. Myhill DA, Riley, J. (2009). Handbook of Writing Development. London, Sage Publications.

Myhill DA, Jones SM (2009). How Talk Becomes Text: investigating the concept of oral rehearsal in early years' classrooms. British Journal of Educational Studies, 57(3), 265-284. Abstract. Full text.

Myhill DA (2009). Talk about it!. Participatory Talk for Learning Classrooms. In Boorer D, Quintus Perera JSH, Wood K, Piew LS, Sithamparam S (Eds.) Evolving Pedagogies, Brunei: University of Brunei.

Beard R, Myhill DA, Riley J, Nystrand M (2009). The SAGE Handbook of Writing Development. London.

Myhill DA, Fisher R, Jones S, Lines H (2008). Effective Ways of Teaching Complex Expression in Writing. A Literature Review of Evidence from the Secondary School Phase. The Department for Children, Schools and Families. the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Author URL.

Myhill, D.A. (2007). Reading the World:. Using Children's Literature to teach Controversial Issues. In Claire H, Holden C (Eds.) Teaching Controversial Issues in Democratic Societies.

Myhill DA, Fisher, R.J. (2005). Informing Practice:a review of recent research in literacy and the teaching of English. Author URL.

Myhill DA (2005). Prior knowledge and the (re)production of school written genres. In Kostouli T (Ed) Writing in context: Textual Practices and Learning Processes in Sociocultural Settings, Springer, 117-136.

Myhill DA, Jones S, Hopper R (2005). Talking, Listening, Learning. Effective Talk in the Primary Classroom., Open University Press.

Myhill, D.A. (2005). Writing Creatively. In Wilson AC (Ed) Creativity in Primary Education, Exeter: Learning Matters Ltd, 58-69.

Myhill, D.A. (2004). Classroom Observation Schedule. In Lankshear C, Knobel M (Eds.) Handbook of Teacher Research, Open University Press.

Myhill, D.A. (2003). Postgraduate Student Difficulties in Learning Grammar. In Neather EJ (Ed) Getting to Grips with Grammar, London: CILT, 79-82.

Myhill, D.A. (2003). The Communicative Approach in Egypt: digging into the Pyramids. In Gollin J, Ferguson G, Trappes-Lomax H (Eds.) Symposium for Language Teacher Educators, Edinburgh: IALS, University of Edinburgh.

Myhill, D.A. (2002). Consultant Editor for. Eames, K, Taylor, K and Trelawney-Ross, D. Writing: Steps to Success Levels 3-4+. London, Hodder and Stoughton.

Myhill, D.A. (2002). Consultant Editor for. Eames, K, Taylor, K and Trelawney-Ross, D. Writing: Steps to Success Levels 4-5+. London, Hodder and Stoughton.

Myhill, D.A. (2002). Consultant Editor for. Eames, K, Taylor, K and Trelawney-Ross, D. Writing: Steps to Success Levels 5-6+. London, Hodder and Stoughton.

Myhill, D.A. (2001). Better Writers. Westley, Courseware Publications.

debra_myhill Details from cache as at 2021-04-08 20:26:54
Refresh publications
External Engagement and Impact

Advice to Government, Parliament, devolved and English regional administrations, other national, international, regional or local agencies; advice to non-government organisations and to private practice

Member of ITE Expert Group for English

Led the writing of the grammar strand of the revised National Curriculum for English in 2012/13 and has given advice to the Minister for Schools on Primary and Secondary English (2012/13).

Research consultant to the National Strategies English team for several projects between 2005 and 2011, including the Improving Writing support materials, and the DVD Teaching Speaking and Listening, distributed to all secondary schools.

2006 Invited participant in House of Commons seminar on research in post-16 writing, chaired by Barry Steerman, MP

2001 National Literacy Strategy conference: 'Myths, Muddles and Misconceptions in learning Grammar', Keynote speaker.

Evidence of impact on policy and professional practice

2004: wrote Literature Review for OFSTED Review of Inspection Findings in English (published 2005) in recognition of my understanding of the research field (with Ros Fisher)

2005: keynote speaker at national conference on the future of English at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority; alongside Andrew Motion, the poet laureate.

ESRC-funded 'TALK' project cited on DfES website and GTC website:
July 2006:
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/research/themes/speakandlisten/talktalk/

GTC Research of the Month Sept 2006:
http://www.gtce.org.uk/research/romtopics/rom_teachingandlearning/effective_talk/

2000-2003: University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate: supporting research methodology for the national evaluation of the 1999 Key Stage 1, 2 and 3 English tests in writing; consultancy repeated in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. The evidence from this evaluation was used to produce the Annual Standards Reports sent to all state schools

2003: Research consultant to National Key Stage 3 Strategy (English) developing Improving Writing materials, sent to all schools in 2003.

Member of the ITE Expert Group for English

2003: Annual Conference of the National Association of Advisers in English - Progress in English? Keynote speaker.

External doctoral examining nationally and internationally

2006 EdD External Examiner: Jane Donati - Open University

2006 PhD External Examiner: Claire Mackay - Warwick University

2004 EdD External Examiner: Nora McCarthy - Open University

2007 EdD External Examiner Nabileh Haraty Brunel university

International recognition, such as international research collaborations, visiting research posts in overseas institutions, involvement at senior levels in international research associations, acting as referee for national and international research councils.

Executive committee member (Secretary and Treasurer) of the European Association for Learning and Instruction (EARLI)

2007: hosting international conference of the International Association for Instruction in the Mother Tongue Education (IAIMTE)

Journal and book series Editorships and Editorial board membership

Joint Editor of Research Papers in Education

Major awards, Prizes and Honorary degrees, including election to national and international learned societies

Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences

Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Research-based contributions to practitioner and academic conferences

2005: Hong Kong (English Schools' Federation) leading in-servce training in English teaching based on research.

2006: keynote speaker at research strand of the National Association for the Teaching of English annual conference in February 2006

2006: keynote speaker at the annual conference of the United Kingdom Literacy Association (June 2006)

2002: London Institute of Education Research seminar: invited speaker on Writing.

2002: Gloucester Deputy Heads Conference - Research Findings on boys' underachievement. Keynote speaker.

2002: Cornwall Heads of English Conference - the NLS Framework. Keynote speaker.

2002: Hampshire Heads of English conference - Improving Writing. Keynote speaker.

2002: National Literacy Strategy Conference - Whole Class Interaction in the Literacy Hour.

2002: West Midlands NATE - Creative Teaching, Creative Writing. Keynote speaker.

2001 National Literacy Strategy 'Creativity' conference: 'Crafting and Creating'. Keynote speaker.

Teaching

Language and Literacy Education

Modules

2020/21

Supervision / Group

Research Fellows

Postgraduate researchers

Alumni

Mandana Arfa Kaboodvand

Dala Farouki

Vinita Gaikwad

Rosinah Mokotedi

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My interests are in the teaching and research of language and literacy. I am the Director of the Centre for Research in Writing and my commitment is to the bringing together of teaching, teacher education and research so that children and young people's experience of learning to be literate enables them to be confident, articulate citizens of the future, able to use language and literature for personal fulfilment and economic well-being.

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Latest News

A phone or video conference interview is just as important as a face-to-face interview - so treat it like one - which means put aside enough time to prepare properly in advance of the big day, conducting all the usual research you would do in advance of a traditional interview, and make sure you're fully-rested.

We're in the middle of a fight for our attention. Following on from the last installment, in which we explored the crucial role adaptability plays in building a future-proof career, we're going to examine some of those skills, discover the ways you can start developing them, and hopefully get everyone one step closer to being future-ready.

Financial Service jobs aren't for everyone - it can be an intensely competitive industry, which means your CV will need to shine in order to make it through to the interview phase of a job application. Follow the advice below, and give yourself the best chance of success.

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Latest News A phone or video conference interview is just as important as a face-to-face interview - so treat it like one - which means put aside enough time to prepare properly in advance of the big day, conducting all the usual research you would do in advance of a traditional interview, and make sure you're fully-rested.

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More than 40,000 poems by contemporary and classic poets, including Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, Rita Dove, and more.

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Pearson NEW English Language Lift (9-1) from 2021

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Pearson NEW English Language Lift (9-1) from 2021

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Launching our new GCSE

Come along to one of our free launch events for Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) English Language 2.0: Lift to find out more about our brand-new GCSE for 2021. We'll give you an introduction to our new GCSE, and dive into how it could benefit you and your students, reinvigorating English Language learning.
Register for our free launch events

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English Language Lift (9-1) from 2021 | Pearson qualifications

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Come along to one of our free launch events for Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) English Language 2.0: Lift to find out more about our brand-new GCSE for 2021. We'll give you an introduction to our new GCSE, and dive into how it could benefit you and your students, reinvigorating English Language learning.

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Barry Smith on Noam Chomsky and Human Language

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Barry Smith on Noam Chomsky and Human Language

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Philosopher Barry Smith argues that language is our most important uniquely human attribute and examines Noam Chomsky's idea of a universal grammar.

Barry Smith argues that language is our most important uniquely human attribute. It doesn't just help us communicate, it helps us to think. He makes the case for the distinctiveness of human language against the limited signalling systems of other animals. He looks at Noam Chomsky's idea of a universal grammar - that there is something in the human brain that gives us an innate ability to produce language from very early in our lives. And he talks to experts on other intelligent animals - Prof. Nicola Clayton and Prof. Robin Dunbar - to ask how human language and imagination compares with that of birds and primates.

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BBC Radio 4 - A History of Ideas, Barry Smith on Noam Chomsky and Human Language

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Philosopher Barry Smith argues that language is our most important uniquely human attribute and examines Noam Chomsky's idea of a universal grammar. Barry Smith argues that language is our most important uniquely human attribute. It doesn't just help us communicate, it helps us to think.

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What is SQ3R?

SQ3R stands for survey, question (or query), read, recite, review. It is a method designed in the 1940s to improve reading comprehension. Here is the brief overview of each step:

Survey: First, go through and get a lay of the land. Look at headings and subheadings, graphics, highlighted words, maybe summary paragraphs. Get an overview.

Question/Query: Generate questions about the text that you can answer as you read it. These can be general (e.g. What is this section about?), more specifically targeted at the content of, say, the subheadings, or targeted at how the knowledge might be useful for your purposes.

Read: Start actually reading, but as you do, use the questions that you generated above to create a more active reading process.

Recite: Describe what you have just read. This could be done out loud or in written format, but try to recall everything in your own words.

Review: Come back to the material again to review, trying to answer the questions that you generated before.

Ok, so, if you use this method you may have just read my descriptions and said, "Uh, that's not what that means." Here's the kicker: There is wide disagreement on not only what each letter stands for, but how it is appropriately applied. In doing some research, I found one place that said this was "Survey, Question, Read, Reread, Recheck" and lots of others that described "Recite" as going back through and answering the questions while looking at the passage and others that describe "Review" as rereading. This is already leading us into bad news territory; a lot depends on how you're using SQ3R.

Is SQ3R supported by science? The theoretical answer...

Theoretically, this method looks pretty good. The survey method helps to produce some overarching organization for the reader before they start reading and we know that organization is an important aspect of understanding and retaining information (1).

Using questions sounds very similar to elaboration, which is an effective way to connect new knowledge with information you already know and aids in organization. If they're answering these questions during the read portion, then they're engaging in the second half of the elaboration process.

Recite is essentially retrieval practice and checking for understanding.

Review seems to either incorporate feedback for the recitation OR involves spacing (depending on when the review is taking place).

All in all, that bodes pretty well for the SQ3R method. But here's the bad news...

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SQ3R stands for survey, question (or query), read, recite, review. It is a method designed in the 1940s to improve reading comprehension. Here is the brief overview of each step: Survey: First, go through and get a lay of the land. Look at headings and subheadings, graphics, highlighted words, maybe summary paragraphs.

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English literature: grade descriptors for GCSEs graded 9 to 1

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English literature: grade descriptors for GCSEs graded 9 to 1

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In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 8, candidates will be able to:

sustain a convincing, informed personal response to explicit and implicit meanings of texts

sustain a perceptive critical analysis of the ways in which writers use language, form and structure

use judicious and well-integrated textual references to develop personal responses

show perceptive understanding of how contexts shape texts and responses to texts

make illuminating comparisons between texts

In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 5, candidates will be able to:

develop a generally coherent and engaged response to explicit and implicit meanings of texts

develop a clear understanding of the ways in which writers use language, form and structure

use apt textual references to support responses

use understanding of contexts to inform responses to texts

make credible comparisons between texts

In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 2, candidates will be able to:

make straightforward comments about explicit meanings of texts

describe straightforward aspects of language, form or structure

make general references to obvious details of texts

show awareness that texts are related to contexts

make basic links between texts

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English literature: grade descriptors for GCSEs graded 9 to 1

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In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 8, candidates will be able to: sustain a convincing, informed personal response to explicit and implicit meanings of texts sustain a perceptive critical analysis of the ways in which writers use language, form and structure use judicious and well-integrated textual

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1.1 Critical reading and comprehension

In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 8, candidates will be able to:

summarise and critically evaluate with detailed and perceptive understanding

understand and respond with insight to explicit and implicit meanings and viewpoints

analyse and critically evaluate, with insight, detailed aspects of language, grammar and structure

substantiate their understanding and opinions with illuminating references to texts and contexts

make convincing and apt links and comparisons within and between texts

To achieve grade 8, candidates will be able to:

communicate with impact and influence

produce ambitious, accomplished and effectively-structured texts

use a wide range of well-selected sentence types and structures and precise vocabulary to enhance impact

spell, punctuate and use grammar accurately so that writing is virtually error-free

2.1 Critical reading and comprehension

In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 5, candidates will be able to:

summarise and evaluate with accuracy and clear understanding

understand and make valid responses to explicit and implicit meanings and viewpoints

analyse and evaluate relevant aspects of language, grammar and structure

support their understanding and opinions with apt references to texts, informed by their wider reading

make credible links and comparisons between texts

To achieve grade 5, candidates will be able to:

communicate effectively, sustaining the reader's interest

produce coherent, well-structured and purposeful texts

vary sentence types and structures and use vocabulary appropriate to purpose and effect

spell, punctuate and use grammar accurately with occasional errors

3.1 Critical reading and comprehension

In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 2, candidates will be able to:

describe and summarise with some accuracy and understanding

respond in a straightforward way to most explicit information and viewpoints

make some relevant comments about language and structure

support their comments and opinions with some general references

make straightforward links between texts

To achieve grade 2, candidates will be able to:

communicate simply with some clarity for the reader

produce texts with basic structures and some awareness of purpose

show some control over sentence type and structure and use familiar vocabulary to some effect

spell, punctuate and use grammar with limited accuracy

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English language: grade descriptors for GCSEs graded 9 to 1

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In relation to a range of texts, to achieve grade 8, candidates will be able to: summarise and critically evaluate with detailed and perceptive understanding understand and respond with insight to explicit and implicit meanings and viewpoints analyse and critically evaluate, with insight, detailed aspects of language, grammar and structure

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Exploring Essential Digital Skills for teachers and trainers supporting ESOL learners

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Exploring Essential Digital Skills for teachers and trainers supporting ESOL learners

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Exploring Essential Digital Skills for teachers and trainers supporting ESOL learners

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Victoria Beckham - The queen of quick wit & dry humour

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An interview with Applied Linguist and Author Alex Poole

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An interview with Applied Linguist and Author Alex Poole

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In Episode 53, Althea interviews applied linguist and author of Learning a Foreign Language: Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics, Alex Poole. You can pick up a copy of his book on Amazon, through the publisher, or wherever you buy your books!

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Episode 53 - An interview with Applied Linguist and Author Alex Poole - The Learning Scientists

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In Episode 53, Althea interviews applied linguist and author of Learning a Foreign Language: Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics, Alex Poole. You can pick up a copy of his book on Amazon, through the publisher, or wherever you buy your books!

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What does it take to acquire language? ESL Magazine,

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What does it take to acquire language? ESL Magazine,

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Find a wide range of free Cambridge English resources to develop your teaching, including lesson plans, sample papers, handbooks and teacher guides.

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Language matters, especially if you’re a health professional talking to parents-to-be

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Language matters, especially if you’re a health professional talking to parents-to-be

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Alison Pearson 4June19

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Language is very powerful, particularly from the mouth of a health professional. It can have a profound impact on the experience and emotions of people and their loved ones living with a condition, or being told their unborn baby could have a condition identified by antenatal screening.

We're Colette Lloyd and Alison Pearson. We're 2 mums who were asked by PHE Screening to talk about the importance of the language that health professionals use when communicating with parents and parents-to-be about conditions like Down's syndrome, Edwards' syndrome and Patau's syndrome.

Down's syndrome

Throughout the NHS, and particularly in screening, we should make sure that our words and terminology:

are free from discrimination and prejudice

reflect our NHS core values of respect, compassion and valuing all people

The language I use around Down's syndrome has changed significantly since my daughter was identified, 21 years ago, as having an extra chromosome. I was not previously setting out to offend. And I certainly did not want to reinforce negative stereotypes. It was just easy to use words that other people commonly used, without realising how prejudiced they were.

However, full immersion into the wonderful community of people with Down's syndrome significantly changed my outlook. I realised that words such as 'risk', 'suffer' and 'abnormality' are just not appropriate.

What I've learned

It can be tricky knowing what words to replace those with though - particularly when we have been taught using them, read them in research and they have become ingrained.

I therefore created a poster to help. It does not cover everything but, as a general rule, if you would not say it about another minority group, please do not say it about Down's syndrome.

Many women I have spoken to can repeat word for word what was said to them, even many years on, when their baby was identified, before or after birth, as having Down's syndrome.

May your words be remembered as ones that brought hope and comfort, not ones that created a barrier for a woman to first overcome before bonding with her baby.

Take a look at the Down's Syndrome Association terminology guide for more information.

Edwards' syndrome

Oh isn't she gorgeous?

I am sure this is what midwives, nurses and doctors are trained to say about your new baby daughter, even if they don't truly believe it.

In our early days with our gorgeous baby Isabel nobody said this to us. Not once.

Instead, the fact that she had a diagnosis of Edwards' syndrome (trisomy 18) seemed to make it OK for a senior doctor to talk about her 'dysmorphic features' because her ears were set a little bit low: even 8½ years on I am still hurt by his blunt appraisal and lack of ability to talk about our beautiful daughter as if she were the important, loved human being she is rather than a medical specimen.

But worse was to come. In the days and weeks to follow her condition was called 'lethal', we were told it was not 'appropriate' to resuscitate Isabel should she suddenly deteriorate, and that this would be 'her way of telling us she wants to die'.

Others with the same diagnosis have been told their child is 'incompatible with life' and are beyond hurt at this wholly inaccurate description, too often used as an excuse not to allow access to even basic medical interventions.

Isabel was, and is, a beautiful, loving, gorgeous little girl, full of life, and love. She is a human being - please honour and respect her, and us.

And do not isolate us even further at a time which is already so difficult.

What Public Health England (PHE) is doing

PHE is doing a lot of work to improve the use of language and terminology in screening information and publications.

For instance, it has:

Annette McHugh, programme manager for the Down's syndrome, Edwards' syndrome and Patau's syndrome screening programme, said:

I'm really thankful to Colette and Alison for writing so clearly and powerfully about the importance of language.

The national screening team in PHE really wants to help promote and champion the appropriate use of language to improve women's experience of antenatal screening. I'd therefore ask all local services to use our national information. Where services have developed local information to supplements this, please do check that the language and terminology is consistent.

PHE Screening blogs

PHE Screening blogs provide up to date news from all NHS screening programmes. You can register to receive updates direct to your inbox, so there's no need to keep checking for new blogs. If you have any questions about this blog article, or about population screening in England, please contact the PHE screening helpdesk.

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Language matters, especially if you're a health professional talking to parents-to-be

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Language is very powerful, particularly from the mouth of a health professional. It can have a profound impact on the experience and emotions of people and their loved ones living with a condition, or being told their unborn baby could have a condition identified by antenatal screening. We're Colette Lloyd and Alison Pearson.

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The relationship between early literacy and GCSE English attainment

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The relationship between early literacy and GCSE English attainment

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Mike Treadaway, Dave Thomson, Natasha Plaister, Philip Nye

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The relationship between early literacy and GCSE English attainment - FFT Education Datalab

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Exploring the link between KS1 reading and writing scores and GCSE English language results

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Pearson GCSE English network 2021 update

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Pearson GCSE English network 2021 update

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Bridging the learning gap caused by COVID-19 and providing support for students who have fallen behind academically is a key challenge for all schools, but learning loss has been particularly severe for some. The attainment gap will inevitably widen as a result of recent school closures (EPI, 2020), with year group / bubble quarantining posing an ongoing concern.

Unfortunately, students with a vocabulary deficit are at a further disadvantage, and studies have shown that this word gap affects their progress, wellbeing and lifelong prospects (OUP, 2018).

A positively framed 'recovery curriculum' (Carpenter and Carpenter, 2020) can help to set the tone and context for this year's learning, but many schools are focusing on cornerstones of learning - reading, writing and oracy - with vocabulary development at the core of their curriculum design.

For Mary Myatt, vocabulary is one of the 'instruments' of curriculum development (2018), and the Education Endowment Fund also emphasises the importance of aligning vocabulary instruction with curriculum development. The EEF report, 'Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools' (2019) advocates targeted vocabulary development in every subject, and for subject teachers to develop direct and indirect approaches to teaching new words, and to make explicit word links between subjects.

Three research schools have shared their experiences of explicitly focusing on vocabulary development. Huntingdon has introduced a vocabulary-led curriculum, opening 'word doors' for their students. Durrington High School began a whole-school literacy focus in 2017 based on explicit vocabulary instruction with investment in staff CPD. Now all curriculum areas have adopted evidence-based practices for vocabulary instruction, and the school has five-year vocabulary curriculum maps.

Greenshaw High School wanted to remove the 'tendency to see vocabulary teaching as additional to the curriculum rather than it being equivalent to the curriculum...'. Their 'Big words for Big Ideas' project has helped to introduce over a thousand new words to KS3 students.

Feldman and Kinsella (2004) stress the importance of four key elements to support vocabulary development, which can be easily embedded into a whole-school approach:

the importance of reading widely (including fiction and non-fiction texts)

explicit teaching of important individual words

teaching students the skills to help them to learn new words independently

fostering 'word consciousness'.

We can all help to change the 'word poor' into the 'word rich' (Quigley, 2018) by providing an enriched language environment, by focusing on students' oracy and written skills and by celebrating new words and exploring their variety.

In collaboration with Oxford University Press, we've created a wide range of materials to support vocabulary development and close the word gap:

Secondary word gap resources:

In Closing the word gap: activities for the classroom, you'll find classroom strategies, teaching ideas and lesson resources for secondary English, maths, science, history and geography teachers, along with a guide to developing a whole-school vocabulary policy.

Our Word gap templates include adaptable classroom templates and display ideas to help students to develop their own vocabulary and have fun with words, while supporting the explicit teaching of tier 2 and tier 3 vocabulary. Our Word gap posters also provide engaging visual cues and help you to build a vocabulary-rich learning environment.

Engage parents in closing the word gap, our KS2-3 transition support guide offers suggestions to share with feeder schools and parents of new year 7s to encourage reading for pleasure and help parents to find ways to talk more at home.

With other year groups, share this Word gap toolkit for parents, with 18 simple ideas to engage parents in closing the word gap, including suggestions for talking more together, encouraging reading for pleasure and sharing an interest in words.

If you're a tutor, you'll find ideas for displays, word games and reading for pleasure to embed vocabulary development into your daily interactions with tutees: 20 ideas for closing the word gap in tutor time.

Further reading
Education Policy Institute (2020) Preventing the disadvantage gap from increasing during and after the Covid-19 pandemic

Education Endowment Fund (2020) Covid 19 support guide for schools

Carpenter, B. and Carpenter, M. (2020) A Recovery Curriculum: Loss and Life for our children and schools post pandemic

Myatt, M. (2018) The Curriculum Gallimaufry to coherence (John Catt)

Education Endowment Fund (2019) Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools

Oxford University Press (2018) Why Closing the Word Gap Matters

Quigley, A. (2018) Closing the Vocabulary Gap (David Fulton)

Feldman, K. and Kinsella, K. (2004): Narrowing the Language gap: The case for explicit vocabulary instruction

Read about the research schools' vocabulary development work:
https://classteaching.wordpress.com/2019/09/26/minimising-the-vocabulary-deficit-departmental-scale-approaches/
https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/threshold-concepts-for-teachers/

https://researchschool.org.uk/greenshaw/news/developing-vocabulary-across-the-curriculum-a-case-study/

https://researchschool.org.uk/huntington/news/a-vocabulary-led-curriculum-1/

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Bridging the learning gap caused by COVID-19 and providing support for students who have fallen behind academically is a key challenge for all schools, but learning loss has been particularly severe for some. The attainment gap will inevitably widen as a result of recent school closures (EPI, 2020), with year group / bubble quarantining posing an ongoing concern.

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This free course, Everyday English 2, will inspire you to improve your current English skills and help you to communicate more effectively in everyday work and life.

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This free course, Everyday English 1, will develop and improve your essential speaking and listening, reading and writing skills for work, study and everyday life.

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free online - lots of science and interesting topics

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This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

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FUNCTIONAL SKILLS RESOURCESThis page is the full collection of all resources created for the Flexible Learning Fund project. The project has now finished but content will be added to this page in t...

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These interactive materials have been taken from the old Read write plus, Move on and Key skills Trainer sites. They provide useful teaching and learning activities from entry level 1 through to level 2 in English (Literacy) and maths (Numeracy). There are also a limited number of resources for ESOL (E3 and L1 only).

Click on the link below to go to the materials for

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Interactive resources for English (Literacy), Maths (Numeracy) & ESOL

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These interactive materials have been taken from the old Read write plus, Move on and Key skills Trainer sites. They provide useful teaching and learning activities from entry level 1 through to level 2 in English (Literacy) and maths (Numeracy).

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Free Functional Skills English resources

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Top tips for improving literacy for functional skills

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Top tips for improving literacy for functional skills

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Check out our top tips for improving your reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. The practical advice and fun activities are useful if you're preparing for your Functional Skills qualification and can help anyone who wants to communicate better at work.
Supported by NHS Health Education England.

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Tips for improving communication for Functional Skills exam

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Check out our top tips for improving your reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. The practical advice and fun activities are useful if you're preparing for your Functional Skills qualification and can help anyone who wants to communicate better at work. Supported by NHS Health Education England.

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Words for Life | National Literacy Trust

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Activities and support for parents, children and young people to improve language, literacy and communication skills from home.

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Eduqas Exam walk throughs GCSE English Lit

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Eduqas Exam walk throughs GCSE English Lit

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Published: 11 September 2020
Authors:

Aimed at learners, this Exam Walk Through resource offers practical hints and tips on how to effectively approach questions in the examination paper. Using questions from past exam papers, the PPT with audio help and audio script in the notes will walk you through a mock examination paper, helping you revise and practise useful exam techniques. You can complete the "mock" in a single sitting, tackle one or two questions at a time or revisit some parts of the presentation to reinforce your learning.

Make sure you download the PPT to ensure the audio function works effectively, make sure your speakers / headphones are on and don't forget to ask your teacher if there is anything you are unsure of.

Feedback

Not seeing what you want? Is there a problem with the files? Do you have a suggestion? Please give us feedback, we welcome all correspondence from our users.

name: email: how would you rate this resource? (optional)

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Published: 11 September 2020 Authors: Aimed at learners, this Exam Walk Through resource offers practical hints and tips on how to effectively approach questions in the examination paper. Using questions from past exam papers, the PPT with audio help and audio script in the notes will walk you through a mock examination paper, helping you revise and practise useful exam techniques.

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Published: 27 March 2020
Authors:

A bank of sample knowledge organisers to support the learning of GCSE English literature.

These could be used for revision or as a starting point for creating your own knowledge organisers.

Feedback

Not seeing what you want? Is there a problem with the files? Do you have a suggestion? Please give us feedback, we welcome all correspondence from our users.

name: email: how would you rate this resource? (optional)

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Published: 27 March 2020 Authors: A bank of sample knowledge organisers to support the learning of GCSE English literature. These could be used for revision or as a starting point for creating your own knowledge organisers. Not seeing what you want? Is there a problem with the files?

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Tolkien's Experiences Scheme of Work and Lesson Plans

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Teaching Remembrance | Learning Resources | Royal British Legion

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We support the teaching of Remembrance across the UK and have designed a range of free teaching resources for Key Stages 1- 4.

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I know how busy you all are (especially with the new covid-19 measures this term) so I don’t want to give you information overload, but you might find some of the links below useful to you:

If you're not with us yet and want to switch this is the switching page form for you to complete when you join us.

Here you’ll find a standardisation video playlist.

The link to our teaching materials - you’ll see the tabs on the right (fifth one down) for Exemplar materials.

Here is our training booking page . If you scroll down and use the filter ‘English’ in the ‘keyword’ box you will see the upcoming English events.

Facebook English community page.

Finally, Clare Haviland, our English Subject Advisor is always on hand to help with any questions you have. You can reach her and receive regular updates through the following channels:

Join our GCSE and General English (for information that applies across qualifications) communities

Follow Clare on Twitter

Sign up for Clare's monthly email updates
Check out the English Subject Page
Access support videos on Clare's youtube channel.

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Questioning and summarisation to support deep literacy

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Questioning and summarisation to support deep literacy

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The latest Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) guidance on secondary school literacy (2019) is a must-read for all colleagues working in secondary schools.

The endorsement of every teacher being aware of their own academic discipline's literacy needs, regardless of subject specialism, is refreshing to read. For example, when a science teacher supports their students' understanding and learning of polysyllabic, Latinate key terms (90 per cent of these have a Latin or Greek origin in their subjects) they are identifying, then supporting a very specific literacy need in their unique discipline.

However, this must go hand-in-hand with the explicit teaching of comprehension strategies to enable their students to have ownership of their own understanding and learning of challenging knowledge and skills.

In a previous article, I emphasised how two crucial reading comprehension strategies should be embedded in classroom teaching (SecEd, 2019). First, all teachers should activate the prior knowledge of their students on a topic. Second, they should explicitly teach challenging vocabulary prior to teaching a topic.

In classrooms where teachers routinely use these approaches, students demonstrate increased confidence in new learning because they already have a "way in".

There are two further strategies which support students' ability to understand what they are reading. First, focused teacher questioning, before, during and after reading a text is vital in supporting students' comprehension. The most effective teachers use focused questioning automatically and routinely.

However, the most powerful consequence of this approach is when students themselves begin to use questioning to test their own understanding.

When teaching unseen poetry, I stress to classes the need for them to not only "hear" the poem's words in their heads, but also to articulate questions about its meaning aloud in their heads. For example, "why has the poet chosen that title?", "what are the connotations of that specific word?" or "how does the tone of the poem affect me?"

Students often despairingly moan to their teacher before the run up to an exam: "I can do it when you're asking me questions, but I can't do it when I'm on my own!" This is why we have to explicitly explain to our classes the power of metacognition and self-regulated learning. Once a student realises that, in an exam, they can adopt the same comprehension strategies that their teachers use in lessons, they feel empowered and more confident to face a challenging unseen text or question.

Second, the art of summarisation is a comprehension strategy I would urge teachers to introduce to their students. Summarisation is a more difficult tool to teach, practise then apply, but an important one tested in the English GCSE.

When I was a teenager studying GCE English (some 40 years ago!) my peers and I were taught the art of writing critical précis, a summary of a text written in an expository style with the structure of an essay.

After much practice, I developed the technique described below to ascertain the core knowledge I needed to learn. I suggest teachers regularly live model the deliberate steps taken to condense the content of a paragraph into a few sentences, then a phrase.

The paragraph below could be used as an example to teach summarisation, known when I was a student (yes when dinosaurs roamed the Earth) as the art of précis. It is the opening paragraph of George W Bush's address to the nation, made on the evening of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.
Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices: secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge, huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong.
A teacher could "live model" the following steps to their class.

Step 1: Ask students what is/are Bush's main purpose(s) in this part of his speech? They could discuss this in pairs before sharing their thoughts.

The answer could then be provided - e.g. it is to set the scene to the rest of his seven paragraph speech: to confirm what happened that appalling day, that thousands of victims from all walks of life were killed in huge buildings in a terrorist attack. However, it is also to reassure his audience that, while violated and in shock, they as Americans will survive and face their future with confidence.

Step 2: Condense the above into the three main intentions of Bush's message. For example:

To put the 9/11 terrorist attack into context

To state who the victims were.

That America will respond with strength.

Step 3: Summarise these intentions into a couple of phrases or one sentence. For example, America will not be weakened as a result of the massacre of thousands of innocent Americans going about their everyday business. And step 4: Condense to one statement. For example, despite the appalling attack, America is strong.

Over my long teaching career, I have found that many teachers assume their students can summarise the content of what they have been taught. Many students cannot.

They need to be explicitly taught the art of summarisation, how to identify the core knowledge, then how to simplify it into a format they can learn, commit to memory then apply in an exam context.

Ruth Everett is a consultant teacher with the Driver Youth Trust, a charity committed to improving the outcomes of young people who struggle with literacy. Visit www.driveryouthtrust.com

Further information & resources

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Questioning and summarisation to support deep literacy

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The latest Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) guidance on secondary school literacy (2019) is a must-read for all colleagues working in secondary schools. The endorsement of every teacher being aware of their own academic discipline's literacy needs, regardless of subject specialism, is refreshing to read.

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Every teacher is a teacher of literacy: Boosting writing skills

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Every teacher is a teacher of literacy: Boosting writing skills

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Every teacher is a teacher of literacy: Boosting writing skills

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In this series I am making the case for literacy as a whole-school concern, arguing - as George Sampson did - that: "Every teacher is a teacher of English because every teacher is a teacher in English." This is the final part.

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View specialist resources to support functional skills and GCSE English, maths and ICT, ESOL, Employability, dyslexia and SEND. Download and find out about free resources.

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The security system for this website has been triggered. Completing the challenge below proves you are a human and gives you temporary access.

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GCSE English Literature Revision | Quizlet

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Use Quizlet for GCSE English Literature revision to learn about everything from Macbeth to Lord of the Flies. Discover curriculum-aligned study sets and learning activities below.

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Useful links to a range of E&M sites

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Teaching and using visual communication in the language classroom presented by Sherri Williams

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Teaching and using visual communication in the language classroom presented by Sherri Williams

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Developing English in vocational/ technical contexts

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Developing English in vocational/ technical contexts

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Developing English in vocational/ technical contexts (course Padlet)

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Preparing them to get the most out of your courses