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50 Nifty Activities for 5 Components and 3 Tiers of Reading Instruction

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50 Nifty Activities for 5 Components and 3 Tiers of Reading Instruction

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50 Nifty Activities for 5 Components & 3 Tiers of Reading Instruction | Tools 4 Reading

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Can a teacher be a brain surgeon in her own classroom? Instructional choices can actually build neural pathways in a student's brain! These pathways create a highway in the "reading brain" that will support the development of orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2005). These critical connections are needed for words to be stored in memory and for reading to become effortless.

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Florida Center for Reading Research Student Activities

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Florida Center for Reading Research Student Activities

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently. Students can complete the activities in small groups, pairs, or individually.

Accompanying these Student Center Activities is a Teacher Resource Guide that offers important insights on differentiated instruction and how to use the Student Center materials.

Component

Name of the reading component: Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonics (P), Fluency (F), Vocabulary (V), or Comprehension (C). Each component is color coded: PA is purple, P is orange, F is red, V is green, C is blue.

Subcomponent

Name of the reading subcomponent, which is a subskill of the component.

Activity Name

Activity Number

The letters correspond with the reading component (PA, P, F, V, or C). The numbers are listed in ascending order within each component. The activities are sequenced from simple to more complex within each component and subcomponent.

Student Icon

The suggested number of students for the activity. One student icon indicates that students may work independently or with a small group. Two student icons indicate that the activity requires students to work in pairs. Two student icons with a plus sign indicate that the activity requires two or more students.

Objective

States the goal of the activity, which is aligned with the subcomponent.

Materials

Materials are located on the pages that follow the Activity Plan. Most materials are non-consumable to be prepared and used repeatedly (e.g., word cards can be laminated). Some materials are consumable and will need to be duplicated for each student doing the activity. Other materials, such as counters, are commonly found in most classrooms.

Activity Statement

One sentence explanation of the purpose of the activity and what students do to complete the activity.

Activity Steps

The first step describes how to setup the center. The second step begins with: The student, Students, Working in pairs, or Taking turns depending on the number of students needed to complete the activity. The second step also starts the series of steps to complete the activity. The next steps explain what the student does to complete the activity. The last step lists one of three accountability methods: Self-check, Peer evaluation, or Teacher evaluation.

Example

A visual of the activity and key materials.

Extensions and Adaptations

Suggestions that extend or provide an adaptation for additional practice on the skill addressed in the activity. Materials for the extensions and adaptations are included after the pages that align to the Activity Plan.

Users may use the FCRR Student Center Activities resources as long as modifications are not made, the resources will only be used for non-profit educational purposes, and the copyright belong jointly to the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research. These resources may not be used for any commercial purposes. These resources on our site may be linked to but not reposted, reproduced, modified, or copied to other sites. For questions about the use of these resources, please contact The Florida Center for Reading Research at fcrr@fcrr.org.

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently.

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LISTEN TO PODCAST

Emily Hanford of American Public Media has written several award-winning reports about dyslexia and reading instruction (" At a Loss for Words: What's Wrong with How Schools Teach Reading?"). Each one has prompted nationwide discussion. I applaud the depth and insightfulness of these remarkable blogs and podcasts. You can listen to an interview with Hanford on this subject on October 22, 2019 here.

The time has come to call the public's attention to reading science and to dispel the misconceived beliefs and practices that are so widespread in our classrooms. Not all readers and listeners, however, are persuaded by Hanford's reporting. Various critics' blogs and opinion papers have challenged her analyses. In doing so, unfortunately, these skeptics have resurrected some worn-out straw men that once again, require rebuttal. They include the idea that reading science is just about phonics and scripted programs; that it does not address all the important aspects of teaching; and that it does not address reading comprehension.

First, the body of work referred to as "the science of reading" is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, or a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don't learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students. Mark Seidenberg's (2017) book, Language at the Speed of Sight, summarizes that science as well as any.

Second, with regard to the importance of teaching phonics systematically, explicitly, and cumulatively, the scientific consensus ( see Foorman et al., 2016) is very strong. Most of the studies that show positive effects in comparison to "business as usual" have provided phonics instruction about 30-45 minutes per day, using different instructional materials. Good phonics instruction, moreover, is hands-on and moves from presentation of a concept to practice exercises and then to its direct application in reading and spelling. If phonics instruction is boring, rote, or meaningless, as critics tend to claim, the fault is with the practitioner and/or program designer. As we provide ® (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) professional development around the country, we find that many teachers simply don't know how to make phonics lessons fun and engaging. That is mainly because they have not been taught how spoken and written words work, and they are uncomfortable teaching students how to decode and spell. We can change that with good courses, better materials, and professional development like LETRS.

Third, the body of scientific evidence about reading is not limited to the importance of phonics instruction. Perhaps the most critical and least-practiced component of effective early instruction is phoneme awareness. Awareness of the sounds that make up spoken words, facility at manipulating those sounds, and the links between speech and print must be mastered for students to be fluent readers and accurate spellers of an alphabetic writing system like ours. Phonics and spelling instruction may not make sense to students unless they are developing a fairly high level of proficiency with phoneme awareness ( see Kilpatrick, 2015). Yet we still have many classrooms where little to no deliberate development of phonological skills takes place, and many kids fall behind as a result. The best antidote for this problem is instruction for teachers in the speech sound system and its correspondence with print, supported by good instructional materials.

Fourth, reading science has not neglected the importance of language comprehension and the challenges of reading comprehension. While this aspect of reading is more difficult to research than foundational reading skills, we can hang our hat on certain robust findings. They include the critical importance of building vocabulary and background knowledge for text reading, and the value of a content-rich curriculum that is more focused on what the students are learning about than it is on teaching specific comprehension skills ( e.g., see Wexler, 2019). Comprehension skills, such as how to find the main idea or how to write a summary, generalize better if they are practiced in the context of learning about a worthwhile topic.

As the Hard Words reports have documented, much classroom instruction is driven by ideas advanced by "balanced literacy" programs. "Balance" is an appealing term but in reality, it has meant little to no systematic instruction in foundational reading skills, including phoneme awareness, phonics, and fluent word recognition. Children are taught to rely on context and pictures to identify printed words, a practice that reinforces what poor readers naturally do. In all respects, from word reading skills to language comprehension development, these approaches are not consistent with best evidence.

A well-designed early-reading program would teach these foundational skills explicitly and systematically, with adequate time devoted to each:

Awareness of speech sounds, segmentation, manipulation of sounds

Letter formation and writing by hand

Phoneme-grapheme correspondences

Spelling patterns

Meaningful word parts (morphemes)

Then, each skill or concept would be applied to phrase, sentence, and passage reading-we hope in the context of learning about something of importance. Then, language comprehension can be nurtured through rich content learning, reading aloud, classroom discussion, and deliberate study of language at the level of sentences, paragraphs, and longer texts. Good instruction is never "regurgitation without comprehension."

We are, of course, facing many difficult challenges in education. But how to teach reading so most students learn early and well-THAT should be on the list of things we can do something about. We just have to bury a few more of those straw men.

References:

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://whatworks.ed.gov

Kilpatrick, D.A. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can't, and what can be done about it. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Wexler, N. (2019). The knowledge gap: The hidden cause of America's broken education system--and how to fix it. Random House, Avery Publishing Group.

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Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About

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Emily Hanford of American Public Media has written several award-winning reports about dyslexia and reading instruction ("At a Loss for Words: What's Wrong with How Schools Teach Reading?").

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The PAST can be downloaded above. Please also download and carefully read the instructions before using. Information can also be found in the manual “Equipped for Reading Success” by David A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D in chapter 11 on how to effectively use the test. Make sure to also practice using the test before using it with […]

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Equipped for Reading Success A Comprehensive, Step-By-Step Program for Developing Phonemic Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition

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Equipped for Reading Success A Comprehensive, Step-By-Step Program for Developing Phonemic Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition

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Equipped for Reading Success A Comprehensive, Step-By-Step Program for Developing Phonemic Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition

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Research-based methods for boosting phonemic awareness, phonics, and instant word recognition

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Essential of Assessing, preventing an overcoming

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Essential of Assessing, preventing an overcoming

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Description

Practical, effective, evidence-based reading interventions that change students' lives

Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties is a practical, accessible, in-depth guide to reading assessment and intervention. It provides a detailed discussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, which will help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accurately assess why a student is struggling. Readers will learn a framework for organizing testing results from current assessment batteries such as the WJ-IV, KTEA-3, and CTOPP-2. Case studies illustrate each of the concepts covered. A thorough discussion is provided on the assessment of phonics skills, phonological awareness, word recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Formatted for easy reading as well as quick reference, the text includes bullet points, icons, callout boxes, and other design elements to call attention to important information.

Although a substantial amount of research has shown that most reading difficulties can be prevented or corrected, standard reading remediation efforts have proven largely ineffective. School psychologists are routinely called upon to evaluate students with reading difficulties and to make recommendations to address such difficulties. This book provides an overview of the best assessment and intervention techniques, backed by the most current research findings.

Bridge the gap between research and practice

Accurately assess the reason(s) why a student struggles in reading

Improve reading skills using the most highly effective evidence-based techniques

Reading may well be the most important thing students are taught during their school careers. It is a skill they will use every day of their lives; one that will dictate, in part, later life success. Struggling students need help now, and Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties shows how to get these students on track.

About the Author

DAVID A. KILPATRICK, PHD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York College at Cortland and a New York State Certified School Psychologist with the East Syracuse-Minoa Central School District. An expert and experienced clinician who excels in reading assessment and intervention, Dr. Kilpatrick has conducted over 1000 student evaluations for reading difficulties and disabilities.

Table of contents

Series Preface xv

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxi
One Introduction 1
The Unfair Race 1

The Importance of Reading 2

The Gap Between Reading Research and Classroom Practice 4

The Unfortunate Reality About Reading Research: Nobody Knows About It! 4

Why IsThere a Gap Between Research and Classroom Practice? 6

The Powerful Research Results We Have Been Missing 11

Acknowledging and Responding to the Gap Between Research and Practice 14

Summary 20
Two How We Teach Reading and Why It Does Not Work With Struggling Readers 23
A Very Brief History of Reading Instruction 24

Why Our Current Approaches to Reading Instruction Are Ineffective With Struggling Readers 26

The Visual Memory Hypothesis of Word Reading 30

The Three Cueing Systems Model of Reading 35

The Phonics Approach to Reading 41

Summary 42
Three A Practical Framework for Understanding and Assessing Reading Skills 46
The Simple View of Reading 46

Types of Reading Difficulties/Disabilities 54

The Components of Reading 58

The Components of Word-Level Reading 60

The Components of Linguistic Comprehension 73

Summary 77
Four Understanding Word Recognition Difficulties 80
The Importance of This Chapter 80

Introducing Orthographic Mapping 81

How Skilled Word Reading Develops 83

The Early Stages of the Reading Process 91

Learning to Read Irregular Words 104

The Research on Orthographic Mapping 109

How the Phonological-Core Deficit Hinders Reading Development 114

Word-Reading Fluency and Orthographic Mapping 121

Students Whose Native Language Is Not English 125

Answers to the Questions Posed About Reading Difficulties 127

Summary 129
Five Understanding Reading Comprehension Difficulties 133
Specific Reading Comprehension Impairment 134

What Is Required for Skilled Reading Comprehension? 135

Reader Abilities 136

Text Factors 143

Task Factors 144

Students Whose First Language Is Not English 144

Summary 145
Six Assessing Phonological Processing Skills 149
An Introduction to Intervention-Oriented Assessment of Reading 149

Issues in Assessing Phonological Skills 154

Phonological Awareness Assessment 165

Phonological Blending Assessment 170

The Rationale for Assessing Rapid Automatized Naming and Working Memory 172

Summary 179
Seven Assessing Phonics Skills 182
Orthographic Knowledge 183

Assessing Phonics Skills 187

Summary 196
Eight Assessing Word Identification and Reading Fluency 199
The Assessment of Word-Reading Skills 199

Untangling the Confound Between Word Recognition and Word Identification 202

Word Identification Subtests 208

The Assessment of Word-Reading Fluency 212

Types of Fluency Tasks 214

Summary 219
Nine Assessing Reading Comprehension and Related Skills 222
Reading Comprehension Assessment 223

Tests of Reading Comprehension 231

Tests of Listening Comprehension 233

Assessment of Skills That Contribute to Reading Comprehension and Listening Comprehension 235

Summary 244
Ten Effective Approaches for Preventing Reading Difficulties 247
Prevention: Removing the Hurdles Before the Race Begins 247

Experimental Support for Phonological Awareness Instruction 253

Experimental Support for Explicit and Systematic Letter-Sound Instruction 265

Practical Considerations Regarding Teaching Letter-Sound Skills and Phonics 269

The Centrality of Phonology in Word Reading 275

Phonological Awareness Training Programs 276

Preventing Literacy-Related Language Difficulties 280

Summary 283
Eleven Effective Approaches for Overcoming or Minimizing Reading Difficulties 286
Intervention with Word-Level Reading Difficulties 289

Popular Reading Interventions With Modest or Minimal Results 293

Reading Intervention Research With Minimal to Modest Results 301

The Phonological Awareness Intervention Continuum 302

Reading Intervention Studies with Highly Successful Results 304

Specific Programs Used in Highly Successful Outcome Studies 318

Addressing Comprehension Difficulties 322

Making It Work: Practical Intervention Issues 326

Summary 329
Twelve Case Illustrations 332
Mild Dyslexic Pattern 333

Severe Dyslexic Pattern 334

ELL Student 336

Compensator Pattern 337

Mixed Type 340

Hyperlexic Type 342

Summary 343
Thirteen Reading Difficulties and Learning Disability Identification 344
Far Fewer Students with SLD? 345

Characteristics That Suggest an Educational Disability-Part 1: SLD in Word-Level Reading 346

Characteristics That Suggest an Educational Disability-Part 2: Reading Comprehension 348

General Guidelines for Identifying a Reading Disability 349

Summary 357

Afterword 359

Glossary 361

Further Reading 367

References 369

About the Author 399

About the Online Resources 400

Index 401

Reviews

"Th[is is] literally the best book ever written in our field."
- Dr. Maria Murray, Associate Professor of Literacy, State University of NY at Oswego

"David Kilpatrick's book, one of Wiley's Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, is much more than a synthesis of test reviews, summaries of intervention research, illustrative case studies, and recommendations for reading and literacy interventions. While such content is pro forma in a guide for school psychologists, reading specialists, and educators, this book offers provocative new insights into the nature of reading development, reading difficulties, and effective instruction that deserve wide discussion and application in the field...[This book] represents one of the most potent linkages between science and educational practice available to us now. "
- Dr. Louisa Moats, EdD, review from International Dyslexia Association's Perspectives on Language and Literacy, Summer 2016, p. 51-52.

"[Kilpatrick's] book is highly recommended for all school psychologist practitioners. It provides a comprehensive foundation in the research on the development of reading skills as well as an in-depth analysis of how to approach assessment and intervention. Understanding what the research says about how and what to instruct is crucial for school psychologists who are working in a multitiered system of support in order to be able to support teachers in choosing eﬀective instruction at the classroom level and beyond.
- Lynne O. Thies, PhD, NCSP, review from Communiqué he Newsletter of the National Association of School Psychologists, Vol, 45, Issue 2, 2016.

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Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties

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Practical, effective, evidence-based reading interventions that change students lives Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties is a practical, accessible, in-depth guide to reading assessment and intervention. It provides a detailed discussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, which will help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accurately assess why a student is struggling.

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Learn more about the new edition!
For two decades, Speech to Print has been a bestselling, widely adopted textbook on explicit, high-quality literacy instruction. Now the anticipated third edition is here, fully updated with ten years of new research, a complete package of supporting materials, and expanded guidance on the how of assessment and instruction in today's classrooms.

Filling a critical gap in teacher preparation courses, Speech to Print supplies K-12 educators with in-depth knowledge of the structure and function of language-fundamentals they need to deliver successful structured literacy instruction. Renowned literacy expert Louisa Cook Moats gives current and future teachers comprehensive, accurate, and accessible information on the underpinnings of language instruction, including:

the history of the English language and its effect on spelling

English phonology, including speech sounds and their distinctive features

how print represents speech in English

the morphological aspects of words

syntax and its instruction

how meaning is conveyed with language

Through case studies, activities, recommended teaching principles, and close analysis of real-world student work samples, teachers will also receive invaluable insight into how their students should be taught. Ideal for use in preservice courses and in-service professional development sessions, this essential textbook will give educators the strong foundation they need to teach language and reading skills to students with and without disabilities.
WHAT'S NEW:

New and expanded practical content on the how of language and reading instruction

New and updated chapter exercises

New faculty support materials

More on key topics like program and curricula selection, frameworks for instructional planning, and problem solving when students are slow to respond to intervention

More accessible, undergraduate-friendly tone and structure

Additional graphics to illustrate key concepts

NEW FACULTY SUPPORT MATERIALS! Support your instruction with a complete package of online companion materials, including chapter quizzes, a sample syllabus/course outline, PowerPoints to accompany each chapter, PDF handouts for selected concepts, and a video demonstrating production of all the sounds in the English language. Watch the webinar recording

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Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers

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Amazon.com: Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers: 9781681253305: Moats Ed.D., Louisa Cook, Brady Ph.D., Dr. Susan: Books

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Listen to this audio documentary on the Educate podcast. Subscribe now.

Molly Woodworth was a kid who seemed to do well at everything: good grades, in the gifted and talented program. But she couldn't read very well.

"There was no rhyme or reason to reading for me," she said. "When a teacher would dictate a word and say, 'Tell me how you think you can spell it,' I sat there with my mouth open while other kids gave spellings, and I thought, 'How do they even know where to begin?' I was totally lost."

Woodworth went to public school in Owosso, Michigan, in the 1990s. She says sounds and letters just didn't make sense to her, and she doesn't remember anyone teaching her how to read. So she came up with her own strategies to get through text.

Strategy 1: Memorize as many words as possible. "Words were like pictures to me," she said. "I had a really good memory."

Strategy 2: Guess the words based on context. If she came across a word she didn't have in her visual memory bank, she'd look at the first letter and come up with a word that seemed to make sense. Reading was kind of like a game of 20 Questions: What word could this be?

Strategy 3: If all else failed, she'd skip the words she didn't know.

Most of the time, she could get the gist of what she was reading. But getting through text took forever. "I hated reading because it was taxing," she said. "I'd get through a chapter and my brain hurt by the end of it. I wasn't excited to learn."

No one knew how much she struggled, not even her parents. Her reading strategies were her "dirty little secrets."

Woodworth, who now works in accounting, 1 says she's still not a very good reader and tears up when she talks about it. Reading "influences every aspect of your life," she said. She's determined to make sure her own kids get off to a better start than she did.

That's why she was so alarmed to see how her oldest child, Claire, was being taught to read in school.

As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.

A couple of years ago, Woodworth was volunteering in Claire's kindergarten classroom. The class was reading a book together and the teacher was telling the children to practice the strategies that good readers use.

The teacher said, "If you don't know the word, just look at this picture up here," Woodworth recalled. "There was a fox and a bear in the picture. And the word was bear, and she said, 'Look at the first letter. It's a "b." Is it fox or bear?'"

Woodworth was stunned. "I thought, 'Oh my God, those are my strategies.' Those are the things I taught myself to look like a good reader, not the things that good readers do," she said. "These kids were being taught my dirty little secrets."

She went to the teacher and expressed her concerns. The teacher told her she was teaching reading the way the curriculum told her to.

Woodworth had stumbled on to American education's own little secret about reading: Elementary schools across the country are teaching children to be poor readers - and educators may not even know it.

For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by - memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don't know - are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school. This makes it harder for many kids to learn how to read, and children who don't get off to a good start in reading find it difficult to ever master the process. 2

A shocking number of kids in the United States can't read very well. A third of all fourth-graders can't read at a basic level, and most students are still not proficient readers by the time they finish high school.
Percentage of U.S. fourth-graders below basic level in reading
When kids struggle to learn how to read, it can lead to a downward spiral in which behavior, vocabulary, knowledge and other cognitive skills are eventually affected by slow reading development. 3 A disproportionate number of poor readers become high school dropouts and end up in the criminal justice system. 4

The fact that a disproven theory about how reading works is still driving the way many children are taught to read is part of the problem. School districts spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on curriculum materials that include this theory. Teachers are taught the theory in their teacher preparation programs and on the job. As long as this disproven theory remains part of American education, many kids will likely struggle to learn how to read.
Percentage of U.S. 12th-graders proficient in reading
The origins

The theory is known as "three cueing." The name comes from the notion that readers use three different kinds of information - or "cues" - to identify words as they are reading.

The theory was first proposed in 1967, when an education professor named Ken Goodman presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City.

In the paper, 5 Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words. Instead, he argued that as people read, they make predictions about the words on the page using these three cues:

graphic cues (what do the letters tell you about what the word might be?)

syntactic cues (what kind of word could it be, for example, a noun or a verb?)

semantic cues (what word would make sense here, based on the context?)

Goodman concluded that:

Skill in reading involves not greater precision, but more accurate first guesses based on better sampling techniques, greater control over language structure, broadened experiences and increased conceptual development. As the child develops reading skill and speed, he uses increasingly fewer graphic cues.

Goodman's proposal became the theoretical basis for a new approach to teaching reading that would soon take hold in American schools.

Previously, the question of how to teach reading had focused on one of two basic ideas.

One idea is that reading is a visual memory process. The teaching method associated with this idea is known as "whole word." The whole word approach was perhaps best embodied in the "Dick and Jane" books that first appeared in the 1930s. The books rely on word repetition, and pictures to support the meaning of the text. The idea is that if you see words enough, you eventually store them in your memory as visual images.

The other idea is that reading requires knowledge of the relationships between sounds and letters. Children learn to read by sounding out words. This approach is known as phonics. It goes way back, popularized in the 1800s with the McGuffey readers.

These two ideas - whole word and phonics - had been taking turns as the favored way to teach reading until Goodman came along with what came to be known among educators as the "three-cueing system."

In the cueing theory of how reading works, when a child comes to a word she doesn't know, the teacher encourages her to think of a word that makes sense and asks: Does it look right? Does it sound right? If a word checks out on the basis of those questions, the child is getting it. She's on the path to skilled reading.

Teachers may not know the term "three cueing," but they're probably familiar with "MSV." M stands for using meaning to figure out what a word is, S for using sentence structure and V for using visual information (i.e., the letters in the words). MSV is a cueing idea that can be traced back to the late Marie Clay, a developmental psychologist from New Zealand who first laid out her theories about reading in a dissertation in the 1960s. 6

Clay developed her cueing theory independently of Goodman, but they met several times and had similar ideas about the reading process. Their theories were based on observational research. They would listen to children read, note the kinds of errors they made, and use that information to identify a child's reading difficulties. For example, a child who says "horse" when the word was "house" is probably relying too much on visual, or graphic, cues. A teacher in this case would encourage the child to pay more attention to what word would make sense in the sentence.

Goodman and Clay believed that letters were the least reliable of the three cues, and that as people became better readers, they no longer needed to pay attention to all the letters in words. "In efficient word perception the reader relies mostly on the sentence and its meaning and some selected features of the forms of words," Clay wrote. 7 For Goodman, accurate word recognition was not necessarily the goal of reading. The goal was to comprehend text. 8 If the sentences were making sense, the reader must be getting the words right, or right enough.

These ideas soon became the foundation for how reading was taught in many schools. Goodman's three-cueing idea formed the theoretical basis of an approach known as "whole language" that by the late 1980s had taken hold throughout America. 9 Clay built her cueing ideas into a reading intervention program for struggling first-graders called Reading Recovery. It was implemented across New Zealand in the 1980s and went on to become one of the world's most widely used reading intervention programs. 10

But while cueing was taking hold in schools, scientists were busy studying the cognitive processes involved in reading words. And they came to different conclusions about how people read. 11

Scientists take on three cueing

It was the early 1970s, and Keith Stanovich was working on his doctorate in psychology at the University of Michigan. He thought the reading field was ready for an infusion of knowledge from the "cognitive revolution" that was underway in psychology. Stanovich had a background in experimental science and an interest in learning and cognition due in part to the influence of his wife, Paula, who was a special education teacher.

Stanovich wanted to understand how people read words. 12 He knew about Goodman's work and thought he was probably right that as people become better readers, they relied more on their knowledge of vocabulary and language structure to read words and didn't need to pay as much attention to the letters.

So, in 1975, Stanovich and a fellow graduate student set out to test the idea in their lab. They recruited readers of various ages and abilities and gave them a series of word-reading tasks. Their hypothesis was that skilled readers rely more on contextual cues to recognize words than poor readers, who probably weren't as good at using context.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

"To our surprise, all of our research results pointed in the opposite direction," Stanovich wrote. "It was the poorer readers, not the more skilled readers, who were more reliant on context to facilitate word recognition." 13

The skilled readers could instantly recognize words without relying on context. Other researchers have confirmed these findings with similar experiments. It turns out that the ability to read words in isolation quickly and accurately is the hallmark of being a skilled reader. This is now one of the most consistent and well-replicated findings in all of reading research. 14

Other studies revealed further problems with the cueing theory: 15

Skilled readers don't scan words and sample from the graphic cues in an incidental way; instead, they very quickly recognize a word as a sequence of letters. That's how good readers instantly know the difference between "house" and "horse," for example.

Experiments that force people to use context to predict words show that even skilled readers can correctly guess only a fraction of the words; this is one reason people who rely on context to identify words are poor readers.

Weak word recognition skills are the most common and debilitating source of reading problems. 16

The results of these studies are not controversial or contested among scientists who study reading. The findings have been incorporated into every major scientific model of how reading works.

But cueing is still alive and well in schools.

Picture Power!

It's not hard to find examples of the cueing system. A quick search on Google, Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers turns up plenty of lesson plans, teaching guides and classroom posters. One popular poster has cute cartoon characters to remind children they have lots of strategies to use when they're stuck on a word, including looking at the picture (Eagle Eye), getting their lips ready to try the first sound (Lips the Fish), or just skipping the word altogether (Skippy Frog).

There are videos online where you can see cueing in action. In one video posted on The Teaching Channel, 17 a kindergarten teacher in Oakland, California, instructs her students to use "picture power" to identify the words on the page. The goal of the lesson, according to the teacher, is for the students to "use the picture and a first sound to determine an unknown word in their book."

The class reads a book together called "In the Garden." On each page, there's a picture of something you might find in a garden. It's what's known as a predictable book; the sentences are all the same except for the last word.

The children have been taught to memorize the words "look," "at," and "the." The challenge is getting the last word in the sentence. The lesson plan tells the teacher to cover up the word with a sticky note.

In the video, the wiggly kindergarteners sitting cross-legged on the floor come to a page with a picture of a butterfly. The teacher tells the kids that she's guessing the word is going to be butterfly. She uncovers the word to check on the accuracy of her guess.

"Look at that," she tells the children, pointing to the first letter of the word. "It starts with the /b/ /b/ /b/." The class reads the sentence together as the teacher points to the words. "Look at the butterfly!" they yell out excitedly.

This lesson comes from "Units of Study for Teaching Reading," more commonly known as "reader's workshop." 18 According to the lesson plan, this lesson teaches children to "know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words." 19

But the children were not taught to decode words in this lesson. They were taught to guess words using pictures and patterns - hallmarks of the three-cueing system.

The author of Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Lucy Calkins, often refers to cueing in her published work. 20 She uses the term MSV - the meaning, structure and visual idea that originally came from Clay in New Zealand.

Then there is Fountas and Pinnell Literacy, started by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, teachers who learned the MSV concept from Clay in the 1980s. 21

Fountas and Pinnell have written several books about teaching reading, including a best-seller about a widely used instructional approach called "Guided Reading." They also created a reading assessment system that uses what are called "leveled books." 22 Children start with predictable books like "In the Garden" and move up levels as they're able to "read" the words. But many of the words in those books - butterfly, caterpillar - are words that beginning readers haven't been taught to decode yet. One purpose of the books is to teach children that when they get to a word they don't know, they can use context to figure it out.

When put into practice in the classroom, these approaches can cause problems for children when they are learning to read.

'That is not reading'

Margaret Goldberg, a teacher and literacy coach in the Oakland Unified School District, remembers a moment when she realized what a problem the three-cueing approach was. She was with a first-grader named Rodney when he came to a page with a picture of a girl licking an ice cream cone and a dog licking a bone.

The text said: "My little dog likes to eat with me."

But Rodney said: "My dog likes to lick his bone."

Rodney breezed right through it, unaware that he hadn't read the sentence on the page.

Goldberg realized lots of her students couldn't actually read the words in their books; instead, they were memorizing sentence patterns and using the pictures to guess. One little boy exclaimed, "I can read this book with my eyes shut!"

"Oh no," Goldberg thought. "That is not reading."

Goldberg had been hired by the Oakland schools in 2015 to help struggling readers by teaching a Fountas and Pinnell program called "Leveled Literacy Intervention" that uses leveled books and the cueing approach. 23

Around the same time, Goldberg was trained in a program that uses a different strategy for teaching children how to read words. The program is called "Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words," or SIPPS. 24 It's a phonics program that teaches children how to sound out words and uses what are known as "decodable books." Most words in the books have spelling patterns that kids have been taught in their phonics lessons.

Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."

Goldberg and a colleague recorded first-graders talking about what makes them good readers.

One video shows Mia, on the left, who was in the phonics program. Mia says she's a good reader because she looks at the words and sounds them out. JaBrea, on the right, was taught the cueing system. JaBrea says: "I look at the pictures and I read it."

Courtesy of Margaret Goldberg, Oakland Unified School District

It was clear to Goldberg after just a few months of teaching both approaches that the students learning phonics were doing better. "One of the things that I still struggle with is a lot of guilt," she said.

She thinks the students who learned three cueing were actually harmed by the approach. "I did lasting damage to these kids. It was so hard to ever get them to stop looking at a picture to guess what a word would be. It was so hard to ever get them to slow down and sound a word out because they had had this experience of knowing that you predict what you read before you read it."

Goldberg soon discovered the decades of scientific evidence against cueing. 25 She was shocked. She had never come across any of this science in her teacher preparation or on the job.

And she started to wonder why not.

Balanced Literacy

People have been arguing for centuries about how children should be taught to read. The fight has mostly focused on whether to teach phonics.

The whole language movement of the late 20th century was perhaps the zenith of the anti-phonics argument. 26 Phonics instruction was seen as tedious, time-consuming and ultimately unnecessary. Why? Because - according to the three-cueing theory - readers can use other, more reliable cues to figure out what the words say. 27

Marilyn Adams came across this belief in the early 1990s. She's a cognitive and developmental psychologist who had just written a book summarizing the research on how children learn to read. 28 One big takeaway from the book is that becoming a skilled reader of English requires knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences. 29 Another big takeaway is that many kids were not being taught this in school.

Soon after the book was published, Adams was describing her findings to a group of teachers and state education officials in Sacramento, California. She was sensing discomfort and confusion in the room. "And I just stopped and said, 'What is it that I'm missing?'" she recalled. "'What is it that we need to talk about? Help me.'"

A woman raised her hand and asked: "What does this have to do with the three-cueing system?" Marilyn didn't know what the three-cueing system was. "I think I blew all of their fuses that I did not [know what it was] since this was so fundamental to being an elementary reading teacher," she said. "How could I present myself to them as an expert on reading and not know about this?"

The teachers drew her a Venn diagram of the three-cueing system. It looked something like this:

Adams thought this diagram made perfect sense. The research clearly shows that readers use all of these cues to understand what they're reading.

But Adams soon figured out the disconnect. Teachers understood these cues not just as the way readers construct meaning from text, but as the way readers actually identify the words on the page. And they thought that teaching kids to decode or sound out words was not necessary.

"The most important thing was for the children to understand and enjoy the text," Adams said. "And from that understanding and joy of reading, the words on the page would just pop out at them."

She would explain to teachers at every opportunity that explicitly teaching children about the relationships between sounds and letters is essential to ensure all kids get off to a good start in reading. But she got tons of pushback from teachers. "They didn't want to teach phonics!" she recalled in frustration.

In 1998, Adams wrote a book chapter about how the three-cueing system conflicts with what researchers have figured out about reading. She hoped it would help put three cueing to rest. 30

By this time, the scientific research on reading was gaining traction. In 2000, a national panel convened by Congress to review the evidence on how to teach reading came out with a report. 31 It identified several essential components of reading instruction, including vocabulary, comprehension and phonics. The evidence that phonics instruction enhances children's success in learning how to read was clear and compelling. National reports on reading a few years later in the United Kingdom and Australia came to the same conclusion. 32

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it."-Stacey Cherny

Eventually, many whole language supporters accepted the weight of the scientific evidence about the importance of phonics instruction. They started adding phonics to their books and materials and renamed their approach "balanced literacy."

But they didn't get rid of the three-cueing system.

Balanced literacy proponents will tell you their approach is a mix of phonics instruction with plenty of time for kids to read and enjoy books. But look carefully at the materials and you'll see that's not really what balanced literacy is mixing. Instead, it's mixing a bunch of different ideas about how kids learn to read. It's a little bit of whole word instruction with long lists of words for kids to memorize. It's a little bit of phonics. And fundamentally, it's the idea that children should be taught to read using the three-cueing system.

And it turns out cueing may actually prevent kids from focusing on words in the way they need to become skilled readers.

Mapping the words

To understand why cueing can get in the way of children's reading development, it's essential to understand how our brains process the words we see.

Reading scientists have known for decades that the hallmark of being a skilled reader is the ability to instantly and accurately recognize words. 33 If you're a skilled reader, your brain has gotten so good at reading words that you process the word "chair" faster than you process a picture of a chair. 34 You know tens of thousands of words instantly, on sight. How did you learn to do that?

It happens through a process called "orthographic mapping." 35 This occurs when you pay attention to the details of a written word and link the word's pronunciation and meaning with its sequence of letters. 36 A child knows the meaning and pronunciation of "pony." The word gets mapped to his memory when he links the sounds /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ to the written word "pony."

That requires an awareness of the speech sounds in words and an understanding of how those sounds are represented by letters. 37 In other words, you need phonics skills.

Here's what happens when a reader who has good phonics skills comes to a word she doesn't recognize in print. She stops at the word and sounds it out. If it's a word she knows the meaning of, she has now linked the spelling of the word with its pronunciation. If she doesn't know the meaning of the word, she can use context to try to figure it out.

By about second grade, a typically developing reader needs just a few exposures to a word through understanding both the pronunciation and the spelling for that word to be stored in her memory. 38 She doesn't know that word because she memorized it as a visual image. She knows that word because at some point she successfully sounded it out.

The more words she stores in her memory this way, the more she can focus on the meaning of what she's reading; she'll eventually be using less brain power to identify words and will be able to devote more brain power to comprehending what she's reading. 39

But when children don't have good phonics skills, the process is different.

"They sample from the letters because they're not good at sounding them out," said David Kilpatrick, a psychology professor at SUNY Cortland and the author of a book about preventing reading difficulties. 40 "And they use context."

In other words, when people don't have good phonics skills, they use the cueing system.

"The three-cueing system is the way poor readers read," said Kilpatrick.

And if teachers use the cueing system to teach reading, Kilpatrick says they're not just teaching children the habits of poor readers, they are actually impeding the orthographic mapping process. 41

"The minute you ask them just to pay attention to the first letter or look at the picture, look at the context, you're drawing their attention away from the very thing that they need to interact with in order for them to read the word [and] remember the word," Kilpatrick said. In this way, he said, three cueing can actually prevent the critical learning that's necessary for a child to become a skilled reader.

In many balanced literacy classrooms, children are taught phonics and the cueing system. Some kids who are taught both approaches realize pretty quickly that sounding out a word is the most efficient and reliable way to know what it is. Those kids tend to have an easier time understanding the ways that sounds and letters relate. They'll drop the cueing strategies and begin building that big bank of instantly known words that is so necessary for skilled reading.

But some children will skip the sounding out if they're taught they have other options. Phonics is challenging for many kids. The cueing strategies seem quicker and easier at first. And by using context and memorizing a bunch of words, many children can look like good readers - until they get to about third grade, when their books begin to have more words, longer words, and fewer pictures. Then they're stuck. They haven't developed their sounding-out skills. Their bank of known words is limited. Reading is slow and laborious and they don't like it, so they don't do it if they don't have to. While their peers who mastered decoding early are reading and teaching themselves new words every day, the kids who clung to the cueing approach are falling further and further behind. 42

These poor reading habits, once ingrained at a young age, can follow kids into high school. Some kids who were taught the cueing approach never become good readers. Not because they're incapable of learning to read well but because they were taught the strategies of struggling readers.

'So what if they use the picture?'

Once Margaret Goldberg discovered the cognitive science evidence against cueing, she wanted her colleagues in the Oakland school district to know about it too.

Over the past two years, Goldberg and a fellow literacy coach named Lani Mednick have been leading a grant-funded pilot project to improve reading achievement in the Oakland schools. 43

They have their work cut out for them. Nearly half the district's third-graders are below grade level in reading. Goldberg and Mednick want to raise questions about how kids in Oakland are being taught to read.

They meet every couple weeks with literacy coaches from the 10 elementary schools in the pilot program. They read and discuss articles about the scientific research on reading. At a meeting in March, the coaches watched the video of the "picture power" lesson.

"This teacher meant well," Mednick said to the coaches after they watched the lesson. "It seemed like she believed this lesson would ensure her students would be on the road toward reading."

Mednick wanted the coaches to consider the beliefs about reading that would lead to the creation of a lesson like "picture power." The Oakland schools purchased the Units of Study for Teaching Reading series, which includes the "picture power" lesson, as part of a balanced literacy initiative the district began about 10 years ago. The district also bought the Fountas and Pinnell assessment system.

The coaches saw right away that "picture power" was designed to teach kids the cueing system. But they said many teachers don't see any problem with cueing. After all, one of the cues is to look at the letters in the word. What's wrong with teaching kids lots of different strategies to figure out unknown words? 44

"I remember before we started looking at the science and everything, I thought to myself, 'Reading is so hard for kids, so what if they use the picture?'" said Soraya Sajous-Brooks, the early literacy coach at Prescott Elementary School in West Oakland. "Like, use everything you've got."

But she's come to understand that cueing sends the message to kids that they don't need to sound out words. Her students would get phonics instruction in one part of the day. Then they'd go reader's workshop and be taught that when they come to a word they don't know, they have lots of strategies. They can sound it out. They can also check the first letter, look at the picture, think of a word that makes sense.

Teaching cueing and phonics doesn't work, Sajous-Brooks said. "One negates the other."

Goldberg and Mednick want to show the district there's a better way to teach reading. Schools in the pilot project used grant money to buy new materials that steer clear of the three-cueing idea. Two charter school networks in Oakland are working on similar projects to move their schools away from cueing.

To see what it looks like, I visited a first-grade classroom at a charter school in Oakland called Achieve Academy. 45

One part of the day was explicit phonics instruction. 46 The students were divided into small groups based on their skill level. They met with their teacher, Andrea Ruiz, at a kidney-shaped table in a corner of the classroom. The lowest-level group worked on identifying the speech sounds in words like "skin" and "skip." The highest-level group learned how verbs like "spy" and "cry" are spelled as "spied' and 'cried" in the past tense.

There were also vocabulary lessons. 47 The entire class gathered on a rug at the front of the classroom to talk about a book Ms. Ruiz read out loud to them. One of the words in the book was "prey."

"What animals are a chameleon's prey?" Ms. Ruiz asked the children. "Or we can also ask, what animals do chameleons hunt for food?"

The kids turned and talked to each other. "A chameleon's prey are bugs and insects and other chameleons and mice and birds," a little boy explained to his classmate. "That's it."

Other vocabulary words these first-graders had learned were posted on cards around the classroom. They included: wander, persevere, squint and scrumptious. The kids weren't expected to read those words yet. The idea is to build their oral vocabulary so that when they can read those words, they know what the words mean.

This comes straight from the scientific research, which shows that reading comprehension is the product of two things. 48 First, a child needs to be able to sound out a word. Second, the child needs to know the meaning of the word she just sounded out. So, in a first-grade classroom that's following the research, you will see explicit phonics instruction and also lessons that build oral vocabulary and background knowledge. And you will see kids practicing what they've been taught.

After their vocabulary lesson, the kids did "buddy reading." They retreated to various spots around the classroom to read books to each other. I found Belinda sitting on an adult chair at the back of the classroom, her little legs swinging. Across from her was her buddy Steven, decked out in a yellow and blue plaid shirt tucked neatly into his jeans. He held the book and pointed to the words while Belinda read.

"Ellen /m/," Belinda paused, sounding out the word "meets." She was reading a decodable book about some kids who visit a farm. Almost all of the words in the book contain spelling patterns she'd been taught in her phonics lessons.

"I am a farm here," Belinda read.

Steven did a double-take. "A farmer here," he said gently. Steven's job as Belinda's reading buddy was to help her if she missed a word or got stuck. But that didn't happen much because Belinda had been taught how to read the words. She didn't need any help from the pictures, either. She barely glanced at them as she read.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with pictures. They're great to look at and talk about, and they can help a child comprehend the meaning of a story. Context - including a picture if there is one - helps us understand what we're reading all the time. But if a child is being taught to use context to identify words, she's being taught to read like a poor reader.

Many educators don't know this because the cognitive science research has not made its way into many schools and schools of education. 49

Ruiz didn't know about this research until the Oakland pilot project. "I didn't really know anything about how kids learn to read when I started teaching," she said. It was a relief when she came to Oakland and the curriculum spelled out that kids use meaning, structure and visual cues to figure out words. "Because I came from not having anything, I was like, 'Oh, there's a way we should teach this,'" she said.

I heard this from other educators. Cueing was appealing because they didn't know what else to do.

"When I got into the classroom and someone told me to use this practice, I didn't question it," said Stacey Cherny, a former teacher who's now principal of an elementary school in Pennsylvania. She says many teachers aren't taught what they need to know about the structure of the English language to be able to teach phonics well. She says phonics can be intimidating; three cueing isn't.

Another reason cueing holds on is that it seems to work for some children. But researchers estimate there's a percentage of kids - perhaps about 40 percent - who will learn to read no matter how they're taught. 50 According to Kilpatrick, children who learn to read with cueing are succeeding in spite of the instruction, not because of it.

Goldberg hopes the pilot project in Oakland will convince the district to drop all instructional materials that include cueing.

When asked about this, the Oakland superintendent's office responded with a written statement that there isn't enough evidence from the pilot project to make curriculum changes for the entire district and that the Oakland schools remain committed to balanced literacy.

Oakland's situation is no different from many other districts across the country that have invested millions of dollars in materials that include cueing.

"It feels like everyone's trusting somebody else to have done their due diligence," Goldberg said. "Classroom teachers are trusting that the materials they're being handed will work. The people who purchase the materials are trusting if they were on the market, that they will work. We're all trusting, and it's a system that is broken."

'My science is different'

If cueing was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, why is the idea still in materials that are being sold to schools?

One answer to that question is that school districts still buy the materials. Heinemann, the company that publishes the Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Calkins' products that the Oakland schools use, earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million in 2018, according to earnings reports. 51

I wanted to know what the authors of those materials make of the cognitive science research. And I wanted to give them a chance to explain the ideas behind their work. I wrote to Calkins, Fountas and Pinnell and asked for interviews. They all declined. Heinemann sent a statement that said every product the company sells is informed by extensive research.

I also asked Ken Goodman for an interview. It's been more than 50 years since he first laid out the three-cueing theory in that 1967 paper. I wanted to know what he thinks of the cognitive science research. Of the major proponents of three cueing I reached out to, he was the only one who agreed to an interview.

I visited Goodman at his home in Tucson, Arizona. He's 91. He uses a scooter to get around, but he's still working. He just finished a new edition of one of his books.

When I asked him what he makes of the cognitive science research, he told me he thinks scientists focus too much on word recognition. He still doesn't believe accurate word recognition is necessary for reading comprehension.

"Word recognition is a preoccupation," he said. "I don't teach word recognition. I teach people to make sense of language. And learning the words is incidental to that."

He brought up the example of a child who comes to the word "horse" and says "pony" instead. His argument is that a child will still understand the meaning of the story because horse and pony are the same concept.

I pressed him on this. First of all, a pony isn't the same thing as a horse. Second, don't you want to make sure that when a child is learning to read, he understands that /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ says "pony"? And different letters say "horse"?

He dismissed my question.

"The purpose is not to learn words," he said. "The purpose is to make sense."

Cognitive scientists don't dispute that the purpose of reading is to make sense of the text. But the question is: How can you understand what you are reading if you can't accurately read the words? And if quick and accurate word recognition is the hallmark of being a skilled reader, how does a little kid get there?

Goodman rejected the idea that you can make a distinction between skilled readers and unskilled readers; he doesn't like the value judgment that implies. He said dyslexia does not exist - despite lots of evidence that it does. 52 And he said the three-cueing theory is based on years of observational research. In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.

"My science is different," Goodman said.

This idea that there are different kinds of evidence that lead to different conclusions about how reading works is one reason people continue to disagree about how children should be taught to read. It's important for educators to understand that three cueing is based on theory and observational research and that there's decades of scientific evidence from labs all over the world that converges on a very different idea about skilled reading.

The cognitive science does not provide all the answers about how to teach children to read, but on the question of how skilled readers read words, scientists have amassed a huge body of evidence.

Goldberg thinks it's time for educators across the country to take a close look at all the materials they use to teach reading.

"We should look through the materials and search for evidence of cueing," she said. "And if it's there, don't touch it. Don't let it get near our kids, don't let it get near our classrooms, our teachers."

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The Ohio Department of Education aims to increase student achievement through improving language and literacy outcomes for all students. A successful language and literacy framework is built on five interrelated components-teacher capacity, shared leadership, multi-tiered systems of support, parent partnerships and community collaboration.

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Coming this fall!

Explicit and highly engaging activities to support Phonemic Awareness. Please click the pictures or buttons to access the resources.

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Developed by Brooke Diviak

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Activity Mat for Grapheme-Phoneme Mapping

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For more information on explicit mapping instruction see Grace, K. (2006). Phonics and Spelling through Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping. Sopris West.

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Reading Ready, a word reading curriculum for educators and manual for parents/caregivers, is now available. Be sure to check out the website. Coming this fall! Explicit and highly engaging activities to support Phonemic Awareness. Please click the pictures or buttons to access the resources.

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Discussion about "advance" phonemic Awareness- Shanahan

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Discussion about "advance" phonemic Awareness- Shanahan

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Not long ago, I dared question the evidence supporting the teaching of "advanced phonemic awareness." That elicited negative reactions from some educators who found my assertions threatening. Their notion was that if I raised doubts about this, then balanced literacy, whole language, cueing systems and the fall of the Republic would be manifest upon the land.

I'm not saying that there aren't balanced literacy fanatics who cheer when I tell the truth about something like that (I wish they were as happy when I explain why it's a bad idea to teach kids to guess words from context in place of reading).

Okay. I say there is no evidence for teaching advanced phonemic awareness and some readers are ticked off and dismissive and others are chanting, "Hooray for our side."

But this hypothesis- that we may need to teach advanced PA - is too important to leave in this fog of virtue signaling and side choosing.

This idea of advanced phonemic awareness was popularized by David A. Kilpatrick, a psychology professor at the State University of New York at Cortland. David has had a long career in school psychology and academia and may be the best-read scholar when it comes to things alphabetic.

How better to evaluate this idea than to turn to the source himself? He, more than anyone, knows from whence it came and the evidence, if any, that supports it. We recently spent a couple hours exploring these issues, and I reread the relevant portions of his landmark, 2015, book. Essential of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties.

David thought a major clarification was needed. In his 2015 book, he used the terms "phonemic proficiency" and "advanced phonemic awareness" interchangeably to refer to a cognitive or linguistic skill. He never used these terms to refer to any specific instructional activities. Nevertheless, many educators have conflated advanced phonemic awareness with the notion that certain teaching activities, namely phoneme deletion and substitution, were required. That notion came from some readers of his book, not from David. He never claimed that all kids needed to be engaged in deletion or substitution tasks.

This misunderstanding has led David to abandon the term "advanced phonemic awareness" altogether. He still refers to the underlying ability that all students must develop as phonemic proficiency. When suggesting relevant instructional activities, he describes them specifically (e.g., blending, segmentation, deletion, substitution). The point is to distinguish the ability that students must learn from the instructional activities we use to promote that ability.

More interesting are his insights regarding phonemic proficiency.

He begins with Linnea Ehri's theory of orthographic mapping. That theory "explains how children learn to read words by sight, to spell words from memory, and to acquire vocabulary words from print" (Ehri, 2014, p. 5). Basically, young readers need to develop sufficient knowledge of the letters and phonemes so that printed words and spelling patterns can be connected with phonological representations in the mind. It is these phonemic representations that are the anchors that secure that information in memory.

Readers only briefly and occasionally "sound out" words when they read. That would be too slow and laborious (a fact that troubles balanced literacy proponents). Orthographic mapping, like any kind of fast mapping (the concept was drawn from the language learning literature) is about getting information into memory quickly and effortlessly.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Ehri champions teaching letter names, spelling, and phonemic awareness so that students can fully segment (analysis) and blend (synthesis) the sounds. This means they could separate words into their phonemic parts proficiently and reassemble them. Those abilities play an obvious functional role in orthographic mapping. As the National Reading Panel reported, teaching PA improves reading achievement (NICHD, 2000).

That's where most of us leave it and why I dared question claims that students may require more PA than that. And, that's where it gets interesting...

You see, David isn't like most of us. He didn't see that research as complete. Oh, he bought into the idea that kids needed explicit instruction in PA, he just wondered if that was sufficient for everyone.

No idle wondering was this.

It led him back through a plethora of studies to see what was going on with kids who didn't succeed and why some word-reading interventions ended up with better results than others.

He concluded that some kids with core phonological processing deficiencies needed more help developing these phonemic anchors. Meeting typical early learning criteria (e.g., knowing letter names and sounds, segmenting words phonemically) simply were not getting these children far enough.

Studies have reported that older students demonstrate much greater phonemic proficiency than younger students. That means the ability continues to grow beyond the period of explicit teaching that is now often provided in grades K-1. We have long known that PA and reading are reciprocal - PA development improves early reading and reading practice extends PA.

Kilpatrick's hypothesis is that for most kids, developing PA to the point where they can fully segment words is all that is needed to get things rolling-the PA automaticity that supports orthographic mapping naturally develops from there. He concludes that "business as usual" reading and spelling instruction and reading and writing practice are all that are needed to keep PA proficiency developing. Except...

Except for those kids with core phonological deficits . . . the ones who simply don't get enough PA support from usual reading experience. They would, he hypothesizes, benefit from from more extended PA instruction to promote the phonemic proficiency displayed by typical readers. The point of this isn't to engage kids in particular kinds of practice (e.g., deleting phonemes, adding phonemes, reversing phonemes), though engaging in some of them may be part of such practice - David thinks that could be beneficial. No, the purpose is to enable orthographic mapping.

Is this a goofy theory? I didn't think so, but who am I? I, again, went to the source. Who would have better insight into the value of this hypothesis than Linnea Ehri?

She has a somewhat different conception of the form that this advanced development may take but she agreed with many (most) of his predictions of what would work and with whom and why it would matter. So, not a crazy idea at all. (Maybe those people who claimed me to be an idiot might be onto something.)

Remember, however, my complaint about "advanced PA" wasn't about its potential accuracy or its value as a hypothesis that could help advance our understanding. No, my problem was with folks who were extending PA instruction in the classroom for everyone, states adopting more extended or rigorous PA standards for all, and the like. Kilpatrick agreed with this concern. He said most students should not require this degree of PA training. He wasn't abandoning the idea that students needed phonemic proficiency that exceeded the abilities to segment and blend, just acknowledging that those extended levels of proficiency develop naturally in most students. (Remember, his 2015 book was focused on struggling readers.)

What of all of that?

David did look at a lot of studies and his ideas did emerge from the patterns he noticed in the word-reading intervention literature. To many that would seem to make his claims research-based and scientific. But a direct study that compared the efficacy of different kinds of PA instruction would be needed to convince the scientific community. David believes that the patterns he identified in existing studies provide valuable clues about best practices, not this is a "fully established scientific finding."

For instance, Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist wrote: "When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition."

That just means that you need to test those patterns that you think you saw in the original data. In this case, if you taught PA to the point that some kids could do those more complex phonemic manipulations while staying to segmentation and blending with the others, you'd find out whether that kind of teaching was advantageous. It might be, but until such studies are done, we won't know.

I wondered how Linnea Ehri felt about that. One could understand she might choose to embrace David's hypothesis as a way of advancing her own theory.

Her response?

"David's hypotheses need to be tested directly with controlled studies that examine whether training improves phonemic proficiency, the involvement of grapho-phonemic proficiency, and whether this facilitates sight word learning in typically developing readers and struggling readers."

Nothing self-serving there. Just a scientist frankly evaluating the science.

Oh, and, perhaps more on point, is David Kilpatrick's own take on the matter:

"We completely agree that a study is needed in which the only difference between groups is the nature and extent to which phonemic skills are developed. Indeed, that was supposed to happen last year with 200 severely reading disabled students. But due to COVID-19, that got scrapped."

Maybe, I'm not the idiot or whole language devotee some of you presumed.

Where does that leave us?

1. Kilpatrick, Ehri, and Shanahan agree that there is substantial evidence showing a clear benefit from explicitly teaching young readers to perceive the sounds (phonemes) within spoken words and to link these sounds with letters and spelling patterns. Getting kids to the point of full segmentation in PA is a reasonable goal for regular classroom instruction.

2. We agree that the engine of learning words is not rote memorization but a deep knowledge and proficiency of phonemes and letters in words.

3. We also agree that there are some students who manage to accomplish those levels or degrees of PA efficiency but for some reason still fail to accomplish orthographic mapping.

4. We all agree that more needs to be done for those kids, but here there are some variations in our thoughts about what is needed.

5. Kilpatrick has a cool theory that suggests that instruction could profitably automatize phonemic analysis skills - enabling orthographic mapping. That instruction would not be for all students but only for those who don't get to that point of "sight word" reading. We all agree that his idea may be correct.

6. We also all agree that this idea is worth testing and that until it is tested, it has the status of a sensible data-based hypothesis, but that it is not a proven method for improving reading achievement. Until there is such evidence, "advanced PA mandates" and the like is the work of politicians and salesmen rather than scientists and educators.

Oh, and given the unfortunate misuse of the term "advanced phonemic awareness," let's join David and abandon its use. Rest in peace, advanced phonemic awareness.

Thanks, David and Linnea. Your generosity in helping me with this blog entry is deeply appreciated. Your integrity and deep devotion to a true science of reading is laudable. Of course, if I've gotten anything wrong here, that's on me - not you.

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RIP to Advanced Phonemic Awareness | Shanahan on Literacy

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RIP to Advanced Phonemic Awareness, This blog explains the theory of advanced phonemic awareness and shows that it is not yet a research-based or science of reading idea because its effectiveness has not been tested.

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This is the website for sound wall resources, West Va Explicit phonics lessons (you'll need to create a free account), 50 Nifty ideas and more!

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Tools 4 Reading provides great resoures for your classroom such as Phoneme/Grapheme Card and Kid Lips.

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Abstract

Two masked priming experiments investigated the time course of the activation of sub-phonemic information during visual word recognition. EEG was recorded as participants read targets with voiced and unvoiced final consonants (e.g., fad and fat), preceded by nonword primes that were incongruent or congruent in voicing and vowel duration (e.g., fap or faz). Experiment 1 used a long duration mask (100 ms) between prime and target, whereas Experiment 2 used a short mask (22 ms). Phonological feature congruency began modulating the amplitude of brain potentials by 80 ms; the feature incongruent condition evoked greater negativity than the feature congruent condition in both Experiments. The early onset of the congruency effect indicates that skilled readers initially activate sub-phonemic feature information during word identification. Congruency effects also appeared in the middle and late periods of word recognition, suggesting that readers use phonological representations in multiple aspects of visual word recognition.

Research over the past twenty years established that phonological processing deficits underlie most difficulties in learning to read (for reviews see: Adams, 1990; Goswami, 2007; Liberman et al., 1989; Snowling, 1998), yet the role that phonological processing plays in skilled reading is far from being completely understood. Numerous studies have demonstrated that skilled readers activate phonological representations during visual word recognition (for reviews see: Frost, 1998; Rastle and Brysbaert, 2006), but the nature and function of those representations remain largely unknown. The present study addresses theoretical questions about the input and output of lexical access processes. It investigates when phonological features become relevant in visual word recognition, and whether initial phonological processing is constrained by the lexicality of the prime.

Phonological features are the constituents of phonemes that differentiate entries in the lexicon. Whereas phonological features describe a listener's internal representation of a spoken word form, phonetic features are the parts of the acoustic signal that indicate the underlying phonological form. Several types of phonological features exist, including manner of articulation, place of articulation, and voicing. The voicing feature differentiates the /b/ phoneme from the /p/ phoneme, for example, even though these two sounds have the same manner and place of articulation. For example, slab and slap differ in terms of final consonant voicing. As final consonant voicing has the effect of lengthening the duration of the preceding vowel, minimal pairs with a final consonant voicing contrast necessarily differ along two dimensions of phonetic features (i.e., voicing and vowel duration). The present experiments manipulated these dimensions in order to investigate whether skilled readers process phonological feature information during visual word recognition.

Many studies have demonstrated phonological priming in visual word recognition using homophones, pseudohomophones, and orthographically matched non-homophone primes (see for reviews: Frost, 1998; Grainger et al., 2006; Rastle and Brysbaert, 2006). These experiments are informative about phonological processing, but they do not provide information about the specificity of phonological representations in reading, because pseudohomophones prime all aspects of phonology (e.g., consonant and vowel segments, phonemes, and phonological features).

Other experiments have investigated the specific nature of phonological representations used in visual word recognition. Several studies report that these representations include syllable information ( Ashby and Martin, 2008; Ashby and Rayner, 2004; Carreiras et al., 1993; Carreiras and Perea, 2002; Chen et al., 2003; Ferrand et al., 1997; Hutzler et al., 2005), and there is some evidence for the representation of onset-rime units ( Ashby et al. 2006; Treiman et al., 1995) and lexical stress information ( Ashby and Clifton, 2005; Columbo, 1992). Thus, previous research indicates that skilled readers' phonological representations include several levels of phonological information beyond the level of phoneme segments.

The question of whether readers' phonological representations include sub-phonemic feature information has been investigated recently in two lexical decision studies ( Lukatela et al., 2001; 2004). Lukatela et al. (2001) used a four-field masked priming paradigm (i.e., mask-prime-mask-target) to present nonword primes that differed from their targets by one or two features ( ZEA- sea vs. VEA- sea). In the 57 ms stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) conditions, lexical decision times were faster when the prime differed from the target by one feature than when it differed by two features. In a subsequent paper, Lukatela et al. (2004) varied the phonetic properties of vowel duration by manipulating final consonant voicing, in order to test whether vowel duration information affected lexical decision times. In these masked priming experiments, words like pleat and plead were preceded by a variety of primes: three experiments contrasted an identical word condition ( plead/plead) with a condition where the prime's final consonant differed in voicing ( pleat/plead), a condition with a dissimilar lexical prime ( roach/plead), or a control string (XXXXX/ plead). In the most relevant experiments, lexical decision times were consistently slower for the long vowel duration targets than the short vowel duration targets, replicating an effect reported initially by Abramson and Goldinger (1997). Further, identity priming effects were larger for long vowel duration words than short vowel duration words. The vowel length effect suggests that a detailed phonological representation is accessed during lexical decision. Lukatela et al. (2004) claimed that differences in the identity priming effects for short and long duration words indicate an early role for phonological features in word recognition; they concluded that phonetic and phonological information are activated during lexical access. However, lexical decision is a measure of binary decision making (word/not word) and not necessarily a measure of word recognition in terms of identifying a unique lexical entry ( Balota and Chumbley, 1984). In addition, reaction times measure the end-point of processing and offer little information about the time-course of phonological effects. Thus, the data from Lukatela and colleagues suggest that phonological features are represented during visual word recognition but do not specify when this activation occurs.

Establishing the time course of activation in visual word recognition is central to understanding how phonological processes operate during reading. According to one conception, skilled readers activate semantic and syntactic processes primarily from direct access of the orthographic form, at least for familiar words ( Shaywitz, 2003; Smith, 1999). Were this the case, it would be surprising to find evidence that skilled readers represent specific phonetic correlates of a phonological contrast (i.e., phonological features) early in visual word recognition. Rather, one might expect phonology to become more salient later at the point of lexical identification, as a full phonological representation is activated and used to integrate words into sentences ( Frost, 1998). Alternatively, it is possible that phonology plays an early role in the visual word recognition of skilled readers ( Perfetti et al., 1988; Perfetti, 1999; Pollatsek et al., 1992; Rayner and Pollatsek, 1989). Readers might generate production codes quickly from the orthographic form, and thereby activate the underlying phonological representation ( Ashby, 2006). If readers used orthographic information to activate an initial representation that resembles the acoustic information available in speech, one would expect that production representation to include phonological and phonetic detail.

Previous ERP studies have examined the time-course of phonological processing in visual word recognition, but the large time range of effects (200-500 ms) does not indicate with any precision when phonology first impacts lexical processing. Phonological effects typically appeared between 300 and 500 ms in early ERP studies that required semantic, rhyming, or sentence acceptability judgments ( Kutas and Van Petten, 1990; Rugg, 1984; Rugg and Barrett, 1987). However, Kramer and Donchin (1987) reported phonological effects in the 200 ms to 300 ms window in a rhyme judgment experiment. More recent studies also tend to find phonological effects between 200 - 300 ms. For example, Newman and Connolly (2004) investigated phonological and orthographic processing using an RSVP paradigm that presented highly predictable sentence contexts to raise readers' expectations of a particular orthographic word form. When the target word violated readers' orthographic expectations, they found larger N270 amplitudes than in the congruent word condition that met readers' expectations. Newman and Connolly (2004) claim that the N270 suggests the operation of phonological recoding processes that are important for sentence integration. Experiments using an oddball paradigm, which required explicit judgments for non-target items, found phonological effects as early as 290 ms ( Bentin et al., 1999; Simon et al., 2004). One study that examined orthography to phonetic translation processes, reported that ERPs differentiated legal from illegal letter strings by 150 ms ( Proverbio et al., 2004). However, this effect cannot be attributed solely to phonological/phonetic processing, as string legality was both orthographic and phonological in nature.

In most previous ERP studies, participants read target words that appeared on the screen suddenly, without any prior word form information. Sudden-onset presentations might give rise to word recognition processes that differ from those occurring in more natural reading situations. During silent reading, the extension of the perceptual span to the right of the fixated word (in English), allows readers to obtain word form information before a word is processed foveally during fixation. Eye movement studies of silent reading indicate that skilled readers routinely use this parafoveal form information to facilitate word recognition, even though they are not consciously aware of doing so (see Rayner, 1998 for a review). Therefore, the availability of word form information prior to foveal processing might be key to tapping the time-course of phonological processing during a typical reading experience. Surprisingly, it appears that parafoveal presentation of the advance information is not necessary to obtain these effects; experiments report phonological priming effects when foveal primes are briefly presented during the initial moments of fixation during silent reading (H.W Lee et al., 1999; Y.A. Lee et al., 1999). Therefore, there is some reason to expect that brief masked primes that present advance information foveally and below the threshold of conscious detection might yield earlier phonological effects in ERPs.

A few ERP studies have used a masked priming paradigm to investigate phonological priming. Grainger et al. (2006) conducted a masked-priming study in which participants read targets (e.g., BRAIN) preceded by pseudohomophone primes (e.g., brane) and orthographic control primes (e.g., brant), brain potentials were more negative between 250 - 350 ms at anterior sites only, for the orthographic control condition compared to the pseudohomophone condition. Ashby and Martin (2008) conducted a masked-priming study with syllable congruent and incongruent nonword primes that also yielded an increased negativity to the incongruent condition between 250 -350 ms. The time course of effects in these two studies suggests that masked priming results in somewhat earlier phonological effects than are reported in most previous ERP studies (i.e., before 300 ms). However, the timing of these effects is still difficult to reconcile with previous eye movement research.

Phonological effects appearing around 250 ms in ERPs would be too late to affect fixation durations during silent reading ( Rayner, 1998; Sereno and Rayner, 2003). Given that the phonological similarity of parafoveal and foveal representations consistently decreases fixation durations ( Ashby and Rayner, 2004; Pollatsek et al., 1992), phonological effects on fixation duration should occur within 100 - 130 ms after the start of the fixation. This is because there is a 120 - 150 ms delay between programming an eye movement and making an eye movement. Some ERP studies have reported early effects in word recognition that are consistent with this time line. Hauk et al. (2006) found effects of word length and letter frequency around 110 ms and Sereno et al. (1998) found effects of word frequency as early as 130 ms. However, these studies necessarily compared different target words and so possible early effects could be confounded with low level visual differences (e.g., in the letter composition of high and low frequency words). Overall, the results of eye movement studies and some ERP experiments suggest that prelexical phonological priming effects should appear by around 100 ms.

The present experiments investigated how phonological features are processed in visual word recognition. We examined the ERPs elicited by printed words with voiced final consonants ( fad) and unvoiced final consonants ( fat) preceded by nonword primes that were congruent or incongruent in terms of voicing and vowel duration ( fak/ faz). With this design, the congruent and incongruent primes and targets were visually identical; congruency depended on the relationship between the two. The predictions for the present study are straightforward. If readers process feature information, such as voicing, in order to form an initial phonological representation, then the ERP waveforms elicited when a prime is phonologically congruent with the subsequent target should differ from waveforms elicited by the phonologically incongruent condition early in word recognition. However, if skilled readers primarily rely on a visual route to directly access familiar words in the lexicon, then incongruent phonological information should be irrelevant early in word recognition and one would not expect to find any early differences in the congruent and incongruent ERP waveforms.

Methods

Participants

Twenty students at the University of Massachusetts were paid $18.00 or received 3 experimental credits to participate in an experiment. Two students who participated in Experiment 1 also participated in Experiment 2. All participants were right-handed, native English speakers with normal, or corrected to normal, vision. Data from an additional six participants in Experiment 1 and three participants in Experiment 2 were excluded from the grand averages due to technical problems.

Apparatus and procedure

EEG was recorded continuously as participants read single words silently. A 21″ NEC Multisync monitor running at 90 Hz displayed the words in cyan letters on a black background1. Participants first saw a ready signal, and initiated the trial with a keypress that was followed by a fixation cross in the center of the screen for 500 ms ( Fig. 1 ). Target words were presented in a four-field masked priming paradigm that presented a forward mask (100 ms), a lowercase nonword prime (44 ms), a backward mask (100 ms in Experiment 1, 22 ms in Experiment 2), and then the target word in uppercase (800 ms). On each trial, the fields were a consistent number of characters. Most participants reported seeing a row of hash marks (#####) followed by the target word, and a few reported seeing a flash. No one reported seeing letter strings before the targets appeared. Semantic judgments were made on half of the filler trials via keypress. Questions that tapped five semantic categories were presented after the target disappeared from the screen (e.g., is it clothing, does it fly, is it bigger than a shoebox). E-prime software ( www.psnet.com) presented the materials and recorded manual responses. The experiment was completed in one session of approximately 60 minutes. The procedures in the two experiments were identical except for the viewing of the display, the font size, and the duration of the mask intervening between prime and target. Experiment 1 trials were viewed on a fully visible computer screen, whereas in Experiment 2 trials appeared within a 3″ × 5″ window cut into black coreboard that masked the rest of the screen. The font size was reduced from 14 point Courier in Experiment 1 to 10 point Monaco in Experiment 2. The most substantial difference between the two experiments was the use of a long duration backward mask in Experiment 1 (100 ms) and a short duration backward mask (22 ms) in Experiment 2.

Materials and design

The materials for Experiments 1 and 2 were identical. Participants read 48 words with a final unvoiced consonant (e.g., fat) and 48 words with a final voiced consonant (e.g., fad), preceded by masked nonword primes that were incongruent or congruent with the target in terms of the voicing of the final consonant. The nonword primes differed from targets by one letter, which was the final consonant phoneme. Twelve targets were preceded by incongruent primes that differed from the target only in voicing and vowel duration (e.g., cobe/ cope). Remaining targets differed by at least one additional feature (e.g., neek/need). Many of our target words were taken from the materials in Lukatela et al., (2004). Target words ranged from 3-5 letters in length (mean = 3.9 letters), with voiced and unvoiced targets matched for length and initial bigram. Unvoiced and voiced targets had mean frequencies of 31 and 20 occurrences per million, respectively ( Francis and Kucera, 1982).

Participants read these 96 target words interspersed with 318 unrelated filler items that were also preceded by masked primes. One half of the filler items were similar in length, frequency, and morphology to the experimental items. The other half comprised longer, morphologically complex words. Unvoiced and voiced target words were presented in a different random order for each participant. Each participant read every target word once, with half of the targets preceded by incongruent primes and other half preceded by congruent primes. For a given participant, each pair of unvoiced and voiced targets was preceded by the identical masked prime, once in the incongruent condition and once in the congruent condition. Material lists and participant groups were fully counterbalanced.

ERP methods and data analysis

EEG was recorded reference-free in DC from sixty-four Ag/AgCl active electrodes arranged in the 10-20 international system ( Fig. 2 ). EOG electrodes were placed on the outer canthi as well as above and below the left eye. EEG and EOG potentials were amplified by Biosemi Active-Two amplifiers and sampled at a rate of 512 Hz. The EEG signals for each subject were band-pass filtered at 0.16 - 30 Hz and referenced to averaged mastoids offline using EEProbe software ( www.ant-neuro.com). Parts of the signal that contained EOG deflections of +/− 30 μV were rejected automatically and trials with low frequency shifts and other artifacts were rejected by hand. The EEG was segmented into epochs from the first mask (−244 ms in Experiment 1, −166 ms in Experiment 2) to 700 ms post-target onset. Next, the EEG for each electrode was averaged across trials for each participant in each condition, yielding individual averages that were baseline corrected for either 82 ms (Experiment 1) or 84 ms (Experiment 2) during the forward mask preceding the prime. Participant averages were then processed to produce the grand average for each condition.

Thirty-five electrodes were selected a priori to create complete rows and columns that coded for electrode position in the ANOVAs, and these data were included in the analyses2. The ANOVAs for each experiment included four within participant factors: Congruency between prime and target (incongruent or congruent), Target type (voiced or unvoiced) and Electrode position (Rows 1 - 5 and Columns 1 -7). As the voicing differences in the targets were confounded with physical differences in letters in the two sets of targets ( slab vs. slap), we present only congruency effects evident across the full set of items. Experiment was treated as a between participants factor in omnibus ANOVAs that tested 20 ms bins. Statistical analyses for three time periods (early: 80 -180 ms, middle: 200 - 520 ms, and late: 520 - 700 ms) were guided by congruency effects (or congruency by electrode position interactions) in consecutive bins. The N1 was identified as the first negative peak visible after target onset in each experiment. We report Greenhouse-Geisser adjusted p-values for contrasts with more than 1 degree of freedom. Effects with p-values at the.05 level or less were considered statistically significant. Significant interactions with congruency and electrode position were followed up with simple effects tests.

Results

Experiment 1

Figure 3 presents the effects of feature congruency between the prime and the target for Experiment 1 (the long backward mask). Early in word recognition, the feature-incongruent condition elicited a more negative waveform on average than did the feature-congruent condition in the 80 - 180 ms time range, F(1,19)= 8.33, p=.01. The effect appeared somewhat stronger at midline sites ( Fig. 6 ), F(6,114)= 3.14, p=.03. To determine the onset of this effect, significance was tested in two additional time windows: 60 - 80 ms, F<1, and 80- 100 ms, F(1,19)= 5.21, p=.03. The offset of the congruency effect was determined by testing the 180 - 200 ms window, F(1,19)= 3.22, p=.09. The 80 -180 ms window best captures the largest difference between conditions in the early period. Measurement of the waveform at FCZ (averaged over subjects) indicates that the first negative-going wave (N1) peaked at 148 ms.

Neither the congruency effect nor any interactions were significant between 200 - 320 ms, F(1, 19)= 1.04, p=.32. Congruency interacted with electrode position in the 320- 520 ms time range, F(4,76)= 4.52, p=.02. Fig. 6 describes the anterior congruency effect. As in the previous period, scalp potentials were more negative in the incongruent feature condition than in the congruent condition. The onset of the congruency by site interaction was tested in two time windows: 300 -320 ms, F(4,76)=2.07, p=.16, and 320 -340 ms, F(24, 456)= 2.02, p=.045. Measurement of the grand average waveform at FCZ indicates that this anterior negativity peaked at 447 ms. The offset of the congruency effect was determined by testing the 520 -540 ms bin, Fs<1. After 520 ms, no congruency effects were significant Fs<1.

Experiment 2

Figure 4 presents the effects of feature congruency between the prime and the target for Experiment 2 (the short backward mask). The feature-incongruent condition elicited a more negative waveform than did the feature-congruent condition in the 80 -120 ms window, F(1,19)= 10.41, p=.004. The onset of this congruency effect was tested in two consecutive time windows: 60- 80 ms, F<1, and 80-100 ms, F(1,19)= 10.39, p=.004. The offset of the congruency effect was determined by testing the 120 -140 ms window, F(1,19)= 1.31, p=.27. Inspection of the scalp distribution of potentials ( Fig. 6 ) in the 120 - 140 ms window suggests a lingering left-lateralized congruency effect that tended to be stronger at anterior sites, F(4,76)= 3.12, p=.06. The 80 -120 ms time range best captures the main effect of congruency in the early period. Measurement of the waveform at FCZ (averaged over subjects) indicates that the first negative going wave (N1) peaked at 100 ms.

The congruency effect was significant in the middle period of word recognition in the 200 -320 ms time range, F(1,19)= 8.28, p=.01. As with the earlier congruency effect, scalp potentials were more negative in the incongruent feature condition than in the congruent condition. The onset of this main effect was determined by testing for significance in two time bins: 180 - 200 ms, F(1,19)= 1.42, p=.24, and 200 - 220 ms, F(1,19)= 7.20, p=.015. The offset of the feature congruency effect was determined by testing the 320 - 340 ms window, F(1,19)= 3.25, p=.09. The 200 - 320 ms time range best captures the feature congruency effect in the middle period of word recognition.

In the later period of word recognition, a main effect of feature congruency reached significance in the 560 - 600 ms time range, F(1,19)= 4.45, p=.048, as well as a congruency by electrode row interaction, F(4,76)= 3.49, p=.045. Inspection of the waveforms suggests that the effect appeared weaker at the posterior sites tested. We determined the time range that best captured the congruency effect by testing for significance in two time bins: 540 - 560 ms, F(1,19)= 3.09, p=.10, and 560 -580 ms, F(1,19)= 3.48, p=.08. The marginal significance of the congruency effect in the latter window suggests a gradual onset. The offset of the effect was tested in the 600 - 620 ms bin, F(1,19)= 1.61, p=.22. The congruency by row interaction was not significant at any of these time windows (Fs<1.5). The 560 - 600 ms time range best captures the main effect of feature congruency in the late period of word recognition. Neither a main effect of congruency, F(1,19)= 2.50, p=.13, nor any interactions with electrode position (Fs<1) were significant between 600 - 700 ms.

Experiments 1 and 2

Omnibus ANOVAs tested for the effect of Experiment. The possible contributors to the Experiment factor are discussed further in the Discussion section. In addition to different participants, the experiments also differed in the duration of the mask that appeared between the prime and the target (Experiment 1 mask=100 ms, Experiment 2 mask= 22 ms). Before 320 ms we observed a main effect of Experiment in each time range; 80 -180 ms, F(1,38)=5.53, p=.024, and 200-320 ms, F(1,38)=7.58, p=.009. The main effect of Experiment was not significant in the following time ranges: 340 - 520 ms, F<.5; 520 - 600 ms, F<0.2; 600 - 700 ms, F<0.6. The waveforms presented in Figure 5 visually contrast the brain potentials in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Inspection of the waveforms supports statistical tests indicating that similar congruency effects occurred in both experiments until 320 ms, and illustrates substantial differences in the waveforms evoked in each experiment.

The Experiment factor did interact with congruency and electrode position in the 340 - 500 ms time range, F(4,152)= 3.51, p=.04. This interaction suggests that the presence of a congruency effect at anterior sites in Experiment 1 and the absence of a significant effect in Experiment 2 in this time range is the single reliable difference in congruency effects between Experiments.

Summary of Results

Significant feature-congruency effects appeared by 100 ms after target onset in both experiments ( Fig. 8 ). The congruency effect consistently manifested as more negative-going potentials in the incongruent condition as compared to the congruent condition. In both experiments, the congruency effect appeared on the N1, irrespective of its timing. However, the feature congruency effect does not appear to be time-locked to the N1, as its onset preceded the N1 in the first experiment, which used the longer mask. Figure 5 suggests that mask duration did not affect the initial timing of congruency effects, but did affect the timing of the N1 in the grand average. Figure 6 illustrates the relative durations of the early congruency effect in each experiment. The distribution of mean N1 peak times for participants ( Fig. 7 ) indicates that the short mask duration decreased the latency of the N1 peaks as compared to the long mask duration. In the middle period, a main effect of congruency appeared between 200 - 320 ms with the short mask in Experiment 2, but was not significant in Experiment 1. Experiment mask duration interacted with the congruency effect and electrode position between 340 - 500 ms. As seen in Fig.6 , a congruency effect is evident at anterior sites in Experiment 1, whereas no significant effect was observed in Experiment 2 during this time. Later in word recognition, a congruency effect did appear in Experiment 2 between 560 - 600 ms.

Discussion

Two masked priming experiments investigated phonological processing in visual word recognition, shedding light on how readers use sub-phonemic information. The central result of this study is a phonological feature congruency effect that was significant in three periods: early (80 -180 ms), middle (200 - 520 ms), and late (520 - 700 ms). These periods encompass the first, second, and third instance of observed congruency effects. In each period, the brain potentials of skilled readers were more negative when reading fat preceded by faz (the voicing incongruent condition) as compared to when fat was preceded by fak (the voicing congruent condition). The initial feature congruency effect onset around 80 ms in both experiments, which is the earliest phonological activation to be replicated in ERPs. The congruency effect is the first electrophysiological evidence to suggest that phonological processing in visual word recognition involves the activation of sub-phonemic feature information. The early onset of the effect also indicates a potential temporal alignment of ERP and eye movement accounts of phonological processing in visual word recognition. The appearance of a congruency effect in several periods of word recognition indicates that feature activation percolates through the cognitive system, affecting several aspects of the word identification process ( Holcomb and Grainger, 2007).

In terms of the nature of the phonological representations used in word recognition, the congruency effect suggests that skilled readers automatically activate sub-phonemic information to form highly detailed phonological, and possibly phonetic, representations. One could claim, however, that in this particular study participants needed to activate feature information in order to access a particular lexical entry and distinguish fat from fad. Were such minimal pairs the only items in our experiments, the congruency effect might be an artifact of strategic processing. Given that participants saw these words in the context of three hundred other words which were not minimal pairs, we propose that the activation of phonological features is automatic in word recognition.

Experiments 1 and 2 provide electrophysiological evidence that converges with existing behavioral data for the role of phonological features in visual word recognition ( Lukatela et al., 2001; 2004). Unfortunately, the present experiments cannot determine whether phonetic or phonological processing is the main contributor to our congruency effect. This is because in our materials, as in Lukatela et al., 2004, vowel duration is the phonetic correlate of underlying differences in phonological features (e.g., voicing) in English. Thus, we refer to our effect as phonological because phonological similarity necessarily contributes to the congruency effect, but phonetic processing may also be involved.

The high temporal resolution of the present ERP data contributes new information about the time course of feature processing. The onset of the feature congruency effect around 80 ms suggests that readers process features in the initial phases of visual word recognition. We attribute the congruency effect to the fundamental nature of features in language processing ( Lahiri and Reetz, 2003; Lukatela and Turvey, 2001; Pulvermuller et al., 2006). It would be unexpected to find such early priming effects for suprasegmental phonological information (e.g., rime, initial syllable, or lexical stress), as they comprise feature information that is processed initially.

The early congruency effect holds implications for understanding the front-end processes involved in lexical access. In terms of the input to visual word recognition, little is known about how the visual stimulus is converted to a language representation. It is possible that initial letter processing activates phonological representations without phonetic activation, and the congruency effect is consistent with this claim. The early onset of the congruency effect suggests that when congruent phonological feature information is activated by the prime letter string, it facilitates the initial activation of the target's phonological features during word recognition. Alternatively, it is possible that skilled readers might activate a phonetic representation that serves as the "acoustic input" to subsequent word recognition processes ( Ashby, 2006). The disjunction of the congruency effect onset (around 80 ms) and the N1 peak times in Experiment 1 ( Fig. 7 ) could suggest that feature congruent primes facilitate initial phonetic activation that is utilized by, but is separable from, lexical access processes. However, this conclusion would depend on a close link between N1 latency and a particular stage of lexical access.

We now discuss the priming effects we observed in relation to previous ERP studies of phonological priming in visual word recognition. Previous studies typically find phonological effects between 200 - 500 ms. Two recent studies used a masked-priming paradigm similar to the one used in the present experiments. Grainger et al. (2006) found increased negativity to targets preceded by orthographic control primes as compared to pseudohomophone primes between 250 -350 ms at anterior sites (N250). When Ashby and Martin (2008) used syllable congruent and incongruent nonword primes, they also found an increased negativity in the incongruent condition compared to the congruent condition between 250 -350 ms. The phonological effects in these experiments are comparable to the congruency effects observed in Experiment 2 between 200 - 320 ms and in Experiment 1 between 320 - 520 ms (respectively). The effects tended to be stronger at anterior sites and consistently showed more negative-going potentials in the phonologically incongruent condition. However, our congruency effects were evoked by nonword letter strings, whereas Grainger et al. used pseudohomophone primes that are entries in the phonological lexicon. Thus, the present data suggest that feature congruency effects in visual word recognition are not dependent on the lexicality of the prime. The similarity in the time course of Newman and Connolly's N270, the effects in previous masked priming ERP studies, and the present congruency effects in the middle period suggest that the phonological representations used for sentence integration could include feature and syllable information.

Studies of phonological priming in auditory word recognition are also useful in interpreting our results. Cognitive psychologists have posited an interface between spoken language and reading processes for quite some time ( Abramson and Goldinger, 1997; Huey, 1908; Lukatela et al., 2004; Rayner and Pollatsek, 1989). Recently, Poldrack et al. (2001) reported initial fMRI evidence for a neuro-anatomical locus for an interface between speech and reading in the pars triangularis. Therefore, theoretical and empirical justification exists for considering our results in the context of auditory studies of phonological priming.

In this volume, Newman and Connolly report a phonological mapping negativity (PMN) peaking around 290 ms that tended to be more negative at anterior sites and was not affected by lexicality of the target. As the PMN was elicited by a phoneme deletion task, it is difficult to link it with the feature congruency effect that peaked around 270 ms in our Experiment 2. Still, the feature congruency effect appears similar to the PMN in terms of its distribution, polarity, and direction of effect. An auditory ERP study by Praamstra et al. (1994) may be relevant to the late N400-type response observed in the present Experiment 1 (long mask duration). In Praamstra et al., participants listened to pairs of single syllable words; targets were preceded by alliterating and nonalliterating words and nonwords. This study found a phonological N400-type response to nonalliterating word and nonwords, relative to alliterating pairs, that started as early as 250 ms and peaked around 450 ms. Praamstra et al.'s effect is temporally similar to the later negativity we observed in Experiment 1 that peaked around 450 ms. Another similarity between the two sets of waveforms is the long window of negativity before the N450 peak in the present study and Praamstra's. However, the greatest difference in this preceding window appeared at posterior sites in Praamstra et al., whereas the slow onset of this congruency effect in Experiment 1 tended to be stronger at anterior sites. Praamstra et al. suggest that the alliterative congruency effect is earlier than the rhyming effect in their first experiment because the salient parts of the primes occurred in early positions. Although this may be correct in terms of speech perception, our data indicate that feature differences located at the end of words can give rise to early priming effects was well.

In summary, previous ERP research in visual and auditory word recognition has yielded effects similar to those found in the present study. Previous studies observed that brain potentials were more negative in the incongruent condition than in the congruent condition between 200 - 500 ms. The present congruency effects appeared in this time range and were in a similar direction. Some studies reported that this negativity tended to be stronger at anterior sites, as we observed in the present study. Auditory studies found that this negativity is independent of target lexicality, and our congruency effects were elicited by nonword primes. Thus, it seems that the congruency effects in this middle period of word recognition are at least superficially similar to the phonological effects reported in previous ERP research.

An additional result that may interest some readers is the effect of backward mask duration on target word processing. We manipulated the duration of the backward mask in order to investigate the effect of prime-target SOA (stimulus-onset asynchrony) on phonological priming processes. Experiment 1 used a long mask between prime and target (SOA of 144 ms), whereas Experiment 2 used a short mask (SOA of 66 ms).3 A main effect of Experiment was evident before 320 ms, and SOA interacted with the congruency effect later in word recognition (340 - 500 ms). Inspection of the data in Fig. 5 and ​and7 7 suggests that a shorter prime-target SOA affected three aspects of the waveform in Experiment 2 as compared to Experiment 1: the latency of the N1, the latency of congruency effects in the middle period, and the absence of a significant N450 -type component. These neurophysiological differences may contribute to the behavioral priming effect observed by Lukatela et al. (2001).

The shorter SOA in Experiment 2 accompanied a decreased latency of the N1 ( Fig. 6 and ​and7). 7 ). We interpret this difference in N1 latency between Experiment 1 (around 150 ms) and Experiment 2 (around 100 ms) as a decrease because the N1 timing in Experiment 1 has been observed in previous masked priming ERP studies ( Ashby and Martin, 2008; Grainger et al., 2006), as well as in experiments using an RSVP paradigm ( Hauk et al., 2006; Sereno et al., 1998). Finding a decreased N1 latency at a shorter prime-target SOA is consistent with a previous study that manipulated SOA within subjects. Holcomb and Grainger (2007) conducted a masked repetition priming experiment that held prime duration constant at 40 ms and varied the prime- target SOA (e.g, 60, 180, 300, 420 ms). A visual comparison of the CZ waveforms (their Figure 1, A and B) suggests that the grand average N1 peaked before 100 ms in the 60 ms SOA condition and peaked around 150 ms in the 180 ms SOA condition. Although the SOAs differ somewhat in the present Experiments 1 and 2 (144 ms and 66 ms, respectively), we essentially replicate the pattern of a shorter SOA decreasing the latency of the anterior N1.4 Holcomb and Grainger (2007) also noted that their repetition priming effect was significant over a wider time range in the 180 ms SOA condition, relative to the 60 ms SOA condition. Similarly, the early congruency effect was significant over a 100 ms time window in our longer SOA experiment, but it was defined by a 40 ms window in our shorter SOA Experiment. The shorter SOA also decreased the latency of the subsequent congruency effect in the middle period; this effect appeared between 200 - 320 ms in Experiment 2 but between 320 - 520 ms in Experiment 1.

Two mechanisms could account for the relationship between shorter SOA and the decreased N1 latency. One possibility is that the long SOA more effectively masked the prime, and made it less available to influence target processing. Were that the case, then congruency effects should shift with the N1 and that was not observed. Rather, our early congruency effects onset around 80 ms irrespective of SOA. Another possibility is that the long SOA extended the time available for processing the prime, allowing higher-level representations to develop that affected target processing. In terms of this study, higher order activation could entail competition between the word neighbors of our nonword primes and our targets. The observation of an N450 in the long SOA experiment is consistent with this interpretation. By comparison, the shorter SOA would minimize the processing time of the prime. This would account for the decreased latency of the N1 as well as the absence of later competition effects in Experiment 2.

The absence of an N450-like competition effect in Experiment 2 was indicated by a three-way interaction between 340 - 500 ms (see Fig.6 ). The interaction was characterized by a centro-anterior N450-type of congruency effect that was evident in the long SOA experiment, but not in the short SOA experiment. The observation of an N450 in Experiment 1 is consistent with the interpretation of this component being phonological in origin, as it was evoked by nonword primes that would be unlikely to generate semantic competition. It is tempting to explain this interaction in terms of the longer mask in Experiment 1 allowing time for competition effects to arise, but the Grainger et al. experiment reported a reduced N400 to targets in the pseudohomophone condition relative to the control even though they used a brief mask (17 ms). Therefore, it seems that the lack of a significant N450 in Experiment 2 cannot be attributed to the brief mask duration. However, it is possible that the activation of nonword primes in our experiment might spread more slowly than activation of familiar phonological forms (i.e., the pseudohomophones in Grainger et al.). In that case, a longer prime-target SOA would be needed to elicit a phonological N450, and this would explain why we did not find that effect in the short prime-target SOA experiment.

The waveforms in the shorter SOA experiment exhibit a decreased N1 latency, a decreased congruency effect latency in the middle period, and an absence of N450-type competition effects, as compared to the longer SOA waveforms. This constellation of differences could indicate that more efficient word recognition processes were operating with a short SOA. As we did not measure the speed of word recognition in this study, future experiments might explore this idea. The brief prime-target interstimulus interval (ISI) in Experiment 2 (22 ms) might elicit more efficient word recognition processes because this ISI falls within the time range of a typical saccade. Skilled readers are practiced at maintaining advance information about a word for the duration of a saccade, as they routinely integrate parafoveal and foveal information when silently reading text ( Rayner, 1998). In that sense, a short prime-target interval might mimic saccade durations during silent reading, and permit readers to engage early phonological processes that are often used for integrating word form information. Whether the congruency effect is actually a result of the integration of parafoveal and foveal information is a topic of future research. Given that the prime-target ISI in Experiment 2 is a closer approximation of saccade durations during natural reading than the ISI in Experiment 1, we consider Experiment 2 the more ecologically valid of the two.

In reference to eye movements during silent reading, our data coincide with the time line of eye movements and ERPs proposed by Sereno and colleagues (1998 2003). Initial processing of phonological feature information by 80 ms would enable this information to impact fixation durations before programming the eye movement to the next word. The middle period congruency effect in Experiment 2 (200 - 320 ms) would appear as word identification completes and around the time the eye leaves the word. The later congruency effect observed between 560 - 600 ms in Experiment 2 suggests late phonological recoding processes that are consistent with word recognition theories proposing a post-lexical, spell-check phase that could occur after the eye has moved to the next word ( Paap and Johansen, 1994; Van Orden et al., 1988). The potential alignment of congruency effects and eye movement programming time is less straightforward for the long SOA presentation in Experiment 1. The timing of the first congruency effect would allow parafoveal feature information to impact fixation durations, but the second effect (320 - 520) would onset after the eyes left the target. This suggests that the shorter ISI of Experiment 2 more closely mimics parafoveal processing in natural reading.

The phonological congruency effects reported here indicate that ERPs can index very early effects in word recognition. In our opinion, the most important factor in accounting for the early onset of sub-phonemic congruency effects is the fundamental nature of features in language processing. We also expect that paradigms that allow readers to process advance word form information without conscious awareness, such as masked priming, are more likely to elicit early effects.

The present study has several limitations. Future experiments are needed in order to generalize our congruency effect to more normal reading situations. Whereas masked priming presents advance information to readers in a way that may mimic parafoveal preview, the masked priming paradigm is more than one step away from silent reading as it usually occurs. The use of nonword primes as well as the screen flicker noticed by some participants are two potentially important differences between our study and real world reading. Generalizing to items also might be problematic, given that our materials nearly exhausted the supply of minimal pairs in English that could be matched for word length. Lastly, the present materials do not differentiate between phonetic and phonological activation, and so it is difficult to determine the precise locus of our congruency effects.

Despite the limitations mentioned above, we have several reasons to believe that skilled readers activate feature information early in word recognition. Most importantly, the design of our study controlled for visual similarity of primes and targets in the congruent and incongruent conditions. Thus, the early effects we observed are unlikely to result from visual differences. Secondly, the early congruency effects onset around 80 ms in both experiments. Because previous ERP studies of phonological priming have not reported effects in this time window, the replication of the feature congruency effect in Experiment 2 was necessary to verify it. Thirdly, the novel early feature congruency effect preceded fairly typical congruency effects in the middle period of word recognition. These effects were similar in direction, onset time, and scalp distribution to previously reported effects ( Ashby and Martin, 2008; Grainger et al., 2006; Newman and Connolly, 2004, in press). Therefore, it appears that the early congruency effect is not an anomaly.

This initial demonstration and replication of a feature congruency effect is noteworthy for three reasons. The appearance of a congruency effect based on phonological features suggests that features play a fundamental role in visual word recognition as well as spoken word recognition. If features are fundamental in recognizing familiar written words, then the present study offers further evidence for an early interface between written language and spoken language processes. Lastly, the observation of congruency effects that onset around 80 ms provides an initial link between ERP and eye movement accounts of the timecourse of phonological processing in visual word recognition.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by NIH grant HD051700, which provided funding for the primary and secondary authors. We appreciate the use of many target items from Lukatela, Eaton, Sabadini, and Turvey (2004) as well as Charles Clifton, Jr.'s comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We especially thank Laura Giffin for her help collecting and managing the data.

Footnotes

¹ Because of equipment changes, the materials were presented at a 75 Hz refresh rate for four participants in Experiment 1 and six participants in Experiment 2. This slower refresh rate increased the duration of the forward mask by 6 ms, the prime by 10 ms, and the backward mask in Experiment 2 by 3 ms, relative to the timing with a 90 Hz presentation. Visual comparison of the grand averaged waveforms recorded at each refresh rate yielded no apparent differences. Accuracy rates for the 75 Hz presentation were 93% and 96% for Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Accuracy for the 90 Hz presentation was 96% in both Experiments. The designated baseline in each experiment was common to all the participants.

² Seven data files in Experiment 1 required interpolation of one or two channels: F6 (2 participants), F4 (1 participant), F3 (1 participant), FC6 (1 participant), FC4 (2 participants), C3 (1 participant), C1 (1 participant), CP2 (1 participant). Four data files in Experiment 2 required interpolation of one channel: F5 (1 participant), F6 (1 participant), CP3 (2 participants). Interpolations were calculated by EEProbe software using a spherical-spline formula.

³We recognize that effects of Experiment could be attributed to differences in participant groups as well as differences in the prime-target SOA. We attribute effects of Experiment to differences in prime-target SOA, since group differences in brain potentials would be expected to persist throughout word recognition. A design that manipulates mask duration within-subjects would offer more conclusive evidence about the effects of SOA on phonological priming, such as Holcomb and Grainger (2007).

⁴ Differences between Experiment 1 and 2 in viewing the display, font size, or participants may also contribute to the decreased latency of the N1.

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Contributor Information

Jane Ashby, Department of Psychology.

Lisa D. Sanders, Department of Psychology.

John Kingston, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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Skilled Readers Begin Processing Sub-phonemic Features by 80 ms during Visual Word Recognition: Evidence from ERPs

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Two masked priming experiments investigated the time course of the activation of sub-phonemic information during visual word recognition. EEG was recorded as participants read targets with voiced and unvoiced final consonants (e.g., fad and fat), preceded ...

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Allophonic Variation on Learning to Spell

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Allophonic Variation on Learning to Spell

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English Learners Starter Kit for Teachers

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Awesome... listen to this.

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Teaching African American Children to Read: The Impact of Language Variation by Dr. Julie Washington

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Teaching Reading to African American Children

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Teaching Reading to African American Children

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Reading depends on spoken language.* This is a simple statement with profound consequences for children whose spoken language differs from the language they are expected to read. For most children, the language skills they bring to school will support learning to read, which is mainly learning to understand their spoken language in a new form: print. However, some children's language skills differ in important ways from the classroom language variety, and teachers rarely receive sound guidance on how to enhance their literacy instruction to meet these children's needs.

Teaching reading to children whose language differs from the oral language of the classroom and from the linguistic structure of academic text adds an additional layer of complexity to reading instruction. There is a large and growing body of evidence indicating that language variation impacts reading, ¹ spelling, ² and writing ³ in predictable ways. In particular, it has been demonstrated that mismatches between the language variety spoken by many African American children in their homes and communities and the written language variety encountered in books and other text can slow the development of reading and writing. ⁴

The focus of this article is the impact of one language variety, African American English (AAE), on literacy development and on teaching, assessing, and learning. Our goal is to describe aspects of instruction, curricula, and assessment that may create obstacles to literacy for African American children (compounding the effects of other factors, such as growing up in systemically under-resourced neighborhoods) and to share ways to modify instructional practices to benefit AAE speakers in significant ways.

African American English

Many African American children are bidialectal speakers of English. That is, they speak two varieties of English: African American English and General American English (GAE). Whereas AAE is frequently spoken in the child's home and community, GAE is used in reading, writing, educational contexts, commerce, and the media. One of the major educational linguistic tasks for school-aged African American children who speak AAE is to bridge the two varieties in order to develop strong literacy skills. Importantly, for many African American children, particularly those growing up in communities enduring chronic poverty, though GAE may be encountered through media, such as television, it becomes prominent upon entry into school. GAE is the medium of instruction, and in school it is learned through exposure and modeling in the classroom. Also important, not every African American child speaks AAE, although most do. ⁵

The history of AAE has been fraught with social, educational, and political judgments about AAE's legitimacy and value. ⁶ AAE is a systematic, rule-governed variety of American English spoken by a community of speakers connected by race, culture, identity, and language. That fits the linguistic definition of a "dialect," but the term is problematic for other reasons. (See the "Changing Language About Language Variation" sidebar on the right; although we support a transition from dialect to language variety in colloquial usage because of misconceptions about dialects, we also use dialect occasionally in keeping with how it is defined in linguistics.) AAE has been referred to as "bad English," "poor grammar," and "ghetto" by people outside of its community of speakers. As a result, attempts to introduce AAE into classrooms or to leverage it to teach children who speak it how to read have been met with great resistance. ⁷ Unfortunately, these negative views of AAE sometimes become conflated with the children who speak it, and expectations for them are lowered. It is important that teachers understand that language varieties are linguistically equal, even when they are not socially equal. The social stigma surrounding varieties spoken by linguistic minorities can be compounded by race and class, but they are as linguistically valid as other dialects and highly valued by the people who speak them.

When a child who is learning English as their second (or third) language lags behind in reading English, we recognize that the learning curve is steeper because the child is learning to both speak and read a second language. We have not given this same consideration to children who use two dialects. Although AAE and GAE overlap more than two distinct languages, research has demonstrated that using two varieties can complicate learning new, language-influenced skills (i.e., reading and writing) as much as using two languages. In fact, the subtle transformations between the cultural and the general varieties of a single language may be even more difficult for young children to detect and resolve than the more obvious differences between two languages. ⁸ By design, curricula and instructional activities for children who are learning English take their dual language status into account. Extending these same benefits and considerations to dual variety speakers could have comparable, positive consequences for African American children.

By far the most studied variety of American English, AAE's characteristics in the five primary domains of language (morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) have been well-documented in adults and are becoming better documented in children. ⁹ These investigations have demonstrated that as used by young children, AAE primarily involves variation in verb morphology, syntax, and phonology (see "Key Features of African American English" below). Because reading depends on spoken language, AAE is significantly implicated in learning to read.

Impact on Reading

The influence of AAE on reading has been a particular emphasis for research focused on school-aged African American children. Because reading depends on spoken language, AAE is an obvious candidate for understanding disparities in reading achievement between African American children and their white and Asian peers. Having documented these disparities for more than 50 years, perhaps it is time to examine potential solutions-such as materials and practices that are sufficiently sensitive to the needs of AAE speakers. ¹⁰

One key issue is the amount of dialect present in a child's language, which is referred to as dialect density. Dialect occurs on a continuum from low to high use. For example, children for whom dialect influences less than 10 percent of their oral language are said to have low dialect density; those for whom dialect influences 50 percent or more of their oral language have high dialect density.* Differences in density impact reading and writing in important ways. ¹¹ The higher the dialect density, the further the child's speech is from the language used in reading and writing. Simply put, linguistic distance influences how much instruction and practice a child is likely to need to bridge the differences between oral language at home, oral language spoken by the teacher, and the written language of books and other texts. ¹² The more AAE that a child uses, the more likely that reading, writing, and spelling growth may be slowed, ¹³ contributing to the reading struggles of African American children in later elementary school and adolescence. ¹⁴ Challenges in learning to read are not inevitable for children who speak AAE, but greater attention to the impact of their language on reading and writing development is critical.

The culture of education demands that AAE speakers engage in additional language learning compared with GAE speakers. Requiring AAE-speaking children to switch to GAE without using their linguistic strengths in AAE to bridge the two varieties represents a significant encumbrance. Children are required to demonstrate linguistic flexibility ¹⁵ at the same time that their cognitive resources are being allocated to learning the language of the classroom along with a wide array of new academic and social skills.

Some children manage these additional linguistic and social demands, but many do not. For example, AAE speakers already know how to conjugate verbs but must also learn a second set of rules for conjugation in GAE. Learning the second dialect involves discovering what is different in GAE, compared with what the child already knows in AAE. Although progress in reading is related to facility with GAE, providing the additional time and relevant opportunities to acquire knowledge of AAE and GAE differences tends not to be a priority in most schools or curricula. At school entry, AAE speakers' exposure to GAE varies and typically lags behind monodialectal GAE speakers simply because their language experiences prior to school entry do not always include GAE. Analogous effects are seen in bilingual children, who need extra time and support to become fully proficient in both their home language and English. Importantly, given that both bilingual and bidialectal speakers are typically stronger in one language or variety than the other, achieving parity between the two can take considerable time.

Nonlanguage Factors

In addition to the differences between AAE and GAE, other factors contribute to the difficulty many African American children experience with academic achievement in general and reading in particular. Some factors are related to the child's immediate environment, such as socioeconomic status and family factors; other factors are related to the broader social, economic, and political context, especially educational opportunity and quality, housing security, and access to adequate nutrition and healthcare. Of these, socioeconomic status (SES) has received the most attention. The impact of reading difficulties on many aspects of emotional health and well-being have also been examined, albeit to a lesser extent.

Socioeconomic Status

Income inequality and educational inequality have been linked historically. ¹⁶ Recent analyses suggest that disparities in students' academic achievement by race and socioeconomic status have remained virtually unchanged for the past half century. ¹⁷ In the United States, income, wealth, and access to higher education are unequally distributed. Although policymakers, researchers, and others have long talked about "achievement gaps," differences in academic performance between high- and low-SES students are more accurately referred to as opportunity gaps. For students from lower-SES backgrounds, their achievement often does not represent their potential to learn, but it does reflect the inequality in opportunity to learn resulting from lower-quality and less-abundant educational, social, and material resources that often plague children in both urban and rural environments.

The opportunity gap has been calculated as a 1.0 standard deviation disparity in achievement between children in the highest- and lowest-SES ends of the distribution. ¹⁸ This difference represents a disparity of approximately four years' worth of learning in both math and reading, and it persists through high school. Notably, among AAE speakers, nearly 100 percent of high-density dialect users are from low-income families and communities. ¹⁹ Thus, high density of dialect seems to reflect the social isolation characteristic of neighborhood poverty ²⁰ that limits experience with and exposure to GAE. In the classroom, this frequently translates into poor reading performance.

Emotional Health and Well-Being

The persistence of reading difficulties among most African American children, and the challenges it presents for other learning that depends on reading, often has negative effects on confidence, self-image, and willingness to engage in school. ²¹ Struggles with reading become aversive and can promote avoidance of the activity. Unsuccessful educational outcomes are associated with numerous negative consequences, many of which have lifelong impacts. Because these are well known, we turn to a less discussed concern.

For individuals who succeed at becoming bidialectal and managing the associated educational demands, there are other personal costs to consider. Biases surrounding the use of AAE can be very harmful to children, negatively affecting not only their motivation in the classroom but also their linguistic identities. Usage of GAE is expected and valued in educational and other institutional contexts. Effective use of GAE in such contexts involves not only learning and using GAE but also inhibition of AAE, which requires cognitive effort. Similar to bilingual speakers, bidialectal speakers engage in monitoring their own speech to evaluate its appropriateness and self-correct as needed. They may actively avoid speaking in fear of producing non-GAE expressions. They may consciously engage in mental translation from AAE to GAE before speaking, and they may compose utterances to conform to linguistic expectations rather than speaking freely. Anecdotally, African American college students for whom switching from AAE to GAE does not occur automatically report great concern about participating in discussions in the college classroom for fear of "saying it wrong." When AAE is the speaker's culturally and personally authentic code, using GAE is an adaptation to external constraints, including pressure to assimilate. Corrections of AAE as "bad English" convey to the speaker that their cultural language (and therefore their culture) is inadequate or defective. As a result, the use of GAE may be performative rather than authentic.

Assuming different personas in differing contexts, in this case school and home, creates the "double consciousness" described by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois. ²² Monitoring the presentation of self, which includes language, carries cognitive and emotional costs. Cognitively, it is an additional task to be performed while engaged in other activities (such as reading). Emotionally, it involves continuous self-evaluation, criticism, and correction. Research on this topic is almost nonexistent, but it is a part of the bidialectal experience that needs close attention. ²³

Recommendations for Teaching

Speaking AAE is not inherently an obstacle to becoming a reader, but it becomes one when children's specific needs are not recognized or addressed. The issues we have reviewed suggest many supportive steps school systems and educators could take. We offer six recommendations below to help school systems and educators begin reconsidering how they engage African American children who are becoming bidialectal and learning to read. Collectively, the essential supports mainly involve (a) providing sufficient opportunities to learn; (b) using materials and practices that are effective given the students' backgrounds; and (c) eliminating the unwarranted stigma associated with using AAE and instead focusing on effectively addressing the educational needs of AAE speakers in ways that build on their knowledge rather than disparaging it.

1. Expand teachers' knowledge of language variation.

As part of their professional training, prospective teachers usually are made aware of a number of cultural differences that may affect education. However, language variation and its impact on reading and instruction are rarely emphasized. Teachers who gain this background will know that language variation is a universal linguistic phenomenon and that AAE, like other dialects, differs from the codified, more general version of American English used in education but is otherwise linguistically unremarkable-it is a "standard" example of dialectal variation, so to speak. They could also gain greater understanding of how such variation affects educational goals and practices, as discussed below.

2. Expand children's knowledge of language and the world prior to school entry.

Many AAE-speaking children are less ready than their peers to benefit from reading instruction on the first day of kindergarten because they are not familiar with the school dialect. But young children are exceptionally good language learners; AAE speakers could gain greater facility with GAE in a language-intensive pre-K environment that provided rich and abundant access to both oral and written language. In 2018, only 38 percent of Black 3- to 5-year-olds were enrolled in preschool, compared with 43 percent of their white peers. ²⁴ This disparity in early childhood education should not only be eliminated-we should invest in greatly expanding access to high-quality, language-focused preschools throughout our most under-resourced neighborhoods.

Children learn language via exposure and use, not explicit instruction. In the course of a school year, teachers whose own language backgrounds vary would provide thousands of examples of utterances in each variety and would model the ways that people who speak somewhat differently successfully communicate. Children can learn pronunciations of words and ways to conjugate verbs that differ from their own language use if given sufficient opportunities to learn them. Children can also gain greater awareness of conditions that govern movement between codes (e.g., their use in different settings or with different individuals), a critical skill for any child who speaks two languages or two varieties. Learning more about GAE does not require extinguishing knowledge of AAE, any more than learning a second language requires unlearning the first. Rather, it places AAE speakers on a more equal footing with children who have learned GAE in the home, while still honoring the need, and desire, to communicate with their families, communities, and friends who also use AAE.

Parents and other caregivers can also be encouraged to create additional language-learning opportunities for children outside of school. Efforts to gain families' participation will be more successful if their role in helping their children thrive is emphasized; parents and caregivers are committed to the success of their children but often do not know how to help. Reading books to children may provide a vehicle for introducing linguistic expressions and aspects of the world beyond their immediate experiences. The language in books for children includes vocabulary and grammatical constructions that differ from those in everyday speech, and thus are not available anywhere else except books. ²⁵ "In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf" is the first line of an enormously popular book for very young children, ²⁶ but few people talk that way. Shared reading can provide a context for expanding children's world knowledge and giving them additional practice in using language. For parents who do not read well themselves or are uncomfortable with reading, educators (as well as librarians and others who engage with families) can help caregivers find books paired with audiobooks that parents and children can listen to together. The audiobooks do not take the place of books but allow parents and children to interact around the book, listening to the story together, and prompt parents when to turn the page.

Parents can also provide language-learning opportunities simply by having conversations with their children. Parents are often encouraged to talk to their children, but it is important to stress having conversations that are, by definition, interactive. This kind of talk encourages turn-taking, requiring input from both the caregiver and child. If teachers are concerned about how much conversation is happening outside of school, it might be helpful to send children home with conversation starters, encouraging them to be the catalysts for sparking family conversations. For example, educators could: teach or make a game at school, then send it home with children and encourage them to teach it to their families; encourage the class to ask a parent or caregiver to teach them how to make their favorite food and write down the recipe to share at school; or read a book to the class several times and then send it home with students to share. In each case, children rehearse the skill or activity at school first, making them eager to show what they have learned when they get home. Both parents and children get very excited about this kind of sharing; it removes the burden from both to figure out how to do or initiate what the teacher has instructed and makes children proud to share what they have learned.

3. Use classroom materials and practices that are effective with AAE speakers.

The curricula and support materials produced by major educational publishers assume that GAE is the language of the child and the classroom. With rare exceptions, these materials do not accommodate differences in language background or provide clear guidance about appropriate practices for children who need support to become bidialectal. Unfortunately, this means that it is left to classroom teachers to develop materials and practices on their own. The table on the right provides a list of the major features of AAE likely to be present in young children's language use. It is not an exhaustive list but provides some guidance regarding the language structures that children use and what they will need to learn to speak, read, and write in GAE. Especially in the case of phonology, the table highlights places where children may need extra time to learn a new phonological form because it differs significantly from their own sound system. Here, we note several key implications for instruction.

Phonological awareness: It is commonly assumed that spoken word play, such as rhyming, develops phonological awareness (knowledge of the structure of spoken words), which facilitates later reading acquisition. The activity emphasizes perfect rhymes such as bear-care, which share the same rime (pronounced air). Perfect rhymes are less prominent in AAE word play than other types of phonological overlap, however. ²⁷ Indeed, for any child whose language variety impacts the vowel system, the words that rhyme will differ. For example, for an African American child in the southern United States, the word thing may rhyme with either king or rang, depending upon how it is pronounced. Moreover, even perfect rhymes work differently because AAE phonology allows optional deletion of final consonants in some cases. For example, cold and hole can rhyme in AAE because of deletion of the final /d/. The net effect is that these activities do not always function in the same way as for GAE speakers.

Phonemic awareness: Tasks such as deciding if two words begin or end with the same sounds bring attention to phonemic structure, which is a key to learning spelling-sound correspondences. The validity of the exercise can again be vitiated by differences in pronunciation. When the task involves comparisons of initial phonemes (e.g., ball, book), AAE and GAE speakers perform comparably. In contrast, some AAE speakers may perform poorly on comparisons involving final consonants, because they are variably included in AAE. It may take AAE-speaking children as much as a year longer to master phonemic awareness in the final position of words. 28 Deciding that cold and hole do not end in the same sound may be difficult if cold is usually pronounced cole. When children take longer to acquire such knowledge, we should not assume that they are less capable learners. We should realize that AAE speakers are learning both a new oral language variety and to identify final consonants (whereas GAE speakers only have to learn the latter).

Phonics: Learning the correspondences between the spellings of words and their pronunciations is an important step in learning to read. Instruction typically assumes that words are pronounced as in GAE. What happens if the child's pronunciations are different, as occurs for many words in AAE? For example, a teacher might write the word gold on the board, pronounce each of the component sounds, and model how they are blended to form gold. For a GAE speaker, the lesson is about the correspondences between four letters and four sounds. The lesson is different for an AAE speaker who pronounces it gole. AAE speakers may be able to figure out the correspondence between the teacher's pronunciation and their own, but translating between the two involves extra effort and a single spelling now corresponds to two pronunciations. Then, in a future phonics lesson, AAE-speaking children may be confused as they learn to spell the homophonic word goal.

We have investigated these conditions using computational models that learn phonics (i.e., spelling-sound correspondences). ²⁹ The models first learned the GAE pronunciations of a large set of monosyllabic words. In the AAE condition, half the words had different pronunciations than in the GAE condition because of final consonant deletions. The models were then taught the correspondences between the spellings of the words and their GAE pronunciations. Although both models could learn the correspondences with sufficient experience, the AAE model took much longer because it was learning the alternative pronunciations of half the words at the same time. This model provided an explicit, mechanistic account of the impact of mismatches between the oral and written language system that children who are becoming bidialectal invariably encounter.

Reading aloud: Reading aloud is an important, widely used learning activity. Children's accuracy and fluency as they read aloud is an indicator of their progress and provides opportunities for feedback-but learning two varieties can make the task more difficult. A child who knows the AAE and GAE pronunciations of cold needs to produce one and suppress the other. The child may be able to generate the "correct" (for the school setting) pronunciation, but may do so more slowly, giving the appearance of lack of fluency. Researchers have found a tradeoff between rate and accuracy when African American children read aloud, such that they achieved a lower score on fluency because they slowed down their reading in order to improve the grammatical accuracy of their oral reading. ³⁰ In this same study, as the complexity of reading passages increased, students appeared to sacrifice reading accuracy in an effort to manage the lexical and syntactic complexity of passages. These outcomes provide evidence of the active decision making that can constrain the cognitive resources that bidialectal readers are able to apply to oral reading. In addition to reducing fluency while reading aloud, this may impact reading comprehension. (Similar results are found among children who are becoming bilingual, but their challenges with reading aloud in English tend to be better understood.) When reading aloud occurs in front of other students, the appearance of lower proficiency can be deeply embarrassing and can create aversion to reading.

Attention and effort: Children who are still learning the school dialect have to focus greater attention and effort on understanding the teacher's speech, which can detract from being able to focus on the content. In a busy classroom setting where the teacher is harder to hear or see, the impact will be greater. These difficulties can be lessened for children by providing in writing any important information that has been presented orally, as well as providing visual supports whenever possible. In addition, we encourage teachers to become more familiar with AAE in order to better comprehend and communicate with children and families who are high-density AAE speakers. ³¹

4. Provide enough time on task.

Sensitivity to the time a child who is becoming bidialectal may need to master a new language skill is critically important. A child who has more to learn to reach a goal needs more time to get there. ³² It takes ample learning opportunities, sufficient practice, and, for many children, additional instruction. This requires rethinking our views about what constitutes "typical" developmental trajectories. Instead, teachers should offer as much learning time in early childhood and throughout the elementary grades as needed for African American children to enter the middle grades as confident readers and writers.

Bidialectal children may take more time to gain the knowledge that supports skilled reading, but that is a byproduct of acquiring more knowledge to connect with the knowledge that they already have. ³³ Educational outcomes for these children are modulated by numerous factors, including educational quality, amount of experience using each language variety, and availability of educational resources in the home and community. Successfully addressing these initial challenges-and doing so in a way that values the home language variety-can eventually yield the many personal, social, and economic benefits of being bidialectal.

5. Respond constructively to AAE use in the classroom.

Teachers face difficult choices when students use AAE in the classroom. If AAE is viewed as "bad English," the response may be to provide a GAE correction, which conveys to children that their home language is bad. It should be possible to help children learn the classroom language variety without negative messages about AAE. With very young children, in preschool through first grade, simply providing full-form models of classroom language is helpful. For example, if a child is deleting the copula, a teacher can cheerfully produce the same utterance, making the copula salient and lengthening the child's production slightly.

Child: "This my backpack."
Teacher: "Yes, this IS your backpack. Let's put it away."

After several such opportunities to learn, children who were once deleting the structure will begin to include it. This is a common, effective technique used in interactions designed to enhance language development that can be easily applied in a classroom.

Based on a classroom observation, a researcher ³⁴ provided an example of a teacher who corrects Joey, a third-grade boy, who pronounces the word street as skreet (which is a common cultural and regional variant). When Joey says Orange Skreet rather than Orange Street, his teacher replies by saying, "Not skreet. Say street." Joey responds, "Skreet." His teacher makes him read the sentence again, but Joey continues to say skreet. The classroom teacher corrects him again in front of the class. When the teacher finally leaves him alone, he continues to read aloud, but this time haltingly, mumbling and fearful of saying the wrong thing and being further embarrassed by the teacher. This is a great example of what not to do. By treating the phonological variation in the child's reading as an error, the teacher eroded Joey's self-confidence, making him likely to be more resistant to reading aloud in the future. It is an experience he will likely never forget! A more helpful approach would be for Joey's teacher to make a note of the skr/str pronunciation and include it in a whole-class language lesson without singling out Joey or any other child. This is typically a regional variant. Since Joey is doing it, there are likely others who are as well, and everyone would benefit from spending time learning the sound-phoneme mapping for this consonant cluster.

At the other extreme, many teachers are averse to commenting on children's use of their home language variety, concerned that it is not their role to encourage becoming bidialectal. The philosopher Jennifer M. Morton discusses issues of justice and ethics associated with dialect differences. ³⁵ She acknowledges the perceived need to accommodate GAE given its importance for health, education, and employment under existing circumstances but also the threats to personal and cultural integrity that adopting GAE entails. The need for one group to adapt to the language and culture of another in order to thrive is an intrinsic form of inequality. She concludes that gaining knowledge of both GAE and AAE is nonetheless the most favorable accommodation to non-ideal circumstances.

Teachers need additional guidance and opportunities to engage in professional dialogue on this issue. Not responding to use of the home variety is an instructional choice that conveys information about linguistic expectations. The challenge is to balance the need to respect children's language and culture, while helping them gain additional facility with the classroom language variety because it serves other functions (as in learning to read).

6. Recognize the impact of bidialectal experience on comprehending and producing language.

Becoming fluent in using two languages or dialects is a positive achievement, but there are bumps along the way, such as the interference between codes that often occurs in comprehension and speaking or reading aloud. Slower responses, dysfluencies, and other "errors" occur because the child's knowledge of the two codes and how to use them is still developing, not because the child lacks the ability to learn. Many studies have demonstrated that children who speak AAE also understand GAE. They may be slowed down in some areas where the two dialects contrast, as we noted above. With few exceptions, AAE and GAE are mutually intelligible. Given sufficient time and relevant experience, bidialectal speakers, like bilinguals, will learn to navigate the two codes in both oral language and print.

Final Takeaways

Most languages have several within-language varieties. An inclusive way to think about language varieties is that they occur along a continuum from those that differ little from the general variety to those that are more distant. This framing includes all communication practices across all speakers ³⁶ and does not consider one variety to be superior. It allows us to put languages and speakers in their proper perspective as equally valued, especially as we support children learning to read and write. All children need to have the skills to make linguistic choices across contexts: formal, informal, home, school, speaking, reading, or writing. Even within these contexts, there are choices that require varied skills, such as writing a report for school, writing a thank-you card for a birthday gift, or writing a text to meet up with friends.

Above all, our shared goal should be for all children to become good readers; this requires practice with reading. For children who speak more than one language variety, learning to read requires learning the differences between their oral language and print, in addition to the inconsistencies of English orthography, making supportive instruction and abundant practice even more critical for mastering reading. The burden placed on the child can be tremendous, but it can be mitigated by effective, culturally responsive instruction and through being given the time needed to master new skills.

Finally, teaching children who are becoming bidialectal to read does not require an entirely new, separate theory of reading instruction. The same elements that have been identified for all developing readers to break the code are necessary for children who speak AAE as well. What differs is the delivery of these elements. Reading is a language-based task; introducing language variation affects the efficacy of many standard instructional practices and reading-related activities. The impact of language variation on reading is not an intractable issue. Adapting instruction and materials to encompass and embrace such variation reduces the load for both teachers and students, allowing them to reach their respective goals.

Julie A. Washington is a professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. A speech-language pathologist and fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, she directs a Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub and the Dialect, Poverty, and Academic Success Lab. Mark S. Seidenberg is the Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also codirects the Language and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Seidenberg's work is supported by the Deinlein Language and Literacy Fund.

*The exception is the case of deaf children who use a visual-gestural, rather than spoken, language. ( return to article)
†Although this assertion is anecdotal, it is based on our combined 70 years of experience. ( return to article)

Endnotes

1. M. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use on a Basic Component of Learning to Read," Frontiers in Psychology 6, no. 196 (2015); and J. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density on the Growth of Language and Reading in African American Children," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 49, no. 2 (2018): 232-47.
2. C. Kohler et al., "African American English Dialect and Performance on Nonword Spelling and Phonemic Awareness Tasks," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 16, no. 2 (May 2007): 157-68; and N. Terry, "Relations Between Dialect Variation, Grammar, and Early Spelling Skills," Reading and Writing 19, no. 9 (2006): 907-31.
3. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; and C. Puranik, L. Branum-Martin, and J. Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density and the Codevelopment of Writing and Reading in African American Children," Child Development 91, no. 4 (2020): e866-e882.
4. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; and Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density."
5. H. Craig and J. Washington, "Oral Language Expectations for African American Preschoolers and Kindergartners," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 11, no. 1 (2002): 59-70; J. Washington and H. Craig, "Morphosyntactic Forms of African American English Used by Young Children and Their Caregivers," Applied Psycholinguistics 23, no. 2 (2002): 209-31; and C. Connor and H. Craig, "African American Preschoolers' Language, Emergent Literacy Skills, and Use of African American English: A Complex Relation," Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49, no. 4 (2006): 771-92.
6. J. Baugh, Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999).
7. J. Baugh, Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8. J. Siegel, Second Dialect Acquisition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
9. R. Fasold and W. Wolfram, "Some Linguistic Features of Negro Dialect," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 3, no. 4 (1972): 16-49; and W. Wolfram, C. Adger, and D. Christian, Dialects in Schools and Communities (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).
10. E. Ferrer et al., "Achievement Gap in Reading Is Present as Early as First Grade and Persists Through Adolescence," Journal of Pediatrics 167, no. 5 (2015): 1121-5, e1-e2; and W. Teale, K. Paciga, and J. Hoffman, "Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: The Curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap," Reading Teacher 61, no. 4 (2007): 344-48.
11. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density"; and J. McDonald and J. Oetting, "Nonword Repetition Across Two Dialects of English: Effects of Specific Language Impairment and Nonmainstream Form Density," Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 5 (2019): 1381-91.
12. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use."
13. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use"; Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; and Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density."
14. A. Tatum, Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2005); and A. Tatum, "Breaking Down Barriers That Disenfranchise African American Adolescent Readers in Low-Level Tracks," Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 44, no. 1 (2000): 52-64.
15. L. Makalela, "Moving Out of Linguistic Boxes: The Effects of Translanguaging Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms," Language and Education 29, no. 3 (2015): 200-17.
16. E. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap: Trends in U.S. Student Performance, working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2019; and E. Hanushek et al., "The Achievement Gap Fails to Close," Education Next 19, no. 3 (2019): 8-17.
17. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap; and S. Reardon, "The Widening Income Achievement Gap," Educational Leadership 70, no. 8 (2013): 10-16.
18. Hanushek et al., The Unwavering SES Achievement Gap; and Hanushek et al., "The Achievement Gap."
19. Washington et al., "The Impact of Dialect Density"; and Puranik, Branum-Martin, and Washington, "The Relation Between Dialect Density."
20. B. Rankin and J. Quane, "Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of Inner-City African American Families," Social Forces 79, no. 1 (2000): 139-64.
21. S. Rowley et al., "Framing Black Boys: Parent, Teacher, and Student Narratives of the Academic Lives of Black Boys," Advances in Child Development and Behavior 47 (2014): 301-32.
22. W. Du Bois, "Double-Consciousness and the Veil," in Social Class and Stratification: Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates, ed. R. Levine (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 203; and W. Du Bois, "Strivings of the Negro People," The Atlantic, August 1897.
23. L. Delpit and J. Dowdy, eds., The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom (New York: New York Press, 2002).
24. National Center for Education Statistics, "Preschool and Kindergarten Enrollment," in The Condition of Education (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 2020).
25. J. Montag, M. Jones, and L. Smith, "The Words Children Hear: Picture Books and the Statistics for Language Learning," Psychological Science 26, no. 9 (2015): 1489-96.
26. E. Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (New York: World Publishing Company, 1969).
27. A. Shollenbarger et al., "How African American English-Speaking First Graders Segment and Rhyme Words and Nonwords with Final Consonant Clusters," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 48, no. 4 (2017): 273-85.
28. S. Thomas-Tate, J. Washington, and J. Edwards, "Standardized Assessment of Phonological Awareness Skills in Low-Income African American First Graders," American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 13, no. 2 (2004): 182-90.
29. Brown et al., "Impact of Dialect Use."
30. H. Craig et al., "Performance of Elementary-Grade African American Students on the Gray Oral Reading Tests," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 35, no. 2 (2004): 141-54; and C. Thompson, H. Craig, and J. Washington, "Variable Production of African American English Across Oracy and Literacy Contexts," Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 35, no. 3 (2004): 269-82.
31. T. Beyer, K. Edwards, and C. Fuller, "Misinterpretation of African American English BIN by Adult Speakers of Standard American English," Language & Communication 45 (2015): 59-69.
32. M. Seidenberg and M. MacDonald, "The Impact of Language Experience on Language and Reading," Topics in Language Disorders 38, no. 1 (2018): 66-83.
33. Thomas-Tate, Washington, and Edwards, "Standardized Assessment."
34. B. Wright, The Brilliance of Black Boys: Cultivating School Success in the Early Grades (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018).
35. J. Morton, "Cultural Code-Switching: Straddling the Achievement Gap," Journal of Political Philosophy 22, no. 3 (2014): 259-81.
36. Makalela, "Moving Out of Linguistic Boxes"; and O. García and C. Sylvan, "Pedagogies and Practices in Multilingual Classrooms: Singularities in Pluralities," Modern Language Journal 95, no. 3 (2011): 385-400.

[illustrations by Ojima Abalaka]

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Teaching Reading to African American Children

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Reading depends on spoken language.* This is a simple statement with profound consequences for children whose spoken language differs from the language they are expected to read. For most children, the language skills they bring to school will support learning to read, which is mainly learning to understand their spoken language in a new form: print.

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Celebrating Many Meanings: Language comprehension and the importance of Black English with Jasmine Rogers

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Celebrating Many Meanings: Language comprehension and the importance of Black English with Jasmine Rogers

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While working with students, one educator came to a realization that put her on a path to fascinating research in the Science of Reading. In this episode, Jasmine Rogers-manager and coach with the In Schools program at the DC Reading Clinic and an early literacy intervention lead at American University-shares her story and delves into her research on dialects and best practices for structured literacy instruction. She discusses Black language and how it connects with the language comprehension strand of Scarborough's Reading Rope. Jasmine also offers recommendations for classroom teachers who have bidialectal students.

Show notes:
DC Reading ClinicS1-22: Success using the Science of Reading: Mary ClaymanJasmine Rogers - Linkedin S4-07: Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error: Julie Washington"Teaching Reading to African American Children," by Julie A. Washington and Mark S. Seidenberg"Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy," by April Baker-Bell"An Informed Lens on African American English," by Megan-Brette Hamilton"Multilingualism and Codeswitching in Education," by Nkonko M. KamwangamaluQuotes:

"As a teacher, a Black woman, who speaks Black English, who knows the language, who is very well versed in structured literacy, if I overlooked this, if that caught me off guard a little bit, then that means that could potentially catch someone else off guard." -Jasmine Rogers

"With language comprehension, and considering in your native language, there may be a word that doesn't necessarily match up with a language that you are learning in the classroom. So you have to then use your incredible cognitive skills that speak two completely different codes, comprehend what is happening, and then tie that back into, of course, the Rope to become a fluent reader." -Jasmine Rogers

"I consider Black English to be a very complex and complicated language...but I think typically in society it has been viewed very negatively. You can see in the media and in research where people have talked about it and used negative connotations. And I think those beliefs from society have seeped into the classroom." -Jasmine Rogers

"A strength of children that are bidialectal is the similar strength to students that are bilingual-they have an ability to take language that is different from theirs and translate it. That right there is an asset." -Jasmine Rogers

"The languages that we speak and bring from home also are not wrong. They're simply different. And we're gonna work together so that we take what we know differently and come together with a common language so that we're communicating with one another." -Jasmine Rogers

"We have got to give our students access to this code so that they can become literate and run our society one day." -Jasmine Rogers

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s6 e12: celebrating many meanings: language comprehension and bidialectal students with jasmine rogers

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‎Science of Reading: The Podcast: S6 E12: Celebrating many meanings: Language comprehension and bidialectal students with Jasmine Rogers on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While working with students, one educator came to a realization that put her on a path to fascinating research in the Science of Reading. In this episode, Jasmine Rogers-manager and coach with the In Schools program at the DC Reading Clinic and an early literacy intervention lead at American Univers...

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Phonemic Inventories and Cultural Linguistice Information

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Phonemic Inventories and Cultural Linguistice Information

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Languages across the world have unique phonemic systems. For individuals learning English as a second language, it is common for the phonemic system of their first language to influence the production of sounds in English.

Resources listed below are intended to contribute to foundational awareness of potential cultural and linguistic influences. There are variations within cultures, and regional and dialectal variances exist in all languages. Therefore, a single chart/page on cultural and/or linguistic features is not meant to provide a comprehensive overview. Clinical judgment, client/patient/student and caregiver input, and additional research are needed to ensure culturally responsive services.

How Can I Use This Information?

Speech-language pathologists can use this information to:

Identify sounds in a client's phonological system for languages other than English.

Determine phonemic influences of a client's native language on English.

Identify sounds from the client's first language that may not exist in English or identify sounds in English that do not exist in someone's native language.

Recognize that even if there are similar sounds across two languages, they may not be used the same way. For example, in some languages a sound may only be used at the ends of words and not as a word-initial sound.

Audiologists can use this information to:

Correlate the client's audiogram and the sounds of the client's language(s).

Recognize and respond to amplification needs.

Identify the effect of the individual's phonemic system on speech audiometry assessment.

Modify materials and procedures during speech audiometry assessment.

Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information

ASHA has compiled resources on the phonemic systems for the following languages:

Amharic

Arabic

Bosnian

Burmese

Chinese

English

English Phonemic Inventory [PDF]
Dialect
Haitian Creole

Hindi/Urdu

Hmong

Japanese

Korean

Navajo

Pashto and Persian

Polish

Russian

Spanish

Somali

Tagalog

Turkish

Vietnamese

Refugee Profiles/Information
ASHA's policy documents state that SLPs and audiologists must consider the sound systems of all the languages used by a client in order to provide appropriate assessment and treatment services.
Websites with Phonemic Inventories

If you have any questions, please contact ASHA's Office of Multicultural Affairs at multicultural@asha.org.

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Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages

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A list of phonemic inventories across multiple languages

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Structured Literacy among English Learners

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Structured Literacy among English Learners

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Elsa Cardenas Hagan: Making Connections for Structured Literacy Instruction Among English Learners

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S4-08: Empowering multilingual learners: Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

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S4-08: Empowering multilingual learners: Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan

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‎Science of Reading: The Podcast: S4-08: Empowering multilingual learners: Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan on Apple Podcasts

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‎Show Science of Reading: The Podcast, Ep S4-08: Empowering multilingual learners: Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan - Oct 19, 2021

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Learn about the language your students are loved in!

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Learn about the language your students are loved in!

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A bilingual site for educators and families for English Language Learners

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A bilingual site for educators and families for English Language Learners

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Fortunately for Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs), there are many similarities between English and Spanish.

First of all, both languages use the Roman alphabet. That knowledge helps build a phonemic and phonological foundation.

Secondly, 30% to 40% of all words in English have a related word in Spanish. With similar sound, appearance, and meaning, these cognates help students transfer that word knowledge into their second language.

Thirdly, except for a couple of word order exceptions (adjective before noun in English and noun before adjective in Spanish), sentences in both languages have the same basic structures (as compared to English and Chinese or other non-Latin derived languages).

And fourth, learning to read and write uses the same basic processes (phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, comprehension, writing mechanics).

When teachers and students know these basic similarities between the two languages, it saves time and guess work as students transfer their knowledge of Spanish literacy into English literacy.

Phonemic and phonological differences between Spanish and English

There are also some differences between the two languages that may interfere with English pronunciation (phonemic differences) and with decoding or spelling (phonological differences).

Perhaps the greatest difference between English and Spanish is that Spanish has only five vowel sounds while English has more than 14, depending on regional dialects. This is the reason Spanish speakers have difficulty differentiating between vowel phonemes in words like seat and sit. Both phonemes are pronounced differently from the Spanish sí ( yes), which is pronounced somewhere between those two English phonemes. These differences also affect students' spelling. Here are some other examples of possible interference from Spanish:

Here are a few differences between Spanish and English:

Combinations in Spanish that are pronounced differently: que, qui, güe, güi. For example: the u is not pronounced unless it is written as ü; therefore, students may not be sure how to pronounce words like queen, quiet, or quick

Quotation marks vs. dashes: "Come here," he said. -Ven aquí-le dijo.

Spanish does not have the following sounds (listed by category):

Strategies for Spanish-speaking ELLs

Point out differences when you introduce phonemic awareness activities (distinguishing sounds) by showing students how to make those sounds.

Say to students, for example:

To make the sound for /sh/ in ship, pronounce it like the Spanish /sh/ by letting air out between your teeth. Notice how you can stretch the /sh/ sound until you run out of air. But, to make the sound /ch/ in chip, you touch the top of your mouth with your tongue and let the air out with a little explosion. Notice how you cannot stretch that sound.

Spanish speakers have difficulty distinguishing the ways to pronounce the final -s in plurals and third person.

Give students examples for each as follows:

Spanish speakers have difficulty distinguishing the ways to pronounce the -ed in past-tense verbs.

Give students examples for each as follows:

"We pronounce it /d/ when the word ends with..."

"We pronounce it /t/ when the word ends with..."

"When the word ends with t, it sounds like /tid/ as in patted."

"When the word ends with d, it sounds like /did/ as in added."

Spanish speakers may leave out word endings when saying or spelling a word.

For example: restauran instead of restaurant; end instead of ended. They may also have problems spelling words that contain the consonant blends, initial sounds, and final sounds listed in the box above.

Additionally, students might substitute:

ll for y (because ll is the nearest sound in Spanish. For example: llelow instead of yellow.)

j for h (because h is silent in Spanish, they might use j. For example: jope instead of hope.)

There are also some differences in question and sentence structures between both languages.

Question markers

Do you want to go to the movies tonight?
¿Quieres ir al cine esta noche?
(Spanish speakers will likely leave out do)

Adjective-Nouns

white horse
caballo blanco (horse white)
(Spanish speakers will often use the adjective after the noun)

With these similarities and differences in mind, pay close attention to your Spanish-speaking ELLs' written and spoken "errors." When you recognize a student saying horse white, for example, point out that in English the noun and adjective are reversed: white horse, brown cow, etc. Once ELLs understand these patterns, they will begin to apply them on their own to new situations.

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Capitalizing on Similarities and Differences between Spanish and English

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Fortunately for Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs), there are many similarities between English and Spanish. First of all, both languages use the Roman alphabet. That knowledge helps build a phonemic and phonological foundation. Secondly, 30% to 40% of all words in English have a related word in Spanish.

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Excellent information for teaching English Language Learners

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Excellent information for teaching English Language Learners

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A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners

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Literacy Foundations for English Learners

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Literacy Foundations for English Learners

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More than 5 million English learners attend U.S. public schools-and yet fewer than 3% of teachers are certified to work with them. Fill that gap in teacher education with this practical and comprehensive textbook, an evidence-based guide to providing English learners in Pre-K-Grade 6 with explicit, systematic instruction on language and literacy fundamentals.

Aligned with IDA's Knowledge and Practice Standards, this book prepares current and future educators to teach English learners the key components of language and literacy, as first described in the National Literacy Panel report. For each component, teachers will get a dedicated chapter with research-based insights on how to teach English learners, guidance on making connections across languages when teaching that component, and ready-to-use principles and strategies for instruction. Learning objectives, study questions, and extended application activities help educators grow their knowledge and apply it in their classrooms.

An essential text for courses on literacy foundations and biliteracy-and an ideal in-service professional development resource-this accessible book will give teachers the knowledge base they need to help English learners develop strong literacy skills and achieve academic success.

PREPARE TEACHERS TO:

Enter their classroom with a full understanding of the language and literacy development of English learners

Teach English learners the key components of language and literacy: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, spelling, and writing skills

Apply insights from current, reliable research on how best to teach English learners

Use specific, evidence-based principles, strategies, activities, and sample teacherâ€"student dialogues to guide and strengthen instruction

Leverage technology to adapt and enhance instruction for English learners

ONLINE COMPANION MATERIALS INCLUDED: Faculty will get helpful PowerPoint slides for each chapter, plus a sample syllabus that shows you how to use this book in your course.

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Literacy Foundations for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction

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Literacy Foundations for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction [Cardenas-Hagan Ed.D. CCC/SLP CDT CALT, Elsa, Vaughn Ph.D., Sharon] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Literacy Foundations for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction

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Excellent resources for parents of students who do not speak English as their primary language.

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A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners

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Phonological Awareness Focus on What Matters

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Primary phonemic awareness screener- Literacy Resources

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Primary phonemic awareness screener- Literacy Resources