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Each term a specific area of focus will be highlighted. For example, the focus for Term 3, 2021 was Book Language.

While members are welcome to read or view any of the resources, a recommended reading or viewing which links to the term focus will be highlighted in purple.

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What teachers need to know about shared reading

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What teachers need to know about shared reading

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In this article for TES, Kate Nation explains the importance of book language and shared reading.

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Picture the scene: I'm squeezed into my seat on a packed train with no room to open my laptop or reach into my bag to pull out a book, phone, newspaper - anything to offer distraction.

Across from me, a father and his toddler daughter start to look at a book together. I close my eyes and tune in to what's happening.

The girl has heard the story before and demands a particular starting page.

"What happened in the story before?" her dad asks.

Something gets recited and then he begins to read, stopping and starting with asides and commentary. He speeds up and slows down; the animal characters have different voices. She bangs the book and insists on turning the page.

They are in their own world, full of words and wonder, unaware, I hope, that the woman opposite is taking mental notes.

We know that "shared reading" matters. Study after study shows that children vary enormously in the amount of shared reading they experience in the preschool years. In turn, this variation is associated with language and literacy development once they get to school.

We also know that the amount and quality of shared reading is associated with social advantage. This means that some children are starting school from a position of serious disadvantage when it comes to later language and literacy learning, and all that follows from that.

Listening in on the train, I was aware of these general findings, and some of the explanations for why shared reading does so much to support development. Some people have argued that shared reading encourages good reading habits, a more positive attitude to reading, and reading for pleasure. Others have focused on the critical role of extra-text talk - how caregivers might scaffold their child's language by making links, emphasising words and explaining concepts.

Relatedly, shared reading fosters language use that is more decontextualised - for example, asking questions, reflecting on what happened before and predicting what might happen next all provide opportunities to move away from the here and now.

All of these features were at play as I eavesdropped. But what also struck me was the content and style of the text itself - the fact that the language used in written text can differ markedly to what is heard in everyday conversation.

It got me thinking: could the nature of this "book language" play a critical role in helping us to properly understand why shared reading matters for language and literacy development? And if so, what might that mean for how we promote and teach reading, both in the home and at school?

Let's leave the father and his daughter reading on the train and consider our own experience of language in conversations and when reading. Think of a recent conversation you've had, or pause to listen to one now, and then imagine it written down, verbatim. How similar is it to language that has been written to be read - the text that you might read in a textbook, novel or newspaper?

Reading vs listening

Formal analyses by linguists reveal quite big language differences between reading and listening, especially when the comparison is between formal text and everyday conversation. Spoken language is generally "in the moment" and in the context of social interaction. When we listen to language, we're privy to an entire repertoire of features that help us comprehend the message: tone of voice and speed of delivery, for example. We might be able to see the speaker, their gestures and facial expressions; in face-to-face conversation, the speaker can monitor our responses, adjusting their output if miscomprehension is suspected.

Text, by contrast, is remote. It cannot rely on situational cues or shared context to deliver its message. Instead, the language itself has to do the leg work, and this means text tends to be more formal and more linguistically complex. When we write (or read), we use more words, longer words and a greater range of different words than when we listen (or speak).

We also use different patterns of grammar; some syntactic structures are rare in speech but common in writing. Take for example "the book that was read by the woman", a complex sentence that contains a relative clause in the passive voice. It's not difficult to understand and we encounter such sentences quite regularly - but virtually always when reading, not when listening. Such increases in linguistic complexity enable sufficient specification in the text, so that the person reading it can reconstruct its meaning.

It's fascinating to note that complex syntax tends to be a property of languages that have a writing system. Languages change and evolve over time, and for European languages, written language is a relatively recent cultural invention. Julie Sedivy, writing in the magazine Nautilus, considers how the onset of writing might have brought about linguistic evolution. Languages that don't have an associated writing system rarely combine more than one clause in a sentence, preferring instead to string together a series of simple utterances. Perhaps our language was once like this before literacy reshaped the way we speak, and perhaps even the way we think.

The more children read and the more widely they read, the more exposure they have to the language of the book. This sets the foundation for acquiring knowledge and learning across the entire curriculum, and for becoming adept at writing and oracy, using the language of the book productively to communicate effectively to others with clarity and authority.

But of course, we don't have to read to experience book language. Classrooms offer many opportunities to experience more formal or academic forms of language. And the little girl on the train was listening to her father - she was able to access the story's vocabulary and syntax, despite not being able to read it herself.

But how different is the language of a book aimed at this age group to other forms of communication in the early years of education? What struck me as I listened on that train journey was the linguistic complexity of the language the girl was hearing as her father read. One might imagine that the language in books written for such young children would be identical to the spoken language they hear - that authors might pitch the vocabulary and syntactic structures to match those familiar to the child. But research shows that this is not the case.

Lexical diversity

Jessica Montag, now at the University of California, Riverside, and her colleagues, collated vocabulary content from more than 100 books written for preschoolers, counting the number of words and the number of different words. They did the same for child-directed speech - samples of language taken from interactions between adults and children in the home or the nursery. The differences were striking. Not only were there more words in text than conversation, but text was more lexically diverse - it contained more different words. Shared reading allows preschoolers to experience words they wouldn't otherwise encounter.

Only a few studies have looked in detail at the syntactic complexity of books written for preschoolers, but the same conclusion holds: shared reading provides children with language experience that is different to everyday conversation.

Thea Cameron-Faulkner and Clare Noble from the University of Manchester analysed the content of 20 books, taken from Amazon bestseller lists, aimed at two-year-olds. In general, the books contained more complex sentences than child-directed speech.

Similar findings were reported by Jessica Montag and Maryellen MacDonald, who showed once again that books written for children contained more complex syntax than child-directed speech. In addition, their analyses showed that children's books, while not as grammatically complex as books for adults, were in some respects more complex than day-to-day conversational speech between adults.

Alongside the content and style of book language itself, adults' speech while engaged in shared reading is also more complex than their everyday conversation. In a follow-up study, Noble and colleagues showed that even very simple picture books induced parents to use more complex language in their extra-text talk, compared with the language they used when playing with their child.

So the father reading with his daughter on the train was, whether he knew it or not, doing far more than keeping an active toddler occupied while killing time on a long journey. His language and conversational style, working in concert with the language of the book, was providing rich input from which his daughter could learn.

The amount and quality of shared reading that a child experiences in the preschool years is positively associated with their later language development and school success. It's not difficult to see why.

As we've seen, books written for preschoolers are written in rich book language, beyond that which is experienced through everyday conversation. And that's before we add in other positive features commonly seen in shared book reading episodes:

*Books can be read and reread, repeatedly (research by Jessica Horst and colleagues at the University of Sussex shows the importance of repetition for word learning via shared reading).

*A dialogical style with questions, points and prompts provide much extra-text talk and reflection.

* Shared reading is an opportunity for one-to-one attention and quality time, emotional bonding and enjoyment.

But how about children who don't receive adequate shared-reading opportunities in the preschool years? We know that there is substantial variation from infancy onwards, with some children being read to only occasionally, and others on a daily basis. There are differences in quality, too, in terms of the range of material read and the amount of extra-text talk provided.

A lack of shared-reading experience might matter more for some children than others. Using longitudinal data from 17,687 children participating in the UK's Millennium Cohort Study, James Law and colleagues examined the relationship between shared reading at ages 3 and 5, and language outcomes at age 11. As well as a general association across the entire sample, they found a larger effect at the lower end of the language distribution. For those children with lower levels of language, shared reading experience was especially beneficial.

It's tempting here to see a correlation between the amount of parent-child shared reading and children's language outcomes, and come to the conclusion that inadequate parenting somehow directly causes poor language. That would be wrong.

As with any correlation, logic tells us that the relationship might work in the opposite direction, with a child's own language level setting the pace for the amount and quality of shared reading. Bidirectional, reciprocal relationships are also possible, with shared reading bootstrapping language to promote more fruitful shared reading - or less positively, a downward spiral for those not so fortunate.

Another temptation is to point a blameful finger at parents who don't read with their toddlers and assume that if only they did, all would be well. That's misleading. Shared reading, the number of books in the home, membership of libraries and so on, are all associated with differences in educational and social advantage. Social disadvantage reflects issues that are systemic and complex - issues that no doubt require systemic and complex solutions. A simple call "to read more" is clearly insufficient.

It's also important to remember that parents don't just create an environment for their child. Genes are also at play, for language is a heritable trait. This means that the shared reading environment a parent provides might reflect their own capabilities, passed to their child via biology as well as culture.

This shouldn't be interpreted as bleak and deterministic - the fact that differences between people in language proficiency are associated with genetic differences between people does not mean that education or social provision is doomed to failure. Far from it. Working hard to optimise intervention and education becomes all the more important, not less.

As Kathryn Asbury from the University of York wrote in Tes last year, heritability estimates "do not predetermine anything... I can gain a couple of inches by wearing heels or I can correct my vision by wearing glasses, both regardless of my genetic predispositions" (you can listen to Asbury talking about the role of genetics in education on the Tes Podagogy podcast at bit.ly/PodAsbury).

Enhancing opportunities

So how can we increase shared-reading opportunities for young children in the home in the preschool years?

Progress is being made, as showcased by nationwide initiatives such as the BookTrust's Bookstart programme, which gives books for babies, along with tips and guidance for their parents to support shared reading. Championing "nudge" ideas, McDonald's and easyJet have provided creative solutions to making books more available to young children by placing them in meal deal boxes and in the pocket of airplane seats on popular holiday flights respectively.

Inspiring as these initiatives are, research tells us that gains from intervention programmes are hard won, especially for families from less advantaged social and economic backgrounds. In a recent randomised control trial with such families, Jamie Lingwood, Josie Billington and Caroline Rowland from the University of Liverpool monitored the effectiveness of a shared-reading intervention, designed for parents and their preschool children, and focusing on enjoying shared reading. Children's vocabulary did not improve.

Lingwood and colleagues discuss the non-trivial challenges of engaging families and encouraging them to engage in more shared-reading practice at home. They note that it is possible to promote a positive shared-reading culture and for this to have positive effects on language development, but more intensive, longer-term support is needed.

Even with intensive community provision in the preschool years, shifting language is hard. In a recent blog, professor Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia discusses the findings of research led by Susan Neuman, conducted in childcare centres in high-poverty urban areas in the US. The three- and four-year-olds had year-long access to lots of books in a child-friendly environment; they listened to information texts and had the opportunity for book-related discussion with library staff. Despite this "flood of books", the children's language did not improve, relative to a control group.

What was missing? It's hard to say. One strong possibility is that children need shared interaction with the same trusted adults, extended over time. Partly for emotional reasons, no doubt, to build empathy and reading for pleasure, but also because such continuity allows structure to develop in the input. Parents and children can choose what to read next, opting for something new or revisiting family favourites again and again - an ideal recipe for learning with exposure to new things alongside repetition of old things. This is difficult to mimic in community settings, and all the more so with hard-to-reach families.

School is different, though, and this is why teachers have such an important role to play.

Opportunities for shared reading should not stop when children go to school. Now, though, something different is also needed.

Research on shared reading with young children has shown that it doesn't provide lessons in learning to read in terms of acquiring knowledge of the alphabet and identifying words. Instead, it provides opportunities to share narrative and learn from oral language, setting the scene for "reading readiness".

What learning to read an alphabetic language such as English does require is for children to acquire phonic knowledge, and there's good evidence to suggest that this is best achieved via explicit and systematic phonics teaching.

Decodable texts have an important role to play here. For beginning readers, of course, decodables will tend towards including book language that is restricted and simplified. But what's gained is the opportunity for children to practise their phonic knowledge and experience success as a reader.

This is not incompatible with calls for "real" or "authentic" texts. Shared reading can and must continue, with texts that challenge and inspire, and bring joy.

Early years classrooms are well placed to help children start to "catch up" on book-language experience. School happens nearly every day. Teachers and teaching assistants offer continuity, and as the year progresses, relationships are built. Regular shared-reading activities seem a must - I'm saddened when I hear teachers say there's insufficient time in the day to do this. Emphasising the importance of shared reading can only be a good thing.

There's also an opportunity for something more. Careful selection of texts can maximise exposure to different aspects of book language - language that doesn't come for free from everyday conversation. More resources could be developed to help teachers structure and plan shared-reading activities, allowing children's learning to build, informed by an understanding of why and how shared reading promotes language development.

The aim here is not to take the joy out of shared reading, nor limit its scope. Maximising exposure to book language by adding structure and planning content, while exploiting principles such as repetition and variation, can help promote language learning without detracting from the enjoyment. This is not an alternative to phonics and structured activities that teach children how to read words for themselves, directly and explicitly. But it is a vital complement - especially for those children who start school with lower levels of language.

Back to the train, and the journey is coming to an end. The book is closed. The girl packs it away in her bag, proudly and contentedly. I smile and say goodbye.

We had both learned something new.
For references and suggestions for further reading, see readoxford.org/book-language Kate Nation is professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, and director of both ReadOxford and Language and Cognitive Development Research Group

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What teachers need to know about shared reading

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Early years books are written in a deeper, more complex language than you might have thought - and it's only through shared reading that their full literacy potential is unlocked. In fact, schools need to make the practice as much of a priority as phonics, says Kate Nation

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The purpose of this Padlet is to create an easy-to-access repository of readings, podcasts and videos to support professional learning for branch members.

Please add links to resources under the relevant column. If a new column needs adding, please email Charlotte Forwood.

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Shared reading for language development 

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Shared reading for language development 

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If you are a parent or a teacher, you most probably read stories to young children. Together, you laugh and point at the pictures. You engage them with a few simple questions. And they respond.

So what happens to children when they participate in shared reading? Does it make a difference to their learning? If so, what aspects of their learning are affected?

Shared reading for language development

British researcher Don Holdaway was the first to point out the benefits of shared reading. He noted that children found these moments to be some of their happiest. He also found that children developed positive and strong associations with spoken language and the physical book itself, during these moments.

Since then a number of studies have been conducted showing the value of shared reading in children's language development, especially in vocabulary and concept development.

Early childhood researcher Vivian Paley, for example, during her work in the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, found that kindergarten children learned when a story was dramatized in shared reading. Not only did children develop oral language, they imaginatively learned the conventions of a story, such as character, plot and themes. In shared storytelling, children also learned how to use language in multiple ways.

Other research found that shared reading was related to the development of expressive vocabulary. That is, children developed listening skills and built an understanding of grammar as well as vocabulary in the context of the story.

Connecting words to emotions

As a language and literacy researcher, I work with teachers to develop reading strategies that develop children's interest in reading and help them think critically. Kay Cowan, an early childhood researcher who studies the role of the arts in language learning, and I conducted two studies to understand children's language development in grades one to five.

Kay Cowan, CC BY

We worked with approximately 75 children across grade levels. We began our language study by talking with the students about the power of words, and the role they play in and outside of school. Following this, we discussed the pleasures associated with words. We then read "Shadow," an award-winning picture book by children's author Marcia Brown, and poems by Shel Silverstein, another children's author.

Children were then asked to think of an "absolutely wonderful" event that they had experienced, and associate an emotion with it. Children chose a personal event that elicited emotions. They then drew contrasting images of the word that showed opposite emotions, and studied synonyms and antonyms to understand the "shades of meaning." They then wrote descriptive poetry to convey this emotion.

All children - even those who were at the risk of failing - used vivid language. Children described words like "ebullient" and "melancholy" in ways that related to their own emotion.

One child described her word "ebullient" as "bright," and "merry," and "never asking for anything." "Ebullient" was also "warm," and "gypsy-like," and so on. Another described loneliness as "...making me feel cold/Like an icicle/wanting to melt away."

Following this exercise, children noticed that their writing was much better. It showed us how wide and varied reading, repetition and varied encounters with words were extremely important for children to have a depth of understanding as well as verbal flexibility - being able to express the meaning of word in different ways.

Why home matters

The quality of exchanges between children and adults during shared reading is found to be critical to their language development. So, the role of home in shared reading is crucial.

Long-term studies by linguistic anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath and other literacy scholars have documented children's ability to read as related to their families' beliefs about reading, the quality of conversation at home and access to print materials prior to their entry into school.

Diana Ramsey, CC BY

For 10 years, Heath studied two communities a few miles a part, one black working-class and one white working-class. She documented how family practices (e.g., oral storytelling, reading books, talk) influenced children's language development at home and in school. For example, children read and talked about stories, were asked questions about the stories or told stories about their lives, events and situations in which they were involved. Parents engaged their children in these experiences to prepare them to do well in school.

Similarly, researcher Victoria Purcell-Gates worked with an Appalachian family, specifically mother Jenny and son Donny, to help them learn to read. With Jenny, they read and talked about picture books, listened to and read along with books on tape and wrote in a journal. With Donny, they shared reading, labeled pictures and wrote stories. Jenny was able to read picture books to her sons, while Donny learned to write letters to his dad in prison.

Other researchers have found that when parents, specifically mothers, knew how to interact with their children during shared reading using positive reinforcement and asking questions about the story, both children and mothers benefited.

Mothers learned how to ask open-ended questions, and prompted their children to respond to stories. Children were more engaged and enthusiastic about the shared reading experience. They also were able to talk more about the story's content, and were able to talk about the relationship between pictures and story.

What's more, shared story experiences have also been shown to have an influence on children's understanding of math concepts and geometry in kindergarten.

Children more readily learn math concepts like numbers, size (bigger, smaller) and estimation/approximation (lots, many) when parents engaged in "math talk" while reading picture books.

Shared reading in a digital world

While shared reading is often associated with print books, shared reading can be extended to digital texts such as blogs, podcasts, text messages, video and other complex combinations of print, image, sound, animation and so on.

Good video games, for example, incorporate many learning principles, such as interaction, problem-solving and risk-taking, among others. As in shared reading, children interact with their parents, teachers or peers as they engage in stories.

Amy Seely Flint, CC BY

Literacy researcher Jason Ranker's case study of eight-year-old Adrian shows that young children can actually "redesign" how stories are read, discussed and told when they engage actively with video game narratives.

Adrian, who played a video game, Gauntlet Legends, created a story in Ranker's class, to which he added many drawings to show the movement of characters.

In this case study, Ranker found that children like Adrian who play video games learn how to produce stories that do not follow the linear pattern found in print stories (exposition, climax, resolution). Rather, children experience stories at "levels" that allow characters and plots to move in many directions, eventually coming to resolution.

Similarly, children with access to certain apps are coordinating their storytelling on a touchscreen. They choose characters for their stories. They move them around with their fingers, and drag-and-drop them in and out of the story. If they want to create more complex stories, they work with others to coordinate characters' movements. Sharing stories, then, becomes collaborative, imaginative and dynamic through these digital mediums.

Children, in essence, have redesigned how stories are told and experienced, demonstrating imagination, vision and problem-solving.

One thing that is clear across research is that rich complex language development does not happen merely by pointing at letters or pronouncing words out of context. It is engagement, and guided attention to language conventions, that matter in shared reading.

Ultimately, what is important is that shared reading must be a joyful experience for the child. Sharing stories must allow for a personal connection and allow for interaction and a shared learning.

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Reading to your child: the difference it makes

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If you are a parent or a teacher, you most probably read stories to young children. Together, you laugh and point at the pictures. You engage them with a few simple questions. And they respond. So what happens to children when they participate in shared reading? Does it make a difference to their learning?

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Oral language is a wonder. Across time and cultures, most people develop oral language skills without much conscious effort. As a species, oral language has helped us to survive, reproduce, and to cooperate with each other, even in very hostile conditions. As individuals, oral language is crucial for social development, reading comprehension, learning, academic participation, and for work and life success.

But what is oral language?

As a speech pathologist who works with people with Developmental and other Language Disorders, one of the most frustrating things about oral language is just how hard it is to explain to others in Plain English. I've tried a few times, without much success.

I'm going to have another go now!

A. Not just complicated.

Some things are made up of many interconnected parts. We describe these things as "complicated". Cars and coffee machines are good examples. Often, the parts of complicated things work together in defined and limited ways to produce a result, like letting me drive down my street, or producing a hot cup of coffee.

Language is made up of many connecting parts. But it is not like a car or a coffee machine. Oral language is not just complicated: it's a complex system.

B. What do we mean by a complex system?

Not only is language made up of lots of parts, but the parts interact with each other in lots of different - and often unpredictable - ways. This makes language complex, like weather or the health system.

Oral language involves listening (receptive) skills; and speaking (expressive) skills. It also includes different forms, content, and uses, as shown in this famous model:

C. Everything is connected!

This sounds like something from James Cameron's Avatar or something to be discovered on a life-changing meditation retreat. But, with oral language, it happens to be true.

Some children have language problems that affect primarily one sub-system or part of language. For example, many children with language disorders have difficulties with word forms (e.g. past tense verbs, like "jumped" or "flew") or syntax (e.g. understanding and using complex sentences like "The boy ordered a pizza because he was hungry", "Before you have breakfast, make your bed", and "The dog was walked by the man with the grey hair"). But everything is connected, and language problems do not segregate into neat subtypes.

As a practical example, consider the word " because ". If a 6-year-old child does not understand the word "because" and how it's used, he or she will:

be unlikely to understand or use the word correctly as part of his or her vocabulary (a language content deficit);

have difficulties understanding or using the word as a subordinating conjunction in complex sentences (a language form deficit);

have difficulties understanding or explaining cause and effect relationships in words, meaning they may not be able to answer questions or follow instructions from a teacher that include the term (both examples of language use deficits);

perhaps be perceived by the teacher and the child's peers as unintelligent, impolite or disobedient (an example of the social stigma and low expectations that often accompany language difficulties); and

perhaps become reluctant to engage in future interactions and situations requiring knowledge of "because" (an example of how language deficits can reduce participation and inclusion over time).

Focusing on one aspect of language difficulty - e.g. receptive syntax or expressive vocabulary - in isolation doesn't make a lot of sense when all aspects of language interact and feed into each other. Language difficulties in one area can have serious, systemic knock-on effects.

Rather than trying to sort language problems into arbitrary categories or leaky buckets, it's better to just use the term "language disorder" and think about treating the system. (You can read more about language therapy here.)

D. Typical language development

Given its complexity, it's incredible that so many of us learn to understand and to use oral language without much direct instruction. But some people aren't as lucky. It's useful to know about typical patterns of language development so that people with, or at risk of, language disorders are picked up and helped as early as possible.

Language development typically follows this pattern:

Understanding of language usually comes before speaking.

From the first months, most children develop native speech perception and production skills based on the language or languages the child is surrounded by.

Speech production starts with single words, followed by word combinations, to simple sentences and then more complex sentences.

Between 18 months and 6 years of age, children learn lots of new words: around 50 words at 18 months to around 10,000 words by 6 years. Word and sentence syntax skills also develop rapidly.

In infant, toddler and preschool years, most of the language a child hears is oral language.

When literacy begins in late preschool or early school years, an increasing amount of language input comes from printed words, e.g. in books.

Early oral language skills are a good predictor of early reading development. But, later, reading and spoken language development piggyback off each other. For example, quality books often contain more sophisticated vocabularies and sentence structures than conversational speech.

During the school years, language skills continue to develop and be refined into adolescence, alongside various forms of "meta-linguistic awareness" (the conscious awareness of oral and written language and how it is used).

E. Things that are known to affect language development

Oral language development is influenced by many factors, including:

genes. In children aged 2-4 years, the heritability of language is about 30% but this rises to around 60% by the age of 12 years. The genetic correlation between oral language and reading comprehension is above 0.80;

socioeconomic status (e.g. factors like parental education, income, and housing). On average, children aged 30 months-3 years from professional families are exposed to 11 million words in a year, compared to an average of 3 million words for children from the poorest families. Parent-child interactions for children from high socioeconomic backgrounds are, on average, more conversational than for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. On average, parents with lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be more directive with their children, though, of course, there are many examples where this is not the case. Poverty has a big impact on reading outcomes too: you can read more about why poor kids are more likely to be poor readers here;

home learning environment. This includes the language and literacy skills of parents (which are of course also affected by genes), as well as the number of books in the home and the parents' reading habits. You can read more about the importance of the home learning environment here;

the interaction between your genes and your environment. For example, if you are good at using language, you will probably seek out more language-based activities. If you have poor social language skills, you will probably have less satisfying social interactions and socialise less; and

other known risk factors for language disorders: we've summarised some of the main known risk factors here.

F. This is interesting. Tell me more!

My favourite response, and why we write this blog!

Here are my recommendations for further reading about different aspects of oral language. For each article, we include references to peer-reviewed research:
(1) Language Form
For information about phonological (speech) development, check out:

For information about early morphological development, check out:

For information about syntax, check out:
(2) Language Content
For information about vocabulary, check out:

For information about categories, semantic development, sequences, and inferences, check out:
(3) Social Use of Language (also called pragmatics)
We use oral language to communicate in different places with different people and for different purposes (pragmatics). For more information, check out these resources:
(4) Language Disorders and the importance of focusing on strengths, participation and inclusion
People with language and other communication difficulties are not broken and don't need to be "fixed". People are not their disorders.

Lots of researchers, speech pathologists, psychologists, teachers, families and people with language disorders are focused on learning more about language and how to mitigate the effects of language difficulties.

It is never too late to seek help! Find out more:

Key source for the information in Parts D and E: Hulme, C., Snowling, M., West, G., Lervåg, A, and Melby-Lervåg, M. (2020). Children's Language Skills Can Be Improved: Lessons from Psychological Science for Educational Policy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(4), 372-377.

The Simple View of Reading, originally proposed in 1986 by Gough and Tunmer, suggests that reading comprehension in early school years is best predicted by two factors:

the child's fluent word decoding; and

the child's oral language skills.

For example, studies have shown that fluent decoding and language skills, together with the effects of their interactions, explain more than 96% of the variance in students' early reading comprehension development (e.g. Hjetland et al., 2018). You can read more about the Simple View of Reading here and here.

Some researchers think that a third factor has an important, additional, part to play in reading development: executive functions.

What does "executive functions" mean?

Executive functions are hard to define and even harder to measure. They are a set of top-down cognitive abilities that control thoughts and behaviours that include:

verbal working memory, e.g. the ability to recall chunks of word-related information, like lists of numbers or words in sequence;

visuospatial memory, e.g. the ability to mimic a sequence of movements, as in the famous "Simon" game of the 1980s;

inhibition, e.g. the the ability to rapidly name opposite shapes (e.g. "say square when you see a circle") or the opposite direction (e.g. "say down when the arrow is pointing up");

shifting or cognitive flexibility, e.g. tasks like saying the correct shape or arrow direction only if the object is coloured white, and the opposite shape or arrow direction if the item is black;

planning, e.g. using strategies before, during, and after tasks to achieve a desired objective; and

selective and sustained attention, e.g. the ability to identify targets among distractors.

There are plausible reasons why each of these functions may play a role in improving reading comprehension.

But do they?

Recent research, conducted with Romanian-speaking second graders, suggests that:

executive functions, as with decoding and language skills, have a strong association with reading comprehension; but

executive functions do not have a significant direct effect on the development of reading comprehension in early years beyond fluent decoding and oral language skills (at least in languages like Romanian, which have relatively transparent orthography); and

fluent decoding and oral language skills explained 92% of the variance in the students' reading comprehension, providing further support for the Simple View of Reading.

In other words, executive functions did not predict reading comprehension skills beyond the effects of fluent decoding and language skills.

These results were consistent with those from an earlier US study conducted with children aged 9-14 years in the US (Spencer et al., 2019). Together, the results suggest that the Simple View of Reading does not need to be updated to include executive functions as a third factor.

Clinical bottom line: What does this research mean for early reading instruction?

If we want to improve students' reading comprehension skills, we should prioritise teaching students word decoding skills - especially in the early stages of reading development - and oral language skills, ratherthan spending our scarce time and money working on discrete executive functions like working memory and cognitive flexibility.

You can read a lot more about the science of reading, and what it means for early reading instruction here.

Principal Source:

Dolean, D.D., Lervåg, A., Visu-Petra, L., and Melby-Lervåg, M. (2021). Language skills, and not executive functions, predict the development of reading comprehension of early readers: evidence from an orthographically transparent language. Reading and Writing, 34,1491-1512. Available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-020-10107-4

Related articles:

You wouldn't know it from Twitter, but literacy researchers, teachers, speech-language pathologists, education psychologists, and reading tutors all want the same thing when working with someone who can't read.

We want them to be able to read. More specifically, we want them to understand what they read.

What we disagree about is how we should teach reading.

The stakes are high

When we get it wrong, students suffer the most. But, actually, we all pay for it:

Illiteracy costs the global economy more than $1 trillion a year in direct costs.

Low literacy is a major contributor to inequality.

Low literacy increases the likelihood of workplace accidents, medication errors, involvement in crime and welfare dependency (World Literacy Foundation, 2015).

Even in rich countries, around 20% of 15-year olds can't read well enough to participate effectively in life (OECD, 2016).

Individually, and as a group, we can do better.

The science is solid. Gaps remain.

A growing body of peer-reviewed research evidence (sometimes called 'the science of reading') tells us a lot - but not everything - about how we should teach reading. But, too often, ideological, political and professional differences distort or drown out the key ideas. Too often, teachers, speech pathologists, and others are not taught the science of reading in university or college. Too often, sunk costs and other biases, training gaps, and resource and time limitations get in the way of us putting the science to work.

We can all get better at teaching reading. We need to be honest about what we know, and don't know. We need to reflect on the limits of our own skills and resources and invest in reducing them. We need to listen to feedback. We need to read new research.

It's hard work. But we must do it.

We owe it to our students. Our job is to:

know which approaches work best;

explain why they work to others, including students, teachers and parents;

know how to teach reading by working on the right things at the right time;

stay open and honest about the many things we don't know;

keep questioning what we're doing, keep learning, and be prepared to abandon practices no longer supported by evidence;

measure our results; and

keep improving our knowledge, systems, processes, techniques and resources to seek better results.

Teaching reading: how?

We've written at length about what works.

In this article, we outline how we go about translating reading science into practice - explaining what we do - recognising that we still have much to learn. That we all have much more to learn. We've tried to focus on evidence-based practices, rather than broad theories or ideologies, but we've referred to some of the key mental models we use when necessary to explain why we do (or don't) do something.

We organised our thoughts on this very important topic after reading a great paper by Professor Anne Castles and colleagues (a citation and link to the full text of the article appear below), and reflecting on our clinical experiences and changing practices over the years.

The basic recipe (with messy ingredients)

Let's start at...the start. To read well, students need to learn:

alphabet decoding: including phonological awareness skills such as letter-sound links and how to blend speech sounds together to make words;

fluent word reading: including gaining access to the meaning of words directly from the spelling without needing to decode them phonically, including through experience, morphological awareness and motivated reading; and

text comprehension, including by increasing vocabulary, background knowledge, semantic networks, inference-making skills, higher level language skills, comprehension monitoring skills, sentence processing, and knowledge of text types, such as story grammar (Castles et al., 2018).

To teach reading well, you need to know how these skills typically develop over time. You need at least some idea of how they interact with each other. You then need to apply that knowledge to the student in front of you.

We think our practices are supported by evidence. But we're open to different views and criticism. We will - no doubt - abandon some practices and adopt others as we learn more. Where possible, we have linked to articles we have written summarising the evidence we rely on to support our practices.

How we support preschoolers to set the stage for later reading success

(a) Oral language and speech development are essential for later reading success

We are hard wired to understand oral language and to speak it. Most (but not all) of us learn to do it without needing to be taught. Parents, early educators and others can play a big role in helping to stimulate early language development by using language stimulation strategies, and engaging activities like play and simply exploring the world. We written hundreds of articles about promoting oral language and speech development. (We've created quite the rabbit hole of information, if you have the time.)

(b) Early treatment of speech and language disorders is very important

A child's oral language competencies (listening and talking) are highly predictive of school readiness and success. And many (but not all) preschoolers with unclear speech go on to have problems with reading. Early intervention is important for children with language disorders and speech sound disorders. But it's never too late to seek help.

(c) Some phonemic awareness skills are important for later reading

Many preschoolers, including some children with speech and language disorders, need extra help to figure out, for example, that the first sound in 'pot' is /p/, or that the last sound in 'pot' is /t/, and that the sounds /p/, /ɒ/ and /t/ can be blended together to make the word 'pot'. These skills can be taught to preschoolers. For school-aged children, we do not teach phonemic awareness in isolation. Instead, we build phonemic awareness skills through letter-sound and early decoding exercises. In other words, we teach sounds with letters, and sound blending and segmenting skills with written words. Read more here.

(d) Letter knowledge is an important precursor to learning letter-sound links

Here are some things you should know when teaching the alphabet to your child.

(e) Increasing print awareness can help preschoolers prepare for reading

Here is a summary of some of the research.

(f) Read quality picture books with preschoolers every day

Here's how to do it. Here's why you should do it. This practice should continue well into primary school.

(g) Read nonfiction to your preschoolers to build world knowledge

Read more non-fiction books to your preschoolers. Here's why.

(h) Listen to audio books and high quality read-alouds with your child

We include some suggestions here. This practice should also continue into primary school, and we make some specific recommendations of audiobooks, with links, for school age children here (Kindergarten and Year 1) and here (Years 2-6).

How we support school-aged students and adults

(1) Reading needs to be taught.

Unlike with talking and listening, we are not biologically primed to read. Everyone needs to be taught. But some children need more help than others.

(2) Use the 'Simple View of Reading'.

When we look at a student's reading strengths and challenges, we apply the 'Simple View of Reading'. You can watch our short video summarising what we think about here. Or you can read a longer article we have written here. In summary, we see the ultimate goal - reading comprehension - as the product of two elements: Word Reading x Listening (language) Comprehension.

(3) Beginners are not experts.

Beginning piano players can't play Chopin's Etude Op. 10 No 4. Beginning artists can't paint The Lady with the Ermine. I've been reading, nerdishly, for more than 40 years. Why would we expect a beginning reader to read like we do: automatically and effortlessly, understanding what we read, as we read it? If you can't read the words on the page, you can't understand what you are reading, even with excellent oral language skills. So we have to start with the squiggles on the page.

(4) Unlike, say with Chinese or Japanese, English has an alphabetic writing system.

In alphabetic systems like English, the speech sounds (phonemes) of the language are represented by letters or groups of letters (graphemes). Most children need to be taught these letter-sound links because they don't pick them up without being taught. Early in reading development, reading comprehension is highly constrained by decoding limitations. Poor decoding can be a bottleneck that stops students from understanding what they are reading about.

(5) Systematic phonics instruction.

There is a strong scientific consensus on the effectiveness of systematic phonics instruction during the initial period of reading instruction (Castles et al., 2018).

(6) Systematic phonics systems teach letter-sound links in an ordered way.

In English, we have 26 letters that, in different combinations, are used to represent the roughly 44 phonemes (speech sounds) we use (depending on our dialect). There are many evidence-based letter-sound sequences around. In our clinic, we used to use the UK Letter-Sound sequence. But we have now adopted the Sounds-Write letter-sound Sequence because it is logical. This sequence teaches children the basic code first (including the sounds most commonly linked to the 26 letters of the alphabet), and then an extended code of frequent letter combinations and the sounds most commonly associated with them, e.g. <ai>, <oo>, <er>, <oy>, <ew>.

(7) One sound per letter to start with.

In English, some letters and letter combinations are linked to more than one speech sound. For example, <c> is linked to /k/ in 'kangaroo' but /s/ in 'city'; <g> is linked to /g/ in 'get' but /dʒ/ 'giraffe'; <ch> is linked to /tʃ/ in 'chicken', /k/ in school, and /ʃ/ in 'chef'); and, infamously, the letter combination 'ough' is linked to at least six different speech sounds (e.g. 'though', 'through', 'rough', 'cough', 'thought', 'thou').

Before 2016, we followed the Spalding approach of explicitly teaching multiple sounds linked to letters and letter-sounds. But, since then we have opted - initially - to teach the sound most commonly associated with each letter or letter combination, and to later teach context-sensitive rules once children have mastered the basic mappings.

For example, once beginning readers have mastered the basic mappings, we will teach them that <c> is linked to /s/ in words where the <c> is followed by <i>, <e> or <y> (as in 'circle', 'ceiling' or 'cycle'), and that <oo> is linked to /ʊ/ when followed by /d/, e.g. 'hood', 'stood', and 'good'. We have found, clinically, that many children (including some children with working memory, speech or language disorders) have difficulty mapping different sounds to letters; and some children rote learn the multiple sounds, but cannot then apply them when decoding words. We have also found that starting out with a limited set of letter-sound links, puts many children on the path to independent reading earlier than if we dedicate too much time to teaching context-sensitive and less common links early.

(8) We take a synthetic phonics approach to systematic phonics instruction.

I wish it had a better name. Synthetic doesn't mean 'fake'. It means that we teach children early to blend individual phonemes together to make words. Another word for blending is 'synthesise', which is where we get the term 'synthetic phonics'.

Note: we don't wait until children have mastered all their letter-sound links to start reading words. As soon as they have mapped the first five letter-sound links in our sequence (<a>, <i>, <m>, <s>, <t>), we practice blending the related sounds together in different combinations, so we can read words like 'mat' and 'sat' and 'tim tam'). (There are other approaches to phonics instruction. One is called analytic phonics, which teaches children to break down whole words into parts. We've seen some evidence that synthetic phonics is better, e.g. Johnson & Watson, 2004, 2005, but I would love to see more evidence and am keeping an open mind.)

(9) We consolidate early decoding skills with encoding (spelling) practice, following the same letter-sound sequence.

There's good evidence it helps to improve phonological awareness skills, including letter-sound links and word reading skills, which you can see summarised here. We are big fans of the inexpensive Spelfabet resources to support this practice, although you can make your own.

(10) We focus on real words in reading instruction.

Nonword reading and writing tests are a great way to test a child's phonological awareness, and to figure out if a child is learning to decode words phonically. That's why we support the Phonics Check.

But, for most students, we focus on real words. Children with small vocabularies can find it hard to know whether a word is 'real' or not, and we'd rather spend the time helping them to build their vocabularies. One caveat: some children with excellent language skills are able to pretend they are decoding, when in fact they are guessing from context, from pictures or because they are reading predictable books (e.g. 'I see a square. I see a circle. I see a triangle.'). For these children, we sometimes use non-words in instruction to help them to break the habit of guessing words.

(11) We are not against supplementing early phonics with 100 or so high frequency 'sight words'.

Most alphabetic writing systems have at least some degree of spelling-to-sound irregularity. English includes many high frequency words that are highly unusual. Teaching sight words is controversial, and some people think it confuses children. The evidence doesn't support these concerns. There is a case for teaching children the pronunciations of a small number of high frequency sight words directly, including words like 'the', 'come', 'have', 'said'. One study shows that teaching the 64 most common letter-sound mappings combined with 100 or so of the most frequent sight words allows children to read aloud 90% of the words in texts they typically encounter, again promoting independent reading (Solity & Vousden, 2009).

Many evidence-based reading programs, like MultiLit, include sight word lists. We think that sight word learning is likely to be most successful when children have basic letter knowledge.

(12) We think that there is a role in early reading for decodable books.

Decodable books are texts written for children that consist mostly of words that they can read correctly using the letter-sound links they have learned and some high frequency sight words like 'the' and 'said'. These books give children an opportunity to practice what they have learned and to experience success in reading independently.

We use decodable books while children are learning the basic and extended codes. Some of our favourites include the InitialLit, Moon Dogs, SPELD SA, and Talisman readers. We have also made our own without pictures, and mapped to the Sounds Write Sequence to check that children are reading (and not guessing from pictures). We've made them available for free.

Once children have acquired basic decoding skills, we fade out decodable books, and move on to books with a wider variety of vocabulary and knowledge, in part to support ongoing language development, and in part to keep children motivated to read about the things that interest them the most.

(13) We supplement early reading lessons with access to high quality audio books and books.

As noted above, during the early years of primary school, we should continue to expose children to high quality books to support oral language development and later reading skills. There is no reason why this can't happen at the same time as early phonics instruction, and both practices are supported by evidence.

(14) For skilled readers, we know word reading involves more than just alphabetic decoding (but you have to walk before you can run).

Although the focus on our reading work with beginner readers is on letter-sound links and blending speech sounds to make words, we know that skilled readers use more than just decoding. There are two key processes in word reading: one that involves effortful phonics-based decoding, and another that involves gaining access to meaning directly from the spelling.

In skilled readers, both processes are used: we use the (more efficient) direct access from spelling method for familiar words, and (effortful) decoding for new and unfamiliar words. For example, when reading the Castle et al., 2018 article, I was flying through, until I hit the word 'pseudohomophone'. I had to pause and decode this word using both my knowledge of the extended code letter sound links (<ps> is sounded out as /s/, <ph>, as /f/) and my morphological awareness skills (e.g. knowing the meanings of pseudo-, homo- and -phone). More on morphological awareness in a minute.

(15) As children become skilled and get more reading practice, the need to decode word-by-word decreases.

When you see a young reader go from laborious word-by-word decoding, and start to read fluently, it seems like a miracle. Complex computational 'dual pathway' models far beyond my ken, like the DRC model (Coltheart et al., 2001), the Triangle Model (Harm & Seidenberg, 2004) and the CDP+ model (Perry et al., 2010) recognise that reading involves both knowledge of learned words and knowledge of the relationship between spelling and sounds. We all want kids to recognise words rapidly and automatically without having to decode them sound-by-sound. We all want kids to read independently as soon as possible.

The self-teaching hypothesis (e.g. Share, 1995) suggests that the act of decoding itself provides opportunities for children to become more familiar with the spelling of words. As children build mental representations of words, cognitive resources are freed up for comprehension. Through repeated exposure to words, a child develops word-recognition optimised for reading for meaning.

What seems to matter most are increasing a child's exposure to print, getting lots of experience reading, increasing the frequency of times a child reads particular words over time, and the diversity of contexts in which they read particular words. You can read more about the importance of reading fluency here.

(16) For some readers who have mastered the basic and at least some of the extended code, teaching morphological awareness can help to increase reading skills.

This includes explicitly teaching children things like the spellings of high frequency prefixes and suffixes, and Greek and Latin roots of words. You can read more about morphological awareness here. Importantly, for beginning readers, we think it is better to prioritise letter-sound links and basic decoding skills. But some people disagree - the science is not settled - and we are keeping an open mind. We see an important role for early morphological awareness and explicit grammar instruction for many children, including many children with language disorders, including targeting Brown's 14 morphemes.

(17) Do what it takes to motivate children to read!

The most effective pathway to fluent word reading is print experience: children need to see as many words as possible, as frequently as possible in print. There are extreme variances here.

One older (pre-digital era) study of Year 5 children found that children at the 10th percentile read about 60,000 words a year; those at the 50th percentile read 900,000 words; and those at the 90th percentile read more than 4 million words a year (Anderson et al., 1988). This contributes to the Matthew Effect: where good readers keep getting better, and poor readers fall further behind over time (Stanovich, 1986).

So how do we motivate children to read? We have written about reinforcements in detail here. Some behavioural scientists suggest external rewards can help (e.g. iPad time for doing enough reading), but other experts suggest that external rewards can in some circumstances reduce the intrinsic (internal) motivation to do the activity (here reading) for its own sake (e.g. Deci et al. 1999). Effective practical strategies suggested by Willingham (1997) and others include to:

increase availability of reading matter about topics of personal interest, e.g. comics, car manuals, sports magazines, movie tie in novels, movie scripts, YouTube scripts, reading movies from subtitles (with no sound), DIY books, etc;

make reading materials highly visible and easy to pick up. This is why we have piles of books scattered throughout our clinic, free to borrow, including reception areas and clinic rooms; and

allow you child to go on 'library sprees' where the student can borrow any book they want (within reason and subject to parent discretion!).

For more strategies, read this.

(18) The better students become at reading, the more they want to read.

This seems obvious. But children are motivated to read more when they know they are good at it (e.g. Willingham, 2017). Ideally, we want students to see themselves as readers.

(19) Reading comprehension is really complex. It is not a single idea and cannot be explained by one model.

To understand what you are reading, you need a whole host of skills:

(20) Don't forget to keep working on higher level language and other language skills

These include academic vocabulary and evidence-based study skills.

In skilled readers, the correlation between oral language and reading comprehension is almost perfect, meaning oral language limitations will limit reading comprehension (and vice-versa).

(21) Some people with reading difficulties benefit from compensatory strategies.

For some people, e.g. with severe dyslexia or otherwise protracted and severe reading difficulties, consider compensatory strategies like text-to-speech and speech-to text tools and, of course, audiobooks. Read more about these strategies here.

Clinical bottom line

To help children and adults to read, we should:

foster oral language development, including of vocabulary, semantics, phonology, word forms, sentence level syntax, narratives and nonfiction books in the preschool and school years;

start reading instruction by understanding that the English writing system is alphabetic: letter-sound links and the ability to blend speech sounds to form words are crucial to develop more advanced reading skills;

recognise that early decoding problems can be a major bottleneck in the early reading comprehension, and that even modest improvements in decoding can make a big difference to a student's understanding;

encourage children to read as much and as widely as possible to increase fluent, automatic word-reading;

recognise that reading comprehension - the ultimate goal of learning to read - is very complex. Reading comprehension problems can be caused by decoding problems, oral language problems, or both;

carefully assess people with reading difficulties, so that we know where the breakdowns are happening and can develop evidence-based plan to address them; and

keep up-to-date with the research evidence, and apply it - even when it means abandoning long-standing practices.

Principal source: Castles, A., Rastle, K., Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51.

This is one of the most influential, practical papers I have read in the last couple of years. Even better, it's available for free via Sage Journals. In my view, this paper should be required reading for all reading professionals. (Note that any errors of interpretation above are mine and mine alone.)

Related articles:

First things first: sequencing and language comprehension skills may be related

Sequencing skills appear to be related to children's oral language and reading comprehension abilities. For example, compared to children aged 8-11 with poor reading comprehension, age-matched children with good reading comprehension skills:

perform better when sequencing events; and

produce more accurate sequences, even when presented with stories that are narrated out of chronological sequence (Gouldthorp et al., 2017).

By understanding more about the relationships between sequencing skills and language, we can support children to understand spoken and written language, including children with with reading difficulties, language disorders (or both).

In this article, we provide five, evidence-based ideas to do this, with lots of examples.

Second: what does "sequencing" mean?

The word 'sequence' means different things in different situations. As a noun, 'sequence' can mean:

a particular order in which related things follow each other, e.g. as in a non-verbal pattern, a cause-effect relationship, a procedure or a set of instructions; or

a set of related events, movements, or items that follow each other in a particular order, e.g. as in an historical recount or a story.

As a verb, 'sequence' can mean:

to arrange in a particular order perceptually, e.g. from least to most, smallest to biggest, shortest to tallest, lightest to heaviest, weakest to strongest, slowest to fastest;

to arrange in a particular order conceptually, e.g. by value, function in a process, alphabetically, membership within a category, or hierarchy;

to order things chronologically (i.e. by the order in which the events occurred in time); or

to order things causally, e.g. by moving from simple cause to effect (e.g. rain-open umbrella), or through chains of cause and effect (e.g. the spread of an imported pest into a new environment, and its effects).

Third: concrete examples of school, work and life tasks requiring both sequencing and language skills

Sequencing tasks can be verbal or non-verbal. Verbal sequencing tasks require you, e.g. to:

understand or process spoken or written language (e.g. to follow multistep classroom instructions or to follow and execute detailed written instructions for a task); and/or

use words, sentences, and discourse-level language (e.g. monologues, conversation, recounts, stories, essays etc.) to order information in speech or writing (or both).

In speech pathology, we often work on language goals that involve sequencing tasks. For example, in a given week, I might help different clients to:

understand daily routines, or school timetables;

work on sentence order, e.g. subject-verb and subject-verb-object sentences;

understand and use temporal cues like 'first, next, and last', 'then' and 'finally', or ordinals (1st, 2nd, 3rd) to sequence thoughts logically;

understand, follow, and give multi-step instructions in complex sentences that include time-related words like 'before', 'after', and 'while';

order, then narrate a series of pictures or points summarising process-steps (e.g. for growing a sunflower, or making a Lego Millennium Falcon);

summarise and recount events in a story (e.g. in an Aesop's fable or school-assigned novel);

solve problems involving cause-effect relationships, making predictions, or weighing up options;

summarise an historical event, like the months leading up to the start of World War II;

outline a complex process, with multiple causes and effects, like the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster;

explain a complex relationship, e.g. between interest rates and the value of the dollar over time;

script difficult conversation, e.g. asking a boss for a raise, or appealing the decision of a government agency;

plan complex tasks, like starting a business or attending a conference; and

generate and write original texts, including stories, professional presentations, reports and proposals.

All of these tasks require both sequencing and language skills (oral, written, or both).

Fourth: Sequencing and language comprehension at the discourse level - the importance of building mental representations and situation models

When we read or hear a story, at least two things happen:

we process the exact words and sentences, including the vocabulary and the grammar used, to understand what is being said (a 'surface level' or 'lower level' task) (Dijk & Kintsch, 1983); and

construct a mental model or situation model of the characters, events, objects, places and actions described and the relations among them (a 'higher level' task) (Tapiero, 2007; Johnson-Laird, 1983).

Interestingly, the exact words and grammar of the text tend to fade from memory pretty quickly. But the situation model lasts longer (Graesser et al., 1997). For example, I can:

remember a joke a friend told me many years ago, even though I'm sure my wording is very different to his when I re-tell it;

tell people the order of countries I visited when backpacking in the late 1990s, including detailed descriptions of key events - like getting lost in a forest in the Czech Republic and accidentally trespassing onto a Turkish military base - even if I can't remember exactly what I said to my son before school yesterday; and

remember the stories (main characters, plot, setting, etc.) of Dr Faustus, Mansfield Park, Nineteen-Eighty Four, and Antony and Cleopatra - texts I studied over 25 years ago - even if I struggle to remember any of the words or sentences used in the book I just finished reading.

Fifth: Some people have difficulties constructing situation models or mental representations, including some people with:

working memory deficits, who may struggle integrate information into a coherent model (although, counter-intuitively, the published research on this is mixed, e.g. Cain et al., 2004; Gouldthorp et al, 2017);

developmental or other language disorders, that affect, for example, their ability to understand multi-part instructions and/or complex syntax;

higher-level language skill deficits, e.g. difficulties making inferences or understanding common text structures like narratives (e.g. Oakhill & Cain, 2012);

dyslexia or other decoding difficulties, which limits their ability to build a model about what they are reading because they can't easily read the words; and

hyperlexia, who may decode the words effortlessly but not build mental representations about what they are reading as they are reading texts.

Sixth: How can we use our knowledge of sequencing skills to boost language and reading comprehension?

Here are five evidence-based tips:

(A) Sequence information chronologically

For example, consider two versions of the same story:
Max looked down at his bag with horror after reaching down and unzipping it. He'd forgotten his calculator, and the maths test was about to begin. Max thought back to the night before, when he'd stayed up late, studying. He must have left the calculator on his desk. Even after sitting for a minute in class, Max was still out of breath. He'd had to borrow his Dad's ancient BMX bike after missing the bus that morning. He couldn't believe that he'd slept in on such an important day! He remembered how, before he'd pedaled off to school, he'd wiped off the cobwebs and pumped up the tires on the bike, all the while wondering whether he'd make it in time for the test later that morning. He imagined how embarrassed and irritated he would feel with himself tomorrow when he reflected on what had happened and what was happening. Once upon a time, there was a boy named Max. One Thursday, Max stayed up very late to study for his Friday maths test. The next morning, Max slept in and missed his bus to school. He rushed to the shed and pulled out his Dad's ancient BMX bike. He pumped up the tires, brushed off the cobwebs, and took off for school. Max pedalled furiously for over 20 minutes. He arrived just in time for maths. Huffing and puffing, Max sat down at his desk and opened his bag, discovering all too late that he'd left his calculator on his desk at home. Max's day was off to a bad start!
The second version is much easier to understand and to sequence. Why? Its sentences and events are ordered chronologically.

(i) Sentences: Studies show that children aged 3-7 have more difficulty sequencing information when the information is presented in reverse order rather than chronologically (e.g. Blything et al., 2015). This is also true for people with language disorders. I suspect it is true for most people. For example:

'He went to the beach before he went to the park' is much easier to understand than 'Before he went to the park, he went to the beach'; and

'After he went to the hardware store he went to the supermarket' is easier to understand than 'He went to the supermarket after he went to the hardware store'.

For this reason, I recommend that parents and teachers should avoid using complex 'before' and 'after' sentences where the order of the words does not match the order of events.

Instead - following a great tip I learned from Dr Julia Starling - I suggest using:

'When...then' sentences instead:, e.g. 'When you have finished your maths questions, then sit on the floor'; and

temporal cues like: 'first, next, then, and last' to help children understand and express sequences of ideas.

(ii) Stories and other texts
The order in which events are presented in texts affects how easy the text is to understand. Both children and adults understand what they are reading better when events are presented in chronological order, compared to reverse or other orders (e.g. Ohtsuka & Brewer, 1992; Kucer 2010; Gouldthorp, 2017). Situation models of stories and mental representations of real life events are usually structured in chronological order (Radvansky et al., 2005). (Narratives often (but not always) organise events in the order in which they are perceived in real life.)

As with sentences, readers and listeners expect the order of events in stories to mirror the order they are experienced in real life: chronological and continuous (Zwan, 1996). For example, some studies show that reading speeds slow when readers encounter a time shift (either a flashback or flash forward) (e.g. Rinck & Weber, 2003; Speer & Zacks, 2005).

(B) After finishing a text, recap the first events

Events in stories become less accessible as more time passes in stories and other texts. Indeed, the first event in a chronological sequence is less accessible to readers than later events, even when the events depicted in the story are not presented in chronological order (e.g. Kelter & Claus, 2005). This might be one reason I find it hard to remember the events and other features of The Phantom Menace, although I remember the events of A New Hope clearly.* (Editors note for people who are not into Star Wars: A New Hope was made much earlier, but its events occurred later than the events depicted in The Phantom Menace.)

(C) Highlight "cause and effect" relationships in texts

With sequences, we often focus on linear chains of events: A then B then C, and finally D. But some researchers think that memory for events is better described as a network of causally-related (cause-effect) events (Tapiero, 2007).

During story reading, concepts with more cause-effect connections to other concepts are accessed more easily than concepts that do not have cause-effect relationships with each other (e.g. van den Broek et al., 1996; Lynch, 2008). Some researchers think that events may in fact be organised in memory according to their causal structure (rather than chronology) (e.g. Tapiero, 2007).

For example, compare these two stories:
Once upon a time, there was an old lady who lived in a cottage on the outskirts of town, on the edge of a forest. One hot day, there was a huge bushfire. As soon as the woman smelled smoke, she got down on her hands and knees, crawled out of her cottage and ran to the main road leading into town. With her mobile phone, she called the emergency number. Five minutes later, a fire truck pulled up outside the old lady's cottage and a young firefighter jumped out. After a fierce battle, the firefighter put out the fire with her hose. 'You've saved my house and the town!' said the old lady to the firefighter. 'Thanks mainly to you,' said the firefighter, smiling. 'I'm going to recommend you for a bravery medal.' Once upon a time, there was an old lady who lived in a the middle of a large city. One freezing day, there was a huge bushfire. The circus arrived, and the ringmaster invited the old lady to see the shortest acrobat. The old lady decided to bake a cake for her grandson, Peter, who was in the army. The cat ran away from home. Just then, Jack brought in a bunch of flowers, a pet rock, and a plastic flute.
The first story is packed with cause-effect relationships. The second story is just a random collection of events. Two key points:

The first story is much easier to remember and to recount, even though it is longer; and

When you were reading the second story, did you find yourself trying to find/impose causal connections between the events? I did, even though I wrote the story to avoid cause-effect relationships!

Using cause-effect-based study tools, like elaborative interrogation and self-explanation, can be effective in increasing recall of events in both stories and non-fiction. You can read more about these free, evidence-based study techniques here.

A important caveat here: As with the first example story above, when it comes to story sequences, it is hard to separate comprehension of time from cause-effect relationships because cause precedes effect logically. Cause-effect relationships are less likely to be identified when presented out of time order (e.g. Briner et al., 2012; Fenker et al., 2005). This suggests that understanding time order remains important for causally linked events to be remembered.

(D) Provide and use visual supports

Children with difficulties sequencing events and understanding texts may benefit from using graphic organisers and other visual supports to understand them.

Common examples include:

visual timetables outlining routines and activities in order;

mini-comic strips with stick figures to depict main events in a story in order;

text type scaffolds like this one that help children to develop and update mental representations of texts;

Novakian concept maps for learning or testing knowledge of complex processes by creating active links between ideas. Here's an example explaining the key processes involved in the mitosis of animal cells:

Source: Ian Kinchin, Visualising Powerful Knowledge to Develop the Expert Student, extracted from Christian Moore Anderson, 2019 (see full source link below).

well-designed concept maps that explicitly sequence and link ideas with colours, lines, arrows, boxes, verb-links, and concrete examples. Here is a great example of a concept map used to explain Dual Coding, using left-to-right sequencing of ideas and clever graphics to aid comprehension.

Source: Oliver Caviglioli (see full link below).

(E) Use sequenced-based memory techniques to help children to build associations between ideas and to remember them

Sometimes, you have to learn things that are not naturally well-connected to each other, even arbitrary. You can use sequencing principles, including time-order, cause-effect and already learned sequences to help.

Hundreds (if not thousands) of years of memory research has shown that forcing sequential and visual associations between objects can you to help remember them. This can work with:

related objects and concepts, e.g. cranial nerves from I-XII, world capitals, or the elements of the periodic table in order; or

otherwise unconnected lists, e.g. passwords, shopping lists, and people's names.

Alphabet and number peg systems are examples of using over-learned or automatically-named sequences to remember otherwise unconnected things. We have made a short video demonstration of a simple but effective number memory peg system here.

More advanced techniques like Buzan's Major Memory System also use number sequences (linked to sounds) to help people remember long lists of information in sequences. We will cover this system in a later article.

Seventh, and finally: the clinical bottom line

Children vary in their sequencing and oral language and reading comprehension skills. Sequencing skills and comprehension skills may be related, but we're not entirely sure how.

Many children have difficulties with both sequencing and understanding language, including some children with language disorders and reading difficulties. Parents, teachers, speech pathologists and others working with children can support children to understand spoken and written language by presenting information sequentially, explaining or narrating things chronologically, highlighting cause-effect relationships, recapping early events in sequences, using visuals, and using sequencing skills to help children to remember and link things together.

Related articles:

Related resources:

Principal source: Gouldthorp, B., Katsipas, L., & Mueller, C. (2017). An Investigation of the Role of Sequencing in Children's Reading Comprehension, Reading Research Quarterly, 53(1), 91-106.

Other resources:

*Of course, the more likely reason I can't remember the events of the The Phantom Menace is that it is a terrible film, and I've actively suppressed all memory of it!

The whole point of reading - for education, work, social activities, self-improvement, community participation, or entertainment - is of course to understand the words that you're reading. Reading comprehension is crucial for success at school and life.

Reading comprehension depends on two main things:

word decoding skills (the ability to convert print into sound and to read fluently); and

listening comprehension skills.

How do we know?

The Simple View of Reading

Since the mid-1980s, reading researchers have found good quality evidence to support what is known as the 'Simple View of Reading' (e.g. Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; and Garcia & Cain, 2014). According to this theory, understanding written text is the product of decoding and listening comprehension. This theory (which is actually far from simple) implies that:

when decoding skills are poor, they limit reading comprehension; and

when decoding skills are stronger, listening comprehension becomes a more important influence on reading comprehension than decoding.

Examples: A tale of two struggling readers; and what can get in the way of reading comprehension

Jake struggles to 'decode' text, and has significant reading difficulties, perhaps even dyslexia. He has to expend lots of effort to convert each printed word ('elephant') and its letters ('e-l-e-ph-a-n-t') into speech sounds (/ɛ-l-ə-f-ə-n-t/) and syllables (/ɛ-lə-fənt/). He then struggles to blend the speech sounds together to read the words fluently (/ɛləfənt/, 'elephant'). When decoding text is such a struggle, it's no wonder that Jake's comprehension suffers!

Laura is pretty good at decoding the words on the page into speech, but, when quizzed, struggles to remember or explain what she's read. She also sometimes has problems following complex directions in the classroom. At times, she fails to read between the lines and has a limited vocabulary. Her mum thinks she might even have hyperlexia.

Both Jake and Laura score poorly on reading comprehension measures on standardised reading assessments. But, unfortunately, many reading interventions treat them the same way.

What do we mean by listening comprehension (and why does it matter)?

'Listening comprehension' is often used by researchers when talking about the Simple View of Reading because Gough and Tunmer used the term in their original paper. It's a shame, because the term isn't technically 'a thing'. What the researchers mean is oral language comprehension, otherwise known as ' oral receptive language '.

A recent 5-year longitudinal study of almost 200 Norwegian school children - starting when the kids were in Year 2 and ending in Year 7 - found that variations in reading comprehension amongst the children were almost completely explained by differences in:

decoding skills; and

listening comprehension skills.

The researchers found that differences amongst the children in listening comprehension were almost entirely explained ( 95% explained) by a factor defined by:

The researchers also found that oral language comprehension was a predictor of early and later growth of reading comprehension skills (Lervåg et al., 2017 - see citation below).

The findings of this study sit well with the:

Simple View of Reading; and

growing body of evidence showing that improvements in oral language skills lead directly to improvements in reading comprehension, both with younger and older children (e.g. Fricke et al., 2013; Clarke et al., 2010).

Note, however, that the Lervåg study had some limitations. For example, the Norwegian alphabet and spelling system are simpler than their English counterparts; and it's unclear how easily the findings can be applied in countries where English is the main language.

Clinical bottom line: How to help readers with poor reading comprehension skills

Anybody struggling to understand what they read - such as Jake and Laura above - should have a comprehensive reading assessment covering the Big 5 skills needed to read successfully. But they should also have their oral language skills assessed by a speech-language pathologist; in particular, to assess their receptive oral language skills.

Decoding problems can be a bottleneck for the development of reading comprehension skills. As a priority, readers like Jake who struggle to decode text should receive evidence-based treatments to improve their decoding. (The Lervåg study found that even fairly small gains in decoding skills for poor readers can have big effects on reading comprehension.)

Readers like Laura who have relatively good decoding skills but poor reading comprehension should be treated with interventions focusing on improving a broad set of oral language skills, including grammar/syntax, morphological awareness, narrative skills, and inference making.

Related articles :

Principal source: Lervåg, A., Hulme, C., Melby-Lervåg, M. (2017). Unpicking the Developmental Relationship between Oral Language Skills and Reading Comprehension: It's Simple, but Complex. Child Development, in press, published online on 12 June 2017, see abstract here.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/yayukqqe

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Oral language is a wonder. Across time and cultures, most people develop oral language skills without much conscious effort. As a species, oral language has helped us to survive, reproduce, and to cooperate with each other, even in very hostile conditions.

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This is a great listen while you go for your 5km radius walk!

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Science of Reading: The Podcast, hosted by Susan Lambert, delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Listen today!

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"what the science of reading hasn’t revealed is that the studies only represented 'typical classroom teachers' and 'typical American or English-speaking students'." Teachers need to recognise that "emergent bilinguals and dual language students learn how to read differently than monolingual students"

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"Literacy has two beginnings: one, in the world, the other, in each person who learns to read and write."-Margaret Meek
This quote has continued to rewind and repeat in my mind as a more than 50-year research "war" re-emerges to declare to the educational world that science has definitely and universally revealed how all children learn to read. Yes, all children... But what the science of reading hasn't revealed is that the studies only represented "typical classroom teachers" and "typical American or English-speaking students" (National Reading Panel U.S. and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Leaving out the details of where this research world begins, and ends, is a matter of equity and access to accurate knowledge, resources, and educational approaches that have been confirmed in their truth around the world.

It is an omission that withholds undeniable science about how dual language students learn to read in two languages and how best to teach them. More tangibly, the exclusion of key information in the science-of reading-narrative has condemned many dual language educators to an impossible ultimatum-either conform to this approach or be labeled as defiant to research-based practices. And therein lies the problem. Emergent bilinguals and dual language students learn how to read differently than monolingual, English-speaking students, and there's decades of research to prove it. So, what has research revealed about the science of reading for dual language programs that's been excluded from the reading wars?

The Reading Wars

Let's start with a quick version of what the reading wars, or the sciences of reading, are. While there are many different scientific models for how children learn to read, there are only two views that have claimed center stage in the debate. There is the simple view of reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986; Hoover and Gough, 1990), which says that reading comprehension is the result of decoding and linguistic comprehension, or D x C = R. Then there is whole language or the three cuing view of reading (Goodman, 1967), which says that reading in English is as natural a human process as learning to speak-a process that should emphasize making meaning and expressing meaning in reading and writing.
These two views were positioned as each other's rivals, and the monolingual world was forced to choose-explicit phonics or whole language. Meanwhile, in the world of second-language acquisition and dual language (particularly in the vast majority of programs that leverage Spanish and English as partner languages), this war seemed founded on a common understanding of reading, language, learning, and teaching that was fundamentally flawed (Pennycook, 2001). Dual language programs draw from an immense body of research and system of beliefs that assume the benefit and utility of each language (DeMatthews et al., 2017) and that cannot be separated from literacy in that language, texts that reflect the cultures that speak that language, distinct pedagogies, and instructional practices that stem from an understanding of the way in which that language works.

In short, the war appeared to use language in a way that manipulated and undermined the validity of a third view of reading that has also been systematically built. It is a view of learning to read in two languages that requires meaning making and reading words, efficiency of practice, and focus on purpose, all while systematically leveraging the most useful aspects of each language. In the world of dual language, an equally substantial body of research has found that neither decoding ability nor the ability to use the three cues can exist without the other if children are to receive instruction that provides any benefit in reading in two languages while becoming proficient in both. While the evidence abounds, looking at the phonics debate alone provides more than enough.

The Science of Decoding in Dual Language

Let's take, as an example, the part of the formula for the simple view of reading that is decoding, which includes phonics and phonemic awareness.

The way we define decoding is the same in Spanish and English. Phonics is the ability to recognize and accurately match graphemes, or letters, to the phonemes, or the sounds, they make. Phonemic awareness, on the other hand, is the ability to focus on and manipulate the phonemes of a word. If students know what to do with each part of a word, they can read the whole word. As all students build confidence and competence in decoding, they begin something called orthographic mapping, which is basically the brain's muscle memory for identifying similar parts in new words. Once children understand a phonemic pattern (like the -ght in light), they use it like a map or a fingerprint to read other words with the same pattern. That pattern then gets used to read more words automatically (Kilpatrick, 2015).

But here is where the monolingual and dual language worlds diverge. English is highly irregular, which means there are many more parts to identify and manipulate. Spanish is not. In the most widely cited meta-analysis to date, the importance of the English language's orthographic structure is brought into question: "if children were taught only the 44 letter-sound correspondences, they would be able to read any word they encountered, and there would be no reading problems (Aukerman, 1981; Popp, 1975)" (National Reading Panel U.S. and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000).

Why is this point critical? Well, it helps educators understand that each word part children have to decode is governed by orthography, or the structure of a language itself. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. However, as noted in the report, there are 44 possible phonemes (25 consonant correspondences and 19 possible vowel correspondences). This is because English is considered a language that is highly irregular, deep (or inconsistent), and full of pronunciation deviations. Just because students hear a sound doesn't mean that they can always predict the letter or letter combination that produced that sound, which is why explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness is needed.

This instruction then must include strategies that are designed to help students learn how to manipulate, delete, blend, etc. However, this is not the case for all languages. In the case of Spanish, which is taught in the greatest number of dual language programs in the country, there is a much different orthography. There are 27 letters but only 22-24 phonemes. This is because Spanish is considered a very consistent, shallow, and ideally phonemic language, where the spelling of a word is the most transparent indicator of how to pronounce the word. What you see is what you almost always get, and if you can see it, you can say it, and then you can read it. The fact that Spanish is one of the most transparent languages in the world is the anti-reason for an equivalent length and intensity of explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness. And here is where orthographic mapping re-emerges and gets really interesting. For dual language and emergent bilingual children, there isn't an actual linguistic or cognitive wall between their two languages. The two literacy and language systems dynamically flow through a corriente of linguistic resources and codes (Garcia et al., 2017). Research has shown that bilingual/biliterate students are able to use the same orthographic mapping process but with their full linguistic resources and codes within and across languages (Van Hell and Dijkstra, 2002; Dijksra et al., 1998). Program models might separate the languages of instruction, but linguistic resources and codes will continue to seek connections.

What's most interesting for Spanish-English dual language children is how few linguistic resources from the corriente are needed for decoding in Spanish, and so all those resources are redirected to play a larger role for processing words in English (Harm and Seidenberg, 2004). And this is where dual language education is uniquely situated to disrupt the reading wars. What's collectively known about learning to read while learning a language across the hundreds of languages that define and unite people is that semantic and syntactic information, better known as MSV, and decoding of words are interrelated and codependent processes. Dual language students deserve access to all research that will accelerate how they break the code, understand the code, and deposit the code into the corriente for continued use in both languages. That means that biliteracy will require linguistic comprehension and explicit phonics instruction in English for skills that are untransferable and more ambiguous (Gottlob et al., 1999).

Science-Based Recommendations

Any pedagogical recommendation should include investigating, discovering, confirming, and sharing out any and all methods, strategies, or "approaches that have been found, through research, to give kids a learning advantage in reading" (Shanahan, T., 2018). This requires shared responsibility between dual language and literacy departments to scrutinize research's limitations (Kubotra, 2004), collective inquiry into and understanding of the science behind program models, and implementation of language-specific reading processes that may be different but no less valid. Through this collective inquiry, programs can focus resources and energies to create:

A coherent definition of biliteracy (not literacy) that balances analytical and synthetic methods and aligns to the three goals;

Shared responsibility and knowledge of research-confirmed methods, strategies, and approaches that are accurately matched to each program language;

Authentic and systematic processes for assessing, monitoring, and supporting a language-specific sequence of skills;

Collaboration and focus on actionable steps informed by valid assessments;

Texts, tools, and talk that are authentic, identity affirming, motivating to students, and allow the application of reading skills when it matters most-in the act of reading.

In short, it goes back to what Margaret Meek says. Developing biliteracy really does have two beginnings, one designed for the typical classroom and another designed to be so much more-designed to give dual language learners access to the promise of dual language education itself. So, there can be no reading war for dual language educators. The only way to attain biliteracy and bilingualism is to leave the typical formula for reading as decoding and linguistic comprehension, or D x C = R, for the formula for developing biliteracy as oracy + decoding + linguistic comprehension + transfer, or O x C x D x T = R2.

References available at www.languagemagazine.com/references-the-science-of-reading-in-dual-language.

Alexandra Guilamo is a dual language expert, author, keynote speaker, and chief equity and achievement officer at TaJu Educational Solutions, a company dedicated to professional development, coaching, and technical support for dual language and bilingual programs.
Visit www.tajulearning.com or follow Alexandra @TajuLearning on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

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The Science of Reading in Dual Language - Language Magazine

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"Literacy has two beginnings: one, in the world, the other, in each person who learns to read and write."-Margaret MeekThis quote has continued to rewind and repeat in my mind as a more than 50-year research "war" re-emerges to declare to the educational world that science has definitely and universally revealed how all children learn [...]

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Features of Lexical Richness in Children's Books: Comparison with Child-Directed Speech

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Features of Lexical Richness in Children's Books: Comparison with Child-Directed Speech

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Open access article by Nicola Dawson, Yaling Hsiao, Alvin Wei Ming Tang, Nilanjana Banerji and Kate Nation exploring the differences in the word used in children's books and child-directed speech.

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Features of lexical richness in children's books: Comparisons with child-directed speech

Abstract

Access to children's books via shared reading may be a particularly rich source of linguistic input in the early years. To understand how exposure to book language supports children's learning, it is important to identify how book language differs to everyday conversation. We created a picture book corpus from 160 texts commonly read to children aged 0-5 years (around 320,000 words). We first quantified how the language of children's books differs from child-directed speech (compiled from 10 corpora in the CHILDES UK database, around 3.8 million words) on measures of lexical richness (diversity, density, sophistication), part of speech distributions, and structural properties. We also identified the words occurring in children's books that are most uniquely representative of book language. We found that children's book language is lexically denser, more lexically diverse, and comprises a larger proportion of rarer word types compared to child-directed speech. Nouns and adjectives are more common in book language whereas pronouns are more common in child-directed speech. Book words are more structurally complex in relation to both number of phonemes and morphological structure. They are also later acquired, more abstract, and more emotionally arousing than the words more common in child-directed speech. Written language provides unique linguistic input even in the pre-school years, well before children can read for themselves.

Keywords: lexical richness, book language, children, child-directed speech, language acquisition, literacy

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Features of lexical richness in children's books: Comparisons with child-directed speech

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Access to children's books via shared reading may be a particularly rich source of linguistic input in the early years. To understand how exposure to book language supports children's learning, it is important to identify how book language differs to everyday conversation.

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Cognitive Load Theory: Research that teachers really need to understand

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Cognitive Load Theory: Research that teachers really need to understand

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Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know 

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Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know 

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The reading, podcast or video chosen for the term's chat will be highlighted on the Padlet to provide easy access to the resource.

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The Book Language section of the Read Oxford blog has a large selection of articles relating to book language.

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The picture shows our research group enjoying some shared reading time at Oxford's Story Museum.

We know that shared reading matters. Study after study shows that children vary enormously in the amount of shared reading they experience in the pre-school years. In turn, this variation is associated with language and literacy development once they get to school. But why is shared reading so important?

I've written a feature for the Times Education Supplement, The secret language of the book and why shared reading matters more than you think. Here's some links to background papers and resources.

Book Share Time, a fantastic resource by speech pathologist Ceclie Ferreira to help choose picture books to exemplify specific types of language
Bus, A.G., Ijzendoorn, & Pellegrini, A. D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read. A meta-analyses on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Education Research, 65, 1-21. Cameron-Faulkner, T., & Noble, C. (2013). A comparison of book text and Child Directed Speech. First Language, 33, 268-279. Flack, Z., Field, A. & Horst, J. (2017) The effects of shared storybook reading on word learning: a meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology. ISSN 0012-1649. Hayes, D. P. (1988). Speaking and writing: Distinct patterns of world choice. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 572-585. Horst, J. S., Parsons, K. L. & Bryan, N. M. (2011). Get the Story Straight: Context Repetition Promotes Word Learning From Storybooks. Fromtiers in Developmental Psychology, 2(17), 1-11. Law, J. Rush, R. King, T. Westrupp & Reily, S. (online early). Early home activities and oral language skills in middle childhood: A quantile analysis. Child Development. Lingwood, J., Billington, J., & Rowland, C. (pre-print). Evaluating the effectiveness of a shared reading intervention: a randomised control trial. Mol, S. E., et al. (2008). Added value of dialogic Parent-Child book readings: a meta-analysis. Early Education and Development, 19, 7-26. Montag, J. L., et al. (2105). The words children hear: picture books and the statistics for language learning. Psychological Science 26, 1489-1496. Montag, J. L. & MacDonald, M. C. (2015). Text exposure predicts spoken production of complex sentences in 8-and 12-year-old children and adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology-General 144, 447-468. Noble, C.H., Cameron-Faulkner, T., & Lieven, E. (2017). Keeping it simple: the grammatical properties of shared book reading. Journal of Child Language (online early). Neuman, S.B. (2017). The information book flood: Is additional exposure enough to support literacy development? The Elementary School Journal, 118. Olson, D.R. (1996). Towards a psychology of literacy: on the relations between speech and writing. Cognition, 60, 83-104. Sedivy, J. (2017). The rise and fall of the English Sentence. Nautilus, November 2017. Snow, C.E. (1983). Literacy and Language: Relationships during the preschool years. Harvard Educational Review, 53, 2. van Bergen, E., van Zuijen, T.L., Bishop, D.V.M., & de Jong, P.F. (2017). Why are home-literacy environment and children's reading skills associated? What parental skills reveal. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(2), 147-160. van Bergen, E., Bishop, D.V.M., van Zuijen, T.L., & de Jong, P.F. (2015). How does parental reading influence children's reading? A study of cognitive mediation. Scientific Studies of Reading, 19(5), 325-339. Willingham, D. (2018). What does it mean when a book flood fails? February 2018.

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The picture shows our research group enjoying some shared reading time at Oxford's Story Museum. We know that shared reading matters. Study after study shows that children vary enormously in the amount of shared reading they experience in the pre-school years. In turn, this variation is associated with language and literacy development once they get to school.

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"While the draft curriculum signals a win for those advocating for more emphasis on systematic phonics instruction, the continued reference to predictable texts, and the associated whole language strategies known as the three-cueing system, is seen as a missed opportunity to align all reading related content to an established body of scientific knowledge. "

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Despite the promise to 'improve clarity', 'declutter', and remove 'ambiguous' content, the new draft curriculum has left teachers guessing when it comes to when, and how, to use texts in the first two years of school. The requirement for teachers to choose between two types of texts remains in the proposed new curriculum, revealing a lack of understanding by the curriculum developers about the purpose and structure of each text.

In the first two years of school, children require many opportunities to practise their phonics skills, which is achieved by reading decodable texts. Predictable texts, in comparison, are incompatible with phonics instruction and do not support beginning readers to master the written code for reading. Once the code has been established, children can move on to a broader range of reading material. If ACARA's objective for the proposed curriculum is to provide 'a clear and precise developmental pathway' for reading, then references to predictable texts, and any reading strategies that require children to guess words from pictures and context, need to be removed from the current content descriptions where learning to read is the focus.

Research we recently conducted revealed that there is confusion among teachers on how to use different types of texts in beginning reading instruction, which the current review of the national curriculum does little to address. While the draft curriculum signals a win for those advocating for more emphasis on systematic phonics instruction, the continued reference to predictable texts, and the associated whole language strategies known as the three-cueing system, is seen as a missed opportunity to align all reading related content to an established body of scientific knowledge.

The Australian Curriculum National Reporting Authority's (ACARA) chief, David de Carvalho claims that the draft curriculum English "allows teachers to choose a range of texts" to support the development of critical reading skills while also promoting the broader motivational and literary aspects of reading. However, rather than providing choice, the continued lack of guidance and clarification about when and how to use each text serves only to keep teachers guessing. Ironically, 'guessing' is one of the strategies that beginning readers must default to when trying to read words from texts that are not instructionally matched to the classroom phonics program. The features and structure of predictable texts, the earliest readers in many levelled reading systems currently used in Australian classrooms, promote memorisation rather than decoding and encourage beginning readers to guess words from pictures and context. Research has repeatedly shown that these strategies are not sustainable in the long term and that it is poor readers who are most disadvantaged when pictures are removed from the text and the capacity to memorise words reaches its limits.
Text types
It is not so much choice that teachers require to meet the instructional needs of children, but the knowledge about how to use different texts for different purposes. Research has identified two sets of processes involved in reading proficiency: language comprehension and decoding. While literature facilitates the development of language related skills such as vocabulary and comprehension, and decodable texts scaffold children's mastery of the alphabetic code, predictable texts contribute very little once children commence formal reading instruction. A clearly articulated curriculum would facilitate teachers' ability to determine when to use a particular text for a particular purpose.
Survey on teachers use of texts
The results of our research draw attention to this issue of how teachers use different types of texts to support beginning reading development. We surveyed 138 Western Australian Pre-primary and Year 1 teachers because we were concerned that the guidance on approaches to reading instruction and text types in the current curriculum was ambiguous and confusing.

Teachers were asked about the approach they used to teach phonics, the type of texts and the strategies they used when teaching reading, and their beliefs about decodable and predictable texts. In Western Australia, teachers are directed by the Department of Education (DoE) to use systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) and, in our study, 93% of the teachers reported that they taught phonics using a SSP approach.

On the basis of this approach to reading, we expected an equivalent number of teachers to use decodable texts. Surprisingly, a majority of teachers (56%) reported using both predictable and decodable texts to support children's reading development. Of the teachers who only used decodable texts (25%), all but two used a range of strategies more suited to predictable texts.

As expected, teachers who only used predictable texts (18%) used prompts associated with these texts, but they also used strategies more suitable for decodable text such as asking children to 'sound out each letter'. This could be confusing for children when reading a text that doesn't include words that can be read using current alphabetic knowledge. Predictable texts feature high frequency (e.g., girl, where, as) and multisyllabic words (e.g., doctor, balloon, helicopter) that reflect common and relatable themes for young children, rather than words that align with a phonics teaching sequence.
Fluency and texts
Two-thirds of the teachers in our research agreed with the statement that predictable texts promote fluency. This belief possibly accounts for the fact that so many teachers used predictable texts despite using a systematic synthetic phonics approach. While there is some evidence to suggest that predictable texts facilitate the development of fluency, the relationship is not well understood.

When children first apply their knowledge of phonics to decodable texts, fluency does initially appear to be compromised. Learning to read is hard work, and it takes at least two years of reading instruction before children reach a level of proficiency where they are able to apply their skills to the broader curriculum, or to what is commonly known as 'reading to learn'.

In contrast, the repetition of high frequency words and the predictive nature of words and sentences in predictable texts gives the impression that children are reading fluently as they memorise sentences that can be recited both while reading, and in the absence of the text. While alluring to teachers, the promotion of these strategies compromises the development of the alphabetic knowledge required for reading a complex orthography such as English, and as such should not be prioritised over careful and accurate decoding, despite the temptation to do so!

A lack of fluency when learning a new skill is evident in many areas of learning, yet it seems to be less well tolerated in beginning reading instruction. One possible explanation for this is the dominance of whole language reading theories, upon which the idea that learning to read is as natural as learning to speak has been promoted. This has resulted in the proliferation of a range of instructional reading strategies that are no longer supported by research, but as our research showed, continued to be used by classroom teachers. It is our contention that the continued use of these strategies is a direct result of the ambiguity evident in the curriculum documents. It has simply not kept up with the research and will continue to act as a barrier to effective implementation unless clarity around the use of texts is provided.
Which books, and when?
Children learn about the correspondence between speech and print by being exposed to books from an early age. At the pre-reading stage, prior to knowing that letters can also represent print, and that there is a predictable relationship between them, children benefit from being read to from a wide range of books, including children's literature that features predictable text. There are many great examples to choose from, including well known classics such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and We Went Walking.

When teachers read books with rhythmic patterned language, children begin to understand that each printed word on the page represents a spoken word. This helps children to understand the segmental nature of speech, a valuable first step in their reading journey. The predictable texts currently used by teachers to meet Foundation and Year one curriculum objectives, while far less engaging than children's literature, are more appropriate for children who are at this stage of their reading development because they do not require children to actually use their knowledge of the alphabet to read. While teachers can, and should, continue to read children's literature, including books with predictable text and rhyming patterns to children beyond the preschool years, there is no instructional value in using 'levelled' predictable readers to support children's development once formal reading instruction has commenced.

When children enter the alphabetic stage of reading, they must transition from being read to, and joining in, to becoming the reader of the text. During this stage, children benefit from text that supports decoding as a primary strategy for reading. Decodable texts have a specific purpose: to scaffold children's mastery and application of the alphabetic code in reading. Once children have mastered the alphabetic code, the reading of natural language texts, with more diverse vocabulary and complex language structures, should be encouraged. It is crucial from this point that motivation for reading is maintained.

The disconnect between the use of text and the teaching approach being employed as well as the inconsistent use of strategies to support children when reading evident in our research can be seen as a direct result of the requirement in the curriculum to use both decodable and predictable texts. It is likely that without a change to the current curriculum, this will continue to be the case.

DISCLOSURE: Simmone Pogorzelski is a product developer for MultiLit Pty Ltd which develops decodable readers, and other reading materials.
References
Cheatham, J. P., & Allor, J. H. (2012). The influence of decodability in early reading text on reading achievement: a review of the evidence. Reading and Writing, 25(9), 2223-2246. doi:10.1007/s11145-011-9355-2

Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, Findings, and Issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167-188. doi:10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4

Hempenstall, K. (2003). The three-cueing system : trojan horse? Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities, 8(2), 15-23.

Mesmer, H. A. (2005). Text decodability and the first-grade reader. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 21(1), 61-86. doi:10.1080/10573560590523667

Pogorzelski, S., Main, S. & Hill, S. (2021). A survey of Western Australian teachers' use of texts in supporting beginning readers. Issues in Educational Research, 31(1), 204-223. http://www.iier.org.au/iier31/pogorzelski.pdf

From left to right:
Simmone Pogorzelski is currently completing a PhD on the role of decodable texts in early reading development at Edith Cowan University (ECU). Simmone is a sessional academic in the School of Education at ECU and works as a product developer for MultiLit. Susan Main, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Her teaching and research interests include preparing pre-service and in-service teachers to teach children with diverse abilities, including evidence-based approaches to literacy instruction, managing challenging behaviour, and using technology to facilitate learning. Janet Hunter, PhD,teaches and researches in the area of literacy education at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. Currently, she teaches both in-service and pre-service teachers. Research interests focus on the development of teacher professional knowledge and how teachers can support students who are failing to make adequate progress in literacy development.

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Decodable or predictable: why reading curriculum developers must seize one

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Despite the promise to 'improve clarity', 'declutter', and remove 'ambiguous' content, the new draft curriculum has left teachers guessing when it comes to when, and how, to use texts in the first two years of school.

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Developmental Language Disorder - the most common childhood condition you've never heard of

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Developmental Language Disorder - the most common childhood condition you've never heard of

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Professor Courtenay Norbury explains about Developmental Language Disorder

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Professor Courtenay Norbury debunks some myths about children with this common but poorly understood condition

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is diagnosed when children fail to acquire their own language for no obvious reason. This results in children who have difficulty understanding what people say to them, and struggle to articulate their ideas and feelings. Recent research has shown that, on average, 2 children in every class of 30 will experience DLD severe enough to hinder academic progress.

In a previous post for Head Quarters about DLD, some of the reader comments reflected commonly held misconceptions about children with the condition. It is one of the most poorly recognized and understood disorders of childhood despite its prevalence. Here Prof Courtenay Norbury debunks some of the most common myths.

Myth 1: She'll grow out of it!

One of the most common reasons parents seek advice from GPs and health visitors is that the onset of their child's first words is delayed. Well-meaning friends and families may try to alleviate parent anxieties by sharing stories of children who didn't say a word until the age of 5 and then came out with complex sentences!

However, research strongly indicates that a child starting school with limited language is very likely to have language deficits throughout the school years (and even into adulthood).

My own work has shown that children with DLD maintain a 2-3 year gap in language skills during the first three years of primary school, with little evidence of 'catching up' with peers. As language is the foundation for learning, children with DLD struggle in the classroom. Thus, teachers should be alert to the signs that a child needs extra support to develop oral language competence.

Myth 2: He's just lazy (or naughty)!

Many children with DLD have difficulty understanding what other people say, especially when others talk fast or there are distractions in the environment. They also have trouble remembering long instructions or formulating responses to questions.

The net result is that they may not do what others are expecting them to do, or their responses to questions may be off the mark. This is often misconstrued as disobedience or poor attention to what people are saying. Language is also the key tool for expressing our feelings and regulating our emotional states, and negotiating with peers. Without the language to do this, many children with DLD become frustrated, and express that frustration through acting out.

It is not surprising then that children with DLD are twice as likely as peers with good language to be rated as having poor attention and behaviour. This is probably a consequence of having to navigate the world with limited language.

So if a child is having trouble following instructions or is acting out, it is worth considering whether DLD could be playing a role.

Myth 3: It's not the kids who have the problem - it's poor parenting!

There is a long standing association between language deficits and social disadvantage, giving rise to a picture in the popular press of uneducated parents who just don't talk to their children enough. In fact, we know that in most cases, DLD arises from genetic influences on early brain development. We don't know enough about specific genes to have a biological test for language disorder, but we do know that parents rarely cause their child's language difficulties.

Children with DLD grow into adults with language disorders. They are very likely to have lower levels of literacy and less likely to attend University or apply for skilled jobs, which reduces economic opportunity. Thus, social disadvantage could reflect these genetic influences.

It is also worth remembering that language is a two-way street. If a child is not talking and doesn't respond readily, parents may find interacting with that child challenging. And if talking and reading don't come naturally to parents, talking and reading to a young, silent child may seem a very odd thing to do indeed!

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds who present with language delays should be a high priority for services such as speech-language therapy, especially if there is a history of language, literacy, or learning difficulties within the family. Just because DLD has genetic influences doesn't mean we are powerless to change it. Therapists can support parents to adapt their ways of interacting to enhance language development.

Myth 4: Two languages makes DLD worse

In our multi-cultural society bilingual parents often ask if they should restrict their input to only one language, or just English. The research evidence here is pretty clear - exposure to two languages does not cause or complicate language disorder. Children need high-quality language input, so parents should continue to talk with their children in whatever language they themselves feel most comfortable speaking.

Identifying DLD is more complicated - ideally we want to know what the child's competencies are in all the languages he or she speaks, but practically we do not have the tools to assess all of the more than 300 different languages that are now spoken in the UK. In these cases, delayed language onset, coupled with family history and slow progress in learning English after school entry, are clear signs that extra support may be needed.

Myth 5: We should focus all our resources on early intervention - it is too late once they get to school

We need to recognise that like other developmental conditions such as autism or Down syndrome, "cure" is not the goal of intervention. Instead, we aim to maximise language capacity, enhance communication using whatever level of language a child possesses, and provide additional support that will reduce the longer term risks to learning, social well-being, and mental health.

While early intervention is important, many parents, health and education professionals point to adolescence, and the transition to secondary school, as a period when children with DLD are particularly vulnerable. This is due to the increasingly complex language demands of the curriculum and the nuanced language needed to manage social relationships during the teenaged years. Unfortunately, services for children with DLD tend to reduce post-primary school and services for adults with DLD are almost non-existent.

In sum, it's important to remember DLD123: (1) DLD is a problem with speaking and/or listening, (2) it is hidden but common, and (3) support can help to improve the quality of life of affected children and their families.

Find out more: This week sees the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry devoted to state of the art research on Developmental Language Disorder:[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.2017.58.issue-10/issuetoc] Professor Courtenay Norbury is the issue editor.
Courtenay Norbury is a Professor of Developmental Language and Communication Disorders at University College London and the President of NAPLIC (Professionals Supporting Language and Communication Development Topics

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Developmental Language Disorder: The most common childhood condition you've never heard of

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Professor Courtenay Norbury debunks some myths about children with this common but poorly understood condition Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is diagnosed when children fail to acquire their own language for no obvious reason. This results in children who have difficulty understanding what people say to them, and struggle to articulate their ideas and feelings.

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Developmental Language Disorder - Digital Book

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Developmental Language Disorder - Digital Book

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Digital book curated by Charlotte Forwood - containing information, resources and links

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Charlotte Forwood
Published on November 20, 2021
Overview of Developmental Language Disorder with teacher strategies, links to videos and resources - designed, curated and customised by Charlotte Forwood PhD - teacher/speech pathologist for Think Forward Educators presentation in November 2021.

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Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) - Dr Charlotte Forwood

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Charlotte Forwood Published on November 20, 2021 Overview of Developmental Language Disorder with teacher strategies, links to videos and resources - designed, curated and customised by Charlotte Forwood PhD - teacher/speech pathologist for Think Forward Educators presentation in November 2021.

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Explicit vocabulary instruction across the grades

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Explicit vocabulary instruction across the grades

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Explicit vocabulary instruction across grades and subjects

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I have written previously, but rather generally, about how to approach vocabulary instruction. I presented quite a few times last year on various aspects of vocabulary instruction. In this post I want to pull all of that content together, and dig deeper into how we might plan and deliver vocabulary lessons. The perfect medium for doing so is the frequently utilised, but rarely capitalised, read-aloud or shared reading lesson, so that is what I will focus on. Why should we have a particular focus

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In his blog, Alex Quigley highlights the language challenges for students as they transition from primary school to secondary school, with a particular focus on vocabulary - quantity and complexity.

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The importance of tending to pupils at the transition between primary and secondary school is well-established. The obvious focus, understandably, attends to the pastoral needs of pupils: making them feel safe and secure in their new ‘big school’ surroundings. Crucially, there is also an increasing…

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Cognitive Load Theory - examples in the classroom

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Cognitive Load Theory - examples in the classroom

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A practical guide to Cognitive Load Theory for educators.