[Reading-hall-of-fame] RE: Reading-hall-of-fame Digest, Vol 42, Issue 1

[Yetta Goodman]

To: Don, Jan, Arthur, Jay, Tom, David, David, Gay....   and interested 
others .....

I think this discussion is wonderful and I appreciate the thoughtful 
interactions taking place and the discussion needs to continue.
I agree that these are the kinds of discussions that are great on a RHF 
listserve and provide a venue for serious questioning.

One of the issues that I have addressed during my research with miscue 
analysis and now with eye movements is to understand what a fluent 
reader is.   I tend not to use the term because I'm never sure what 
people mean when it is used.
I don't believe that readers who are engaged in serious thinking while 
they are reading have a rate across a text that can be averaged and 
still tell the researcher/teacher/listener important information about 
the process of the reader.

I have come to believe that a "fluent" reader is an oral reader who is 
doing a dramatic reading -- usually practiced. 

Our miscue analysis clearly documents that there are many readers who 
read slowly, make lots of miscues and comprehend well (according to oral 
or written retellings).  Since comprehension is the goal for reading, I 
need to be able to explain the miscues and slow rate of such readers. 
Then there are readers who make very few miscues, read with animated 
intonation and are not able to retell what they have read.  We discover 
that the complexity of sytax, the  familiarity with the genre, and the 
knowledge/semantic content of a text are all involved in miscues and 
rate. Readers who are flexible and have background knowledge of the text 
are able to balance these various features of text and conclude their 
reading with comprehension. The same reader reads different texts 
differently depending on these important features of the context of a 
story or article.

Alan Flurkey (Hofstra University) has carefully analyzed miscue analysis 
and reading rates and shows how all readers have variable rates 
throughout the reading of a whole story or article.  He uses the 
metaphor "flow" to explain the ebbs and flows that readers make as they 
read through a text orally.   Even proficient readers have hesitations, 
slow starts, repeats and read fast but their overall rate is not 
consistent throughout a text.  Eye movement research with miscue 
analysis (EMMA) done by Eric Paulson (University of Cincinatti) among 
others also shows the flexibility and variation of readers across a 
whole text.  The eye is ahead of the mouth in eye movement research so 
the information readers get during a fixation is based on what they are 
already predicting and what they know prior to their reading.  Both of 
these researchers have articles in *Scientific Realism in Studies of 
Reading* by Flurkey, Paulson and K. Goodman Earlbaum, 2008

Many of the comments regarding the fluency issue in this list serve are 
very important because they raise questions about "fluency" that have 
for too long not be addressed.   Perhaps this discussion  suggests a RHF 
sponsored session on fluency at the 2011 IRA conference.     I certainly 
hope this conversation continues.   

Yetta Goodman

Arthur N Applebee wrote:
>
> David,
>
> I think you are touching on a central issue---the difference between 
> novice and expert may be a function of the knowledge of the domain 
> gained through cumulative experience, rather than the attainment of 
> specific knowledge or skills through direct instruction.  But we often 
> focus on the skills, rather than the guided immersion in the domain 
> that leads to productive cumulative experience.  We framed our AERJ 
> study of discussion-based approaches to the development of 
> understanding in part in terms of the literature on comprehension 
> strategies, but the results suggest that the process of sustained and 
> focused discussion, without an emphasis on specific comprehension 
> strategies, has a powerful effect on learning.   Our work was with 
> middle and high school students, but I think the general principle is 
> true across ages.
>
> Arthur
>
> (Arthur N. Applebee, J. Langer, M. Nystrand, & A. Gamoran, 
> Discussion-based approaches to developing understanding: Classroom 
> instruction and student performance in middle and high school English. 
> /American Educational Research Journal/ 40:3, 685-730, 2003. )
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk 
> [mailto:reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] *On 
> Behalf Of *David Olson
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:54 PM
> *To:* Jay Samuels
> *Cc:* reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
> *Subject:* Re: [Reading-hall-of-fame] RE: Reading-hall-of-fame Digest, 
> Vol 42, Issue 1
>
>  
>
> Jay et al:
>
> In my view "processing speed" is merely a reflection of one's 
> knowledge.  But I think the question raises a more general question. 
>  In reviewing a bunch of papers on literacy, it occurred to me that 
> there is a considerable gap among experts (like ourselves) on the 
> following issue:
>
> Do tested differences between the good and poor readers, the literate 
> and the non/less literate, provide a reliable guide as to what should 
> be taught.  
>
> I think not.  And that included speed of processing.  Whereas 
> most/many literacy researchers seem to think that if good/poor readers 
> differ on, say, short term memory for letters, vocabulary, sentence 
> comprehension, inferencing, etc. that implies that such  "skills" 
> should be taught.  That assumption is taken for granted by most 
> prescriptive reading programs.  I don't agree.
>
> How about you?
>
> David
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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