[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: What do Warwick Elley, Tom Nicholson, and other NZ'ers think of this?

[val.warwickelley at iconz.co.nz]

I have been asked to express my views on the recent debates in NZ and 
elsewhere on the role of phonics in learning to read.
As one who has found it difficult to attend or participate in RHF 
activities, due to the frailties of advanced age, I have been reluctant 
to join in these controversies, once again.

However, for what it is worth, I see no good reason to revise my former 
position that children best learn to read, and develop a long-standing 
interest in reading, when they are immersed in authentic, predictable 
books and have the guidance of a teacher who understands and applies the 
shared reading approach with its high-interest activities.

Done well, this approach has worked effectively for me for most children 
in a wide range of countries learning to read and write in a second 
language, just as it has in New Zealand for many years. Certainly there 
are a few who may fall by the wayside, for a range of reasons, and who 
may benefit with greater phonemic emphasis, but I find most children 
learn their phonics as they learn to read by more natural meaningful 
approaches, rather than in phonics schemes studied out of context.

These debates have surfaced many times during my 68 years as a teacher 
and researcher, here in NZ and internationally. It seems that empirical 
studies have so far not been convincing enough for those with entrenched 
positions to change their view. However, one study I came across 
recently has not had the publicity I think it deserved in this part of 
the world. Wyse and Goswami reported on a year-long study of how well 
children learned to read in their first language by synthetic phonics in 
14 different European countries. Probably those in England know of the 
study.

After one year of instruction, all the children in the selected classes 
were tested on 20 familiar words and 20 pseudo words.
Not surprisingly children in Finland scored best, with an average of 98% 
on the familiar-word test, and 95% on the pseudo-words. Finnish is the 
most phonetically-regular language.  The children in eight other 
European countries scored over 90% on the familiar word test, and nearly 
the same in the other test. Three others,  (French, Danish and 
Portuguese) scored in the 70%s. But those children learning in English, 
had an average of only 34% on the familiar words and 29% on the 
pseudo-words. Clearly, English is quite different from the other 
languages for children learning by synthetic phonics.

Admittedly, the samples were small, and the mean ages were not equal, 
but the size of the differences between languages surely highlights the 
fact that learning to read with synthetic phonics is much more difficult 
in English than in other languages.
As Wyse and Goswami point out, "The phonological complexity of the 
syllabic structure in English is different from the other languages. 
...and requires instructional levels other than the phonemes may be 
required."  (p. 693)

This research may well have been interpreted differently by others, but 
I find it explains well why children learning by phonic approaches learn 
well in phonetically regular languages, but not in English. As my 
grandchildren learning to read in England discovered, a year-long focus 
on phonics is merely an interference when one can already read 
meaningful text. Of course they were read to daily as pre-schoolers!

Refs:
D.Wyse & U. Goswami. (2008) "Synthetic Phonics and the Teaching of 
Reading." British Journal of Educational Research, 34, 6,
p691-710.

P. Seymour, P. Aro & J Erskine (2003) "Foundation Literacy Acquisition 
in European Orthographies" British Journal of Psychology, 94, p143-147.



On 2019-08-23 01:58, Greg Brooks wrote:
> Brian and others
> My response would be as in the attachment.
> Best to all
> Greg Brooks
> 
> On Wed, 21 Aug 2019 at 04:08, Brian Cambourne <bcambrn at uow.edu.au>
> wrote:
> 
>> 
> https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12259907
>> 
>> Assoc. Prof. ( Dr) Brian Cambourne
>> Principal Fellow
>> School of Education
>> Faculty of Socal Sciences
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