Myths about Learning to Read
Caroline Erdos, Literacy Expert
Dr. Erdos, speech-language pathologist, is the professional coordinator of Speech-Language Pathology at Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board where she is also a special education consultant. Additionally, she is an SLP advisor for Speech-Language & Audiology Canada. Previously, she was the Advancing Learning in Differentiation & Inclusion coordinator for the 10 English school boards in Quebec, where she supported resource teachers through various professional development initiatives. With over 25 years’ experience as an SLP practicing in health and education, her areas of expertise include bi/multilingualism, reading impairment, language disorder and complex profiles of learning disability. Caroline has lectured at several Canadian universities. She has also been invited to present at numerous conferences across North America and has written and collaborated on several publications.
Learning to read is a natural process that mostly happens on its own - False
Reading is not a natural process that happens on its own. Reading involves understanding an arbitrary system that was invented by humankind a few thousand years ago. As such, children must be explicitly taught written language and its conventions so that they can crack the code. This includes explicit instruction in:
· Directionality of print
· Recognizing letter shapes
· Letter-sound correspondences and spelling regularities
· Meaning of word parts like word roots (friend-) and endings (-ly)
Sight-word memorization is a strategy that can be helpful to a young reader – False
Sight-word memorization is significantly less effective than teaching children to sound out words using their knowledge about sounds, letters and spelling rules. There are only so many words that a child can memorize at one time – eventually they will come across words they have never seen or memorized before. Experts say that it can take anywhere between 25 and 100 word exposures for a child to learn to memorize a new word. Consider the effort required to teach a child to memorize the 8 words sat, pat, pats, tap, taps, spat, sap, saps, versus teaching the same child the four letter sounds included in those words – /s/, /a/, /t/, /p/. It can take only 4 exposures to learn a new word if that word is analyzed using a combination of meaning, sound and letter knowledge (referred to as orthographic mapping – more on this here). An additional advantage of the latter is that sight-word memorization may inadvertently reinforce use of the ineffective guessing strategy.
Levelled readers are a good way to identify reading progress and potential reading difficulty – False
Levelled readers are books that are rank ordered by difficulty level according to complexity of subject content, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. Since spelling complexity is only one aspect, these books often contain words or word parts that students have not yet learned to read. These books also contain a high degree of text repetition, especially early on, and generally include picture support. As such, students can appear to be reading when in fact they are simply picking up on the text pattern or figuring out the meaning on the basis of the pictures. This, in turn, can lead to delayed identification of children who are struggling to learn to read.
Letter or sound reversals when reading are signs of dyslexia – False
Letter and sound reversals are a normal part of the errors that children make when they are learning to read. Dyslexia involves word-level reading difficulty characterized by low reading speed and/or accuracy. The difficulties of a child with dyslexia must be present beyond the early stages of learning to read and they must exist despite having received sustained, targeted and evidence-informed intervention.
If a child has not learned to read by grade 6, they will never be able to read – False
It is never too late to learn to read. Even an adult non-reader can learn to read with the right interventions.
Children should not begin reading instruction unless they speak a language fluently – False
Reading instruction should not be delayed. A child can be taught to read in a language they do not yet master so long as consideration is given to this. This involves carefully scaffolding for meaning, and selecting words and sentences that the child can understand, during reading instruction.
Learning to read in English is easier than learning to read in French – False
French may actually be more orthographically transparent than English, meaning that there is more of a 1:1 correspondence between letters and sounds in French than in English. Consider, for example, the multiple spellings of the short /o/ sound in these English words: not, bought, law, father, taught. However, on the flip side, French has many more word endings related to tense than English does. This all balances out such that there is no reason to believe that students would struggle more learning to read in one language than in the other.
We should avoid teaching children to read in two languages at the same time – False
Many schools in countries around the world, including Canada, teach children to read in two languages at the same time. Studies to date have not found detrimental effects related to this form of biliteracy. Here too, however, consideration should be given to the fact that students will be taught two overlapping yet distinct written language systems. Planning should be done collaboratively, if there are two teachers, and include explicit instruction in the similarities and differences across the two languages. In a similar vein, more instructional time should be given to those areas that are expected to be more difficult for students from each language background. For example, English dominant students may be expected to need more time to learn the many vowel sounds of the French language that do not exist in English (e.g., in, on, an). French students may need more practice at pronouncing word endings that are usually silent in French.
Can you think of additional myths about learning to read?
