The Conventional View & The Read Right View
- The report advocated:
- Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness (the concept that words in spoken language are composed of individual phonemes, or sounds)
- Systematic instruction in figuring out what the words are (using decoding, word-attack, and sight word recognition)
- Employing methods to improve fluency (typically, by asking students to read as fast as possible and timing their words per minute)
- Instruction designed to improve vocabulary
- Improving reading comprehension by teaching specific strategies and by asking pertinent questions
The field of reading sees the acquisition of reading ability as a somewhat linear process in which each of these five skills must be mastered to read effectively. Each skill depends on mastery of the previous one: you can’t figure out what the words are if you don’t have phonemic awareness; you can’t read fluently unless you can quickly and accurately identify each word; you can’t quickly identify words that aren’t in your vocabulary; you can’t comprehend if you can’t read fluently.
Read Right’s view is that reading is a unified, multi-faceted, primarily implicit process and that any attempt to separate the cohesive, integrated components and explicitly teach them as disconnected entities will not be successful because the necessary interrelationships will be removed. The cognitive act will be changed. The foundational skill for reading is not the ability to quickly and accurately identify words. Rather, it is anticipating the author’s intended meaning. Technically, the brain must create anticipatory sets* relative to the author’s message, and, because doing so operates implicitly, the brain must figure out for itself how to create those sets.
Read Right constitutes a paradigm shift in the field of reading. As such, it is not surprising that our views about “basic reading skills” differ from that of the National Reading Panel. These differences are delineated below.
Phonemic Awareness
“Children who, after phonological intervention, could sound out new words or nonwords were not reliably improved relative to comparison groups in their word identification and text-reading skills.” Lovett, M.W., Steinbach, K.A., & Frijters, J. C. (2000). Remediating the core deficits of developmental reading disability: a double-deficit perspective. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 33 (i5), 334-58.