Reading is a verb. Literacy is not.
recommendations of the 2005 National Inquiry into the Teaching of
Talking about reading has become a bit pass and unfashionable in
education circles, but reading is high-stakes for the young people
who are the focus of my research those who have exited education
early and empty-handed when it comes to reading skills. No form of
literacy, whether traditional or postmodern is possible unless
children achieve the ability to read. Children do not sit down
and literate a book, a newspaper article, an online blog, or the
instructions for a new game. They read them. If they are lucky, that
is.
Recently, Robyn Ewing, Professor of Teacher Education and the Arts
at the University of Sydney, wrote a blogpost critical of the Centre for
Independent Studies Five from Five Initiative I wish to respond to
some of Professor Ewing assertions.
The fact that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority (ACARA) has a particular definition of literacy is all well and
good, but that does not necessarily translate into useful classroom
practices that in turn translate into useful skills for children. The
catch-cry its already in the curriculum is a hollow
defence against the evidence that indicates that too many
Australian children exit primary school with under-done reading (and
writing) skills. There, I used that word again. Reading.
Where is the evidence that Five from Five is touted as all-
encompassing? It is ironic (and logically inconsistent)
that Professor Ewing describes this approach as simplistic when
there is abundant evidence to indicate that primary teachers in
Australia and overseas lack basic explicit knowledge of the
complexity of how language works in order to teach reading*. Dr
Louisa Moats has stated through the title of one of her publications,
that Teaching Reading IS Rocket Science. However, too few
teachers exit their pre-service education equipped with explicit
language knowledge and an understanding of the science of reading
instruction. Instead, they are fed a steady diet of Whole-Language
based approaches such as the Three Cuing system referred to
in Prof.Ewings blogpost. This approach is used widely throughout
Australian schools, yet was not featured in any of the 20
Literacy.
Teacher knowledge is the elephant in the room that has to be
admitted. Taboos do not make useful contributions to solving
complex problems. There is a sad irony in the fact that much of the
literature on teacher knowledge is situated in journals that concern
learning difficulties in children.
Similarly, it is not enough that literacy educators dont deny the
importance of phonics and phonemic awareness. Literacy
educators need more than a lack of denial in order for their
students to succeed. They need knowledge and skills that give
them access to decades of cognitive science research on how
reading is acquired. How on earth can teachers be expected to
enhance phonemic awareness skills when they dont reliably know
what a phoneme is, or how to count them in simple words?
Education is remarkable in two respects: for its capacity to turn
its back on evidence in favour of ideology, and for its wasteful
approach to the evidence already sitting at its feet and being
ignored. Both of these ingrained and indoctrinated responses occur
at the expense of the educational livelihoods of children most
notably those who are starting from behind. When education
academics get on an aeroplane, do they expect the pilot to
say
Good afternoon ladies and gentleman; theres probably a particular
way that Im meant to get this Airbus A380 off the ground, but Id
like to try out a few ideas of my own on you today. After all, Im the
pilot, and youre my passengers.
Similarly, when education academics go to hospital with a suspected
heart attack, do they expect that an evidence-based protocol will be
followed, or that the doctors in the emergency department are free
to interpret the evidence as they wish? In these examples, of course,
there is a clear link between practitioner actions and outcomes, but
when teachers fail to apply evidence in early years classrooms
(because they were not equipped with it in the first place), there is a
creeping, insidious poisoning of a childs potential, that decades later
is either explained away as a function of the childs background, or of
the child being unteachable for some intrinsic reason.
Unlike pilots and doctors, teachers do not receive
confronting and immediate feedback about erroneous
practices. This seems to perpetuate a flat-earth belief- decoding text. Thats a bit like saying that theres more to making
system that is impenetrable by those on the outside begging a cup of tea than boiling the kettle. Advocates for evidence-based
to be heard. phonics instruction have always seen learning to decode as
a necessary but not sufficient part of literacy learning. The Simple
I am part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Project research
View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) asserts the importance
team which reported last year, consistent with a number of earlier
of both decoding and comprehension. So if you can't get words on
Australian and international studies, that primary teachers' explicit
and off the page, what hope do you have of participating in digital,
and implicit knowledge of basic linguistic constructs was limited and
critical, multi or any other sort of literacy?
highly variable (see Stark, Snow, Eadie &Goldfeld, 2015).
The 78 teachers who participated had a wide range of experience,
Some children have more limited past experiences and knowledge
and were most likely to rate their ability to teach skills including
of language to bring to the task of reading than others. Who, pray
spelling, phonics, comprehension and vocabulary as either
tell, is suggesting an over-emphasis on letter-sound
moderate or very good. However most of them demonstrated
relationships? What would an over-emphasis actually look like?
limited knowledge and stated that they did not feel confident
Its hard to escape the conclusion that for many teacher educators,
answering questions about their knowledge in these areas.
phonics is anything other than incidental, third out of three, last
Bear in mind that these teachers worked in disadvantaged schools resort assistance, as per the sacred Three Cuing doctrine.
where staff were sufficiently interested and motivated to respond to
The young people in my research, those in the tail of the education
a call for Expressions of Interest to take part in a research study on
curve, can interact all they like with a range of literacy materials. If
literacy teaching. A random sample may have produced even more
they cannot read, however, such interaction counts for nought in the
concerning results. It must be stressed, however, that these
real world, in which they will be permanently socially and
findings should not invite criticism of teachers themselves.
economically marginalised.
They are doing the best they can with their available knowledge and
skill toolkits. We can only imagine the greater reach of their efforts, I do agree with Prof. Ewing that ongoing teacher professional
however, if they were properly equipped with systematic skills learning is needed in this space, because there is an enormous
regarding the phonics and phonemic awareness aspects of the Big short-fall to be made up.
Five.
Instead of parking ambulances at the bottom of the cliff,
How can a child who receives solid, teacher-guided however, lets start building fences at the top, in the form of
instruction ranging across phonemic awareness, phonics, more rigourous teacher pre-service education. One day, a
vocabulary, comprehension and fluency be short- university somewhere will break ranks with the zeitgeist and the
changed? Seriously?! Many children can but dream of having wheels of change will start to turn.
these basics in place in their classroom. Having them in evidence is
Just imagine.
one thing. Having them based on robust evidence, is another thing
altogether. And where is the evidence that children exposed to
phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and
fluency disengage from the learning process? What about the
possibility that systematic attention to these features might have the
very opposite effect for many at-risk learners? Stuff they don't tell you about research success

One of the tired and hoary old chestnuts that is regularly trotted out
against those who argue for better and more systematic phonics
instruction is that there's more to reading than simply

Image source
This week, I was asked to say a few words at the opening of a Higher
Degrees by Research (HDR) festival, at the Bendigo campus of La
Trobe University, where I am the Head of the Rural Health School.
This gave me pause for thought about why some people are happy,
productive and "successful" in the research space, and others are
not.
Here's a few pearls I've gleaned along the way in my own research
career, which started relatively late, as I spent some 13 years in
clinical practice before returning to study and completing a PhD. As
an aside, I don't regret one of those years in clinical practice - they
provided rich, complex experience and gifted me some precious
and enduring friendships.
So, what I have learned along the way?
1. After you've carefully selected your PhD supervisors (that's
another blog-post in itself), make it your business to soak up all the
mentoring and support they can offer. You'll never again be on the
nursery slopes, so submit to the ignorance and naivet and drink
from the font of your supervisors' wisdom. Listen carefully. It's fine to
make some mistakes along the way, but you don't have to make all
of them.
2. Your research supervisors are a bit like your parents -
they are expected to literally "supervise" you, to give you feedback
(positive and negative), to set boundaries (you can't answer every
known question on your topic) and to set timelines (it's not OK to roll
your candidature over year after year like your car registration). You
don't have to like your supervisors and you don't have to be their
friends. (That said, I count myself as very fortunate to still on very
good terms with both of my PhD supervisors and I still publish with
them both from time-to-time). As with the parent-child relationship,
you are expected to develop increasing independence over time.
3. Your PhD probably won't change the world. It's actually
an apprenticeship in which you're meant to be learning stuff. A lot of
what you learn goes under the heading of "hidden curriculum" - how
the publishing game works, how the hallowed halls of academia
function, which stats program is easiest to use, and where to buy the
best coffee on campus.
4. Find out what matters in academia and do more of it.
People who get ahead typically have a clear program of research,
and say no to temptations to stray too far from it. They also work
incredibly hard, invariably in what might otherwise be seen as their
own time: evenings and weekends. "But that's bad for work-life
balance" I hear you say. Well maybe it is and maybe it isn't. You'll
need to decide at different points in your career how this plays out,
but you need to understand that those with whom you're competing
for research funds and academic posts are almost certainly working
many more hours than those for which they are paid. Someone had
to say it.
5. Publishing matters, so if you're not a strong writer, you
need to develop your skills, or prepare to be lost in the publication
crowd.
6. Don't be too distracted by presenting at conferences.
Don't get me wrong - conferences are important for sharing data,
receiving feedback, and networking with colleagues. But a
conference presentation doesn't carry the same weight on your CV
as a peer-reviewed publication. If you're wanting an academic career,
it's the latter that is important.
7. Think about where you're going to publish. This means
considering journal Impact Factors, target audience, and the actual
quality of your manuscript. Be strategic (and realistic) about the
match between the size and rigour of your study and the likelihood
that the Editor of Nature/The Lancet/BMJ etc will be sitting by the
phone waiting to hear from you.
8. Learn about metrics such as h-Indices. Sure, they are highly
reductionist and potentially even flawed. If you have an h-Index of
10, you're hardly getting credit for that amazing Cochrane Review
that has been cited 280 times, as it has to just sit alongside the other
nine papers that have been cited 10 times. Remember too, that your
work might be oft-cited because people think it's a good example of
a poor methodology or shoddy practice. I wonder how many times
the (subsequently retracted) Andrew Wakefield autism-MMR
study was cited? Learn to love all your h-Indices equally, whether the
"official" offering from Scopus, or the always higher version offered
by Google Scholar (because it picks up a lot of grey literature not
included by Scopus).
9. Don't be afraid to change tack in your research career.
I started off studying communication impairment and psychosocial
outcome after traumatic brain injury and now have a focus on two
key areas: language skills of young offenders and literacy education
(as many of you would realize, there's a sad link between the two). I
do some related work on young people in the state care system, but
try to be careful to always be able to articulate clear links between
my research interests.
10. Make sure you can answer the "so what?" question
about your research. If you're going to spend a good part of your
work (and non-work) time consumed with a particular issue, you
need to be able to explain to funding bodies why it matters. Your
research should also, therefore, pass the pub test (or failing that, the
grandmother test) - it needs to be able to be packaged to make
sense to the tax-payer who may well be asked to fund it.
11. Related to the "so what" question is the notion
of translational impact. What are your findings going to translate
into and how? Your answers to these questions should drive your
dissemination strategy, covering peer-reviewed journals, reports,
conference presentations, and the use of social media.
12. Collaborate. It's been said that if you want to go fast, go
alone, but if you want to go far, go together. To be honest, I think you
can only go fast on your own to a point. You can sometimes quickly
get certain specific tasks done on your own, but if you want to
achieve significant outcomes in the research space, you need to form
collaborations with others who share your focus and interest. But you
don't all have to fall into the photocopier. It can be tremendously
beneficial to have different paradigms, disciplines, and
methodologies represented in your team - provided there are good
reasons that are driven by the research agenda, not by misguided
charity about finding a role for a drifter who has lost their way
research-wise. Remember too, that funding bodies look at the quality
and make-up of teams and this assessment can be weighted quite
heavily in the overall rating of your project.
13. Kiss a few frogs. By that, I mean cold-call people interstate
and overseas whose work is cognate to yours, and share your most
recent publication (in which you have hopefully cited their work).
Most researchers are delighted to hear that someone far away is
aware of their work and has taken the trouble to get in touch. I've
formed a number of enduring international collaborations in this way
and have published with at least two of them. Sometimes you won't
get a response, and sometimes it will be like a luke-warm bath.
That's OK, and it may not be about you - it may be because their life
is complicated at the moment and your timing was unfortunate.
14. Expect set-backs. They will probably be many and at times,
quite painful. I read a wonderful article via Twitter recently, called Me
and My Shadow CV. Read it. It's a great reminder that we don't see
the rejected manuscripts and grants, or the unsuccessful job
applications when we look at the profile of someone we see as an
academic star. However it's the entries on this ghost-document that
provide us with valuable learnings, not to mention an extra layer or
two on the rhino hide we call academic resilience.
15. Speaking of Twitter, if you're not using this incredibly
valuable platform, you almost certainly should be. I have discovered
whole new professional global networks of people who are interested
in things I'm interested in. Invariably these days if I come across
something new and interesting, it's via Twitter. Try to follow a few
people whose views you don't necessarily share too - it's good to
have your assumptions nudged from time-to-time, and to know how
others think on your topic of interest (even if you're pretty positive
that they're wrong).
16. Be reliable. Successful researchers can't tolerate
unnecessary weights in their saddle bags. Be known for being the
person who states what they will do, commits to delivering in a
timely and thorough manner, and then does so.
17. Enjoy the ride. For all the lows and frustrations, the life of a
researcher is deeply satisfying. There is great personal satisfaction in
having a paper published after the long haul of funding, ethics
approval, data collection and delays, multiple manuscript drafts, late-
night data-wrangling, responding to appallingly misguided reviewer
comments, and other set-backs of various forms. I am reminded of
this when, from time-to-time, I receive an email out of the blue from
a total stranger, telling me how they have used such-and-such
a paper to change their practice or influence a policy maker. H-
Indices are all well and good, but it doesn't get much better than
knowing that somewhere, you've made a small difference on the
ground.
Santa Claus, Homeopathy, and Phonics: Where's the
link?
Image source
Most of us can remember when we found out that Father Christmas,
the Easter Bunny, and/or the Tooth Fairy were not real entities. For
me, the disappointment of discovering that my parents were Santa
was off-set by the relief that my attempts to deal with the illogical
premise of his work-schedule were now reconciled. I must have been
a budding empiricist even as a seven year old. Letting go of illogical
but cherished belief-systems is an important rite of passage in
childhood. It hurts a little, but it leads to greater maturity and depth
of understanding about oneself and the complex world in which we
live. Sometimes we have to let go of cherished beliefs as adults too.
I often think that for primary teachers whose pre-service education
has been dominated by Whole Language-based ideology and
pedagogy, exposure to the scientific evidence on what works (and
who gets left behind) with respect to reading instruction must feel
somewhat akin to losing a belief-system like the idea that a fat jolly
bloke in a red suit flies around the world bringing presents to all of
the children of the world (well, to those of a particular belief-system,
and even then, not in an equitable fashion....let's not try to untangle
those loose ends today).
There's a number of challenges in having discussions about
evidence-based practice with teachers, and none of these reflect on
teachers, per se. They do, however, reflect on teacher training.
1. While systematic synthetic phonics instruction is strongly
favoured by the cognitive psychology literature as a basis for early
reading instruction, some children, notably those from more
disadvantaged backgrounds, derive particular benefit from such
approaches. Teachers who work in communities characterised by
high levels of economic, social and human capital will likely find that
many (but by no means all) children will make the transition to
literacy almost irrespective of the instructional focus, because their
classrooms have more "high readiness" than "low readiness" children
with respect to learning to read. This is somewhat akin to the fact
that doctors who work in such areas may see lower rates of illnesses
in children that are due to air-borne pathogens, because such
illnesses are more common where living conditions are over-
crowded. Our everyday experiences are a powerful driver of what we
see as "normal" and "abnormal".
2. If teachers accept, in spite of their pre-service education, that
Whole Language based approaches such as expecting children to
memorise lists of commonly occurring words, and the use of three-
cueing strategies are not optimal, what do they do then? Become
overnight experts on delivering systematic synthetic phonics
instruction? Not easy.
3. Teachers are typically not taught the skills of reading and
critically appraising scientific research. The power of anecdote and
personal experience prevails when such a skill vacuum exists.
4. Teachers have been sold a crock in so-called "Balanced
Literacy". This is a slick attempt by some teacher educators to pay
lip-service (no pun intended) to phonics-based early instruction,
through pitches such as "Oh it's OK. We've moved on from the
reading wars now. Now we teach Balanced Literacy, so phonics is in
the mix".
In the mix?

Let's consider the so-called "Five Big Ideas" in literacy

education (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development,
comprehension, and reading fluency). How much emphasis on the
first two is enough? And when should phonemic awareness and
I do wonder though, how we can move from our current impasse.
phonics be introduced and called upon in the learning process? You
Four decades of Whole Language dominated teacher education and
might think you'd find some answers in the Australian document
classroom practice stands between today's children and exposure
entitled "The Place of Phonics in Learning to Read and Write" by
to evidence-based reading instruction. Maybe I need to believe in
Emmitt et al. (2013). Instead, this document takes a perversely
one of these:
undermining position with respect to the importance of phonics
instruction. The purpose of this blogpost is not to deconstruct the
work of Emmitt et al., but rather to use it as an example of a modern
guide for teachers that promotes what I've come to think of
as homeopathic doses of phonemic awareness and phonics
instruction. Sure, they're in the mix, but in doses that prevent
systematic skill acquisition by early learners. Effective phonics
instruction requires specialist knowledge of the structure of
the English language, and this unfortunately has been shown to
be significantly lacking in the teacher workforce - again, no fault of
teachers, and something I will come back to in a future blogpost.

In the meantime though, we need to think long and hard about what
it means for children to be receiving patchy and often weak
instruction in phonics. Phonics is not a stand alone. It's necessary
but not sufficient in order to get beginning readers off the blocks
and into the transformational world of deriving meaning from written
text. But it needs to be taught well if early inequities in reading
readiness are to be removed in the critical first three years of school.
Renovating the Language House
This is just a very brief blogpost to say that I have again updated my
schematic "Language House" that I use when talking to primary
school teachers about the role of early oral language competence in
both the transtion to literacy and the development of prosocial
interpersonal skills.
I've blogged previously about how this schematic representation
came about, and have it updated here in response to my reflections
on discussions with colleagues at the recent Speech Pathology
Australia Conference in Canberra.

Most importantly, I thought it was important to show that language,

literacy and social skills development is dynamic and
ongoing throughout childhood and adolescence (and of course
across the whole life-span, but this diagram focuses on the
developmental period). Hence the brick pattern on the pillars in this
version, as a nod to the vertical progress that needs to occur in both
the literacy and interpersonal skill domains, as manifestations of
continued language development. Note too, that the walls in this
model are more visibly sunken into their granite-like foundations -
not just sitting on top of them.

I'm particularly indebted to Dr Ros Neilson for inspiring me to come

back and do some renovations.

Please feel free to use this for professional development and related
discussions, but I would appreciate being acknowledged as its
source. I'd be very happy to hear your thoughts and to take further
suggestions/comments.

Dr Louisa Moats in Australia - the agony and the

ecstasy

Last Saturday I joined around 160 other language and literacy

enthusiasts (predominantly teachers, both primary and secondary,
and speech pathologists) to hear Dr Louisa Moatsspeak in Melbourne
on the science of reading instruction. I was well primed for this
event, having read rave reviews of her presentations in other states,
and also having re-visited some of her published work in the week
prior to the workshop, most notably this one from 2007: Whole
Language High Jinks highly recommended if you havent read it.
 Dr Moats was in Australia as a guest of LearningDifficulties
Australia (LDA). LDA celebrates its 50th birthday this year, and in a
generous and inspired piece of gift-giving, brought Dr Moats and her
expertise to Australia so that we might benefit from her wisdom on
matters pertaining to teacher training, literacy instruction, Response
to Intervention, and management of children with dyslexia.
Ill focus in this blog on Dr Moats comments on reading instruction in
particular, though I will also mention some of her reflections on
Whole Language and on teacher training.
Dr Moats impresses as an under-stated highly knowledgeable
scientist, who also has the benefit of many years experience as both
a teacher and an educational psychologist. She has personally
assessed thousands of struggling readers of all ages, as well as
conducting rigorous research on optimal teaching methods and
teacher training regarding language constructs relevant to reading
instruction.
Much of the Saturday workshop was devoted to the science of
teaching reading. Here, Dr Moats drew on Hollis Scarboroughs 2001
reading rope (see below) to drill down on the specifics of reading-
related subskills such as
What is a phoneme?
How do voiced and voiceless phonemes differ? How does place of
articulation influence phoneme production?
What is a grapheme?
What does phoneme-grapheme correspondence mean?
What is morphology and how does it inform the teaching
of reading and spelling?
How can childrens vocabulary be strengthened?
What do syntactic knowledge and understanding
contribute to reading proficiency and how can they be developed?
The importance of comprehension and the role that oral
language skills play in this.
For a self-described Phonicator Dr Moats approach to reading
instruction richly reflects the cognitive psychology evidence on early
reading and goes way beyond the necessary but not sufficient role of
early phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. Dr Moats also
stressed that while poor decoding skills play a large part in
reading difficulties in the early years, by secondary school,
the picture is more complex, and deficits in early decoding skills
are now compounded by decrements in vocabulary, syntactic
understanding, and reading comprehension. If the foundations of a
house are not sound, then we cant expect the walls and roof to be
strong either.
Some of the exercises Dr Moats asked the audience to do (like
determining the number of phonemes in common words) proved a
little challenging on a Saturday morning, even for this highly
motivated and more-knowledgeable-than-average audience. This
took me right back to first year linguistics when I was studying to be
a speech pathologist, and it struck me that if I was teacher who had
not been schooled in these concepts (a la most Australian teachers
in recent decades), I would have been feeling out of my comfort
zone. Thats a comment on teacher training and not on teachers, and
it also reflects the truth behind the title of one of Dr Moats most
well-known texts: Teaching Reading IS Rocket Science.
While there was much intellectual ecstasy in listening to Dr Moats
(OK, yes, Im a bit of a nerd) bringing the science of reading
instruction to life and seeing its teaching illustrated with clear and
theory-based examples, the metaphorical agony lay in the fact that
Dr Moats was preaching to the choir, albeit in ways that gave the
choir stronger, more in-tune voices. I doubt there were
many Balanced Literacy advocates in the room, nor Reading
Recovery teachers, nor, perhaps most critically, teacher
educators who (in the main) persist in their promotion of non-
evidence-based approaches to early literacy instruction. On this, Dr
Moats observed that we need to be outraged and less tolerant.
Dr Moats also observed that theres no point telling teachers that
phonemic awareness is important if teachers dont know what
phonemes are (as indicated by the research evidence on teacher
knowledge).
As a first-time visitor to Australia, Dr Moats expressed humility at the
reach and influence of her work here, but also some incredulity at
our preponderance for following in the footsteps of our UK and US
neigbours with respect to changing tack, and adopting approaches
ahead of the science being adequately accounted for. Its too late to
put the Whole Language/Reading Recovery genie back in the bottle,
but I wonder what cliff well jump off next if we dont abandon our
lemming ways?
Dr Moats noted that reading is one of the most studied human
skills, yet we persist in failing to apply the hard-earned
science in early years classrooms, and instead accept high rates
of suboptimal literacy levels in first-world nations such as the US and
Australia. Im not the first to observe that such willingness to look the
other way would result in riots in the streets if interventions that
treated a potentially chronic medical illness were being withheld
from small children. Low literacy, however, is such a condition, yet
we have allowed a confluence of social and political factors to force
evidence to take a back seat, in favour of allowing ideology to drive
the literacy instruction bus.
As an important aside, at Dr Moats workshop, I also met Berys
Dixon, whose work I became aware of when she contributed to the
discussion forum following this piece on The Conversation that Alison
Clarke and I recently co-authored. Berys is a primary school teacher
who had her own phonics epiphany in 2008, having been using
Whole-Language based approaches such as the Three Cueing
System. You can hear Berys telling her story at this link on the
Spelfabet website. Theres also more information about Berys
work at this link and here's information about sourcing her fabulous
little Pocket Rockets. So this added a bit more ecstasy to the day.
In addition to a dozen or so workshop and seminar presentations, Dr
Moats also met with senior state and federal education bureaucrats
and ministers during her visit. In the interests of preventing us from
having to replicate other nations' expensive mistakes, I hope some of
those people listened carefully to what this very measured scientist
had to say.
Thank you LDA, for bringing Dr Louisa Moats to our shores.
(C) Pamela Snow (2015)
My response to Dr. Eileen Honan's AARE blogpost on
"how teachers are taught to teach reading"
I have now made two attempts, two days apart to post the following
in response to a blogpost by Dr Eileen Honan (University of
Queensland) on the Australian Association for Research in Education
website
Dr Honan was writing in response to this piece by me and Alison
Clarke, published on The Conversation site on February 6:The way
we teach most children to read sets them up to fail
I don't know why my response has not been published, but here it is:
Eileen no-one, least of all me or Alison Clarke, is suggesting that skilled readers. In addition to her hours and hours of honorary work,
phonics is a magic bullet. Phonological and phonemic awareness Alison provides resources and ideas free of charge via her website.
are, however, necessary, though not sufficient elements in good As a clinician who specialises in working with children with reading
reading instruction. The key point in our piece on The Conversation difficulties, she should be receiving only a small number of referrals
recently was that in spite of recommendations made in the 2005 from surrounding schools.
National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, teachers are not being
Until Australia is performing much more strongly on objective
taught how to approach this aspect of literacy instruction in a
measures such as PIRLS, clinicians such as Alison will have to
systematic way. Some very fortunate children seem to be able to
struggle to see as many instructional casualties as they can. Sadly,
skip over the bridge to literacy in a fairly seamless manner, while
theres just not enough Alison Clarkes to go around.
others need much more in the way of systematised support.
In addition to PIRLS (http://www.acer.edu.au/files/TIMSS-
I really dont think its possible for you to make authentic
PIRLS_Australian-Highlights.pdf) , we also have Australian Bureau of
generalisations about how Australian teachers are taught, because
Statistics data on poor literacy rates in this country
(as far as I am aware, please correct me if Im wrong) we dont have
(http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4228.0Main+Featu
national audit data that maps this. Recently, however, in NSW, a
res202011-12), and a damning 2011 report from the Industry Skills
report was released that indicated that this needs to be done better:
Council of Australia
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/news-media/media-
(http://www.voced.edu.au/print/content/ngv45623) .
release.html
If you can present compelling evidence that were actually
The work of Australian teacher educator Ruth Fielding Barnsely also
doing well with respect to how we teach our children to read,
shows poor teacher grasp of key metalinguistic knowledge in pre-
Im all ears.
service and inservice teachers see
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1359866052000341133
#.VPQHuyuUd8E. Being passionate is a great start, but having some
real knowledge and skills is what gains traction with respect to high The way we teach most children to read sets them up to fail
quality instruction. This raises the issue of the "Peter Effect" in February 5, 2015 7.38pm GMT
teaching that one cannot teach what one does not know See:
https://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/policy-magazine/2013- Author
spring/29-3-13-jennifer-buckingham.pdf

Its ironic that you refer to Dr Norman Swan, of ABC Radio Nationals
Health Report, as endorsing a phonics-based program, as he is one
of Australias biggest champions of evidence-based practice. As
such, he has a keen eye for unsubstantiated claims and holds
researchers and practitioners to account for their claims.

I note too, your attempt to discredit my colleague Alison Clarke, a

highly regarded Melbourne Speech Pathologist who does a huge
amount of probono work to promote improved classroom practices 1. Pamela Snow
and afford more children the opportunity to exit primary school as
Associate Professor of Psychology, Monash University
Disclosure statement
Pamela Snow receives funding from the Australian Research Council
(Linkage Scheme).
Partners
Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The
Conversation AU.
Victoria State Government provides funding as a strategic partner of
The Conversation AU.
The Conversation UK receives funding from Hefce, Hefcw, SAGE, SFC,
RCUK, The Nuffield Foundation, The Ogden Trust, The Royal Society,
The Wellcome Trust, Esme Fairbairn Foundation and The Alliance for
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View the full list
The way we teach most children to read sets them up to fail
English is a complex language with roots in many others, and the
teaching of it should reflect this. AAP
A new batch of Australian five-year-olds has just started school,
eager to learn to read and write. Unfortunately for them, English has
one of the most difficult spelling systems of any language, thanks to
the way it developed.
A patchwork of many languages
Words from Germanic Anglo-Saxon (woman, Wednesday) and Old
Norse (thrust, give) were mixed with words from the churchs Latin
(annual, bishop), and Norman French (beef, war). Pronunciation
changed dramatically in England between 1350 and 1700 (The Great
Vowel Shift), and scribes paid by the character added letters to
words.
Science, technology and The Enlightenment added words, often
based on Latin or Greek (anthropology, phone, school), wars and
globalisation added even more, like verandah from Hindi, tomato
from Nahuatl (Aztec) via Spanish, and yakka from Yagara (an
Australian Indigenous language). Words are also continually being
invented and added to contemporary dictionaries.
Words from other languages typically carry their spelling patterns
into English. So, for example, the spelling ch represents different
sounds in words drawn from Germanic (cheap, rich, such), Greek
(chemist, anchor, echo) and French (chef, brochure, parachute).
English has 26
characters, but many more sounds. Shutterstock
Our originally Latin alphabet has only 26 letters for the 44 sounds in
modern Australian English. To master our spelling system, children
must grasp that words are made of sounds represented by letters,
that sometimes we use two, three or four letters for a sound (f*eet,
bridge, caught), that most sounds have several spellings (Her* f*irst
nurse works **early), and that many spellings represent a few
sounds (food, look, flood, broo*ch).
How should children be taught this complex code?
In his internationally acclaimed analysis of the effectiveness of
teaching methods, Professor John Hattie assigns effect sizes
ranging from 1.44 (highly effective) to -0.34 (harmful). Effect sizes
above 0.4 indicate methods worth serious attention.
There are two main schools of thought about how to teach children
to read and write, one focused on meaning (whole language) and
one focused on word structure (phonics). Hatties meta-analysis
gives whole language an effect size of 0.06, and phonics an effect
size of 0.54.
But which type of phonics works best? The Clackmannanshire
study provides convincing evidence for synthetic phonics. This starts
from just a few sounds and letters in short words, and systematically
adds and practises more sounds, spellings and syllable types, until
children can read well enough to independently tackle the real
books adults have been reading them.
Clackmannanshire is a disadvantaged area of Scotland, but by the
end of primary school the children using this program were three
years ahead of the national average on word reading, 21 months
ahead on spelling and five months ahead on reading comprehension.
In 2005, Australias National Inquiry into Teaching
Reading recommended that young children should be provided with
systematic, explicit and direct phonics instruction, and that teachers
be equipped to provide this. Similar inquiries in
the US and UK agreed.
Are children being taught this way?
The short answer is no. The main reason is that few teachers are
trained or equipped to teach synthetic phonics. Theyre often taught
at university by academics whose careers, publication records and
reputations are based on whole-language teaching approaches,
considered modern, progressive and child-centred. Phonics,
conversely, is framed as old-fashioned, reactionary and teacher-
centred, so is used less.
Children are typically encouraged to read real books containing
long words and difficult spellings, and to guess unknown words from
first letters and pictures. They try to write words that are too hard for
them, and often the resulting spelling mistakes are put up on the
wall for everyone to learn. They memorise lists of high-frequency
words.
Phonics work in Australian classrooms typically focuses on initial
letters and a few basic strategies, not sounds and their spellings in
all word positions. There is little systematic instruction in word
blending or segmenting (breaking words into parts, such as
syllables), or in many of Englishs 170 or so major spelling The vast majority of children will only learn to read and spell in the
patterns. Australian curriculum requirements for English reinforce right developmental window when teachers are equipped with the
this mess-of-methods approach. best available methods, based on the best available evidence.

Many confused children learn to guess and memorise words rather

than sounding them out. This seems to work at first, but by their
third year of schooling lack of visual memory (disk full!) means they
start to fail. The well-intended Reading Recovery program, about
80% whole language and 20% phonics, often fails to provide the
boost these learners need.

Children who cant read much by age nine are in serious trouble. By
then, teachers expect them to have finished learning to read and to
start seriously reading to learn. Yet the 2011 Progress in International
Reading Literacy Study found that a quarter of Australian Year 4
students fell below international benchmarks in reading, with 7%
scoring very low.

Using evidence in education

If large numbers of children were contracting a serious, preventable

illness and you asked your doctor how to protect your child, youd be
rightly angry if the doctor didnt understand the current medical
research and thus recommended what s/he learnt at university, or
had used before and preferred. You might contact the Medical Board
to make a complaint or, if you had followed bad health advice, lodge
a malpractice suit in the courts.
Evidence-based practice is deeply embedded in the culture of health
professionals. Graduates are taught to read and understand the
language of rigorous research and to turn to peer-reviewed academic
journals and properly controlled experimental designs as the best
sources of evidence. This doesnt happen nearly enough in
education.
Childrens opportunities are seriously compromised if they dont
learn to read and spell. They are much more likely to drop out of
school early, be unemployed, suffer ill health and get on the wrong
side of the law.
What are English morphemes, and why do they
matter for spelling?
2 Replies
At the start of each year, to the delight of Aussie word nerds, the
Macquarie Dictionary announces which new words have come into
common usage in the previous twelve months, and gives us all a
People's Choice vote on the Word of the Year.
Of this year's crop, I enjoyed "flappity", "mansplain", "voluntold", "job
stopper", "bamboo ceiling", "wikiwash", "mandal", "facekini",
"normcore", "decision fatigue", "doge", "compassionista", "precariat",
"girlie man", "lifehacking" and "dog surfing", but having had to deal
with more politicians, planning bureaucrats and property developers
than is really recommended for one's good mental hygiene, would
give the gong to "ICACable".
If you're a native speaker of English and you haven't been living
under a rock, you can probably take a reasonable stab at
the meanings of many of these words, because of your knowledge,
or ability to infer, the meanings of their components.
This is especially true if I put them in sentences: "The teenagers
became flappity as their idol's limo approached", "Yes, dear, I got two
distinctions for statistics at uni, no need to mansplain", or "The whole
department was voluntold to help out on Open Day".
Even though "ity", "splain" and "volun" aren't words in their own
right, they are used here as meaningful word parts, or morphemes,
to build the new meanings. When you know the suffix "able" and that
ICAC is the Independent Commission Against Corruption, if I say,
"The former Minister's relationships with the property industry are
very ICACable", you will understand me perfectly.
Different types of morpheme
In linguistics, morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in a
language, and are used to build word meanings as well as their
structure. The study of morphology is separate from, but of course
related to, the study of phonology (speech sounds), syntax (word
types and their use in sentences), semantics (meaning) and
pragmatics (language use in context).
Knowing a bit about morphology can help with explaining and
demonstrating spelling patterns to kids, so let's have a go at it.
Free morphemes
Many English words cannot be broken up into smaller meaningful
parts, for example, "cat", "swim", "and", "the", "red" and "when".
They contain only one morpheme, and since they can go out on their
own in sentences, are called free morphemes.
Some free morphemes are function words with a syntactic or
grammatical purpose:
"And" joins words and sentences.
"The" indicates a specific, known noun e.g. "a moon" could be
anywhere in the universe, but "the moon" is the one that goes
round the earth.
"When" is a conjunction or adverb about time.
We don't make up new function words like these, and it's quite hard
to explain what a lot of these words mean. They really only make
sense when used in sentences.
The rest of our words are content words with a semantic
purpose. They carry the main meanings we are talking or writing
about, such as "cat", "swim", "red" and "always".
We can and do make up new content words all the time, and if they
catch on, dictionaries catalogue them and they become part of the
language.
Bound morphemes
Many English words are made up of two or more meaningful parts,
for example the words "catty", "swimming" and "reddest" all contain
two bits of meaning. The "y", "ing" and "est" are bound morphemes,
which need to be attached to another morpheme before they
become a word, and can go out in sentences.
Some of our bound morphemes serve a syntactic purpose i.e.
they inflect nouns, adjectives or verbs. Since English puts these only
at the ends of words, not at word beginnings, these are
called inflectional suffixes.
Two of these are added to the ends of nouns:
Plurals: show there's more than one of something. The usual
plural morpheme is "s" or "es" e.g. cat-cats, dog-dogs, witch-
witches. However, sometimes we form plurals in unusual
ways, in words that come from Old English, Latin or French
e.g. mouse-mice, child-children, radius-radii, phenomenon-
phenomena, genus-genera, larva-larvae, bureau-bureaux
etc. Click here for more examples.
The possessive: shows that something belongs to a noun,
and is written as an apostrophe + "s" e.g. the frog's leg, the
city's skyline, the cat's pyjamas. If we are talking about two
frogs having four legs, we just add a possessive apostrophe
after the plural "s" ("the frogs' legs).
Two inflectional suffixes are added to the ends of adjectives:
The comparative: is used to make adjectives that compare
things, and written "er" e.g. funkier, lazier, redder.
The superlative: is like the comparative, only moreso, and
written "est" e.g. funkiest, laziest, reddest.
Four inflectional suffixes are added to the ends of verbs:
Third person singular present tense: is the "s" verb
agreement in "she sleeps", "he wakes" or "it lurks".
Simple past tense: is usually "ed" as in "it lurked" but we
also have many irregular forms from good old Old English, like
"she slept" and "he woke", where it is hard to say which bit of
the word is the base word and which bit is the past tense, but
there are still two meanings and therefore two morphemes.
Past participle: usually "en" as in "she has chosen" or "he
had woken" or "ed" as in "they have danced" or "we have
smashed", but there are again many irregular forms e.g. "I
have slept", "you had crept" etc. There are many lists of
irregular simple past and past participle verbs on the
www, click here for one from the British Council.
Present participle: the "ing" that shows continuous action
e.g. "she is carousing", "he was prancing". Note that these
"ing" words can be used as adjectives e.g. "The prancing
pony", or they can be used as nouns e.g. "Prancing has worn
me out".
Then we have many more morphemes called derivational
affixes, which go at the start of words (prefixes) or the end
(suffixes) to change their meaning or word type. For example, we
can add:
"anti" before a noun adds the meaning "against" e.g. antiwar,
anticlimax, antidote.
"ante" adds the meaning "before" as in antechamber,
antecedent, antenatal (but beware, sometimes the meaning
"ante" is spelt "anti" as in anticipate, antique)
"omni" adds the meaning "all/every", as in omnivorous,
omniscient, omnibus.
"ist", "ian" or "eer" after a noun to add the meaning "one
who" e.g. pianist, dramatist, optometrist, politician,
magician, musician, mountaineer, musketeer, engineer.
"vore" after a noun adds the meaning "eater", as in carnivore,
herbivore, omnivore, locavore.
"gate" has within my lifetime become a suffix which turns a
word into a scandal, as in Watergate, Camillagate and
Wormgate (an Australian federal election debate controversy).
"er" after a verb to add the meaning "one who" or "that
which" e.g. dancer, swimmer, repairer, can-opener, toaster,
typewriter. However, "er" is not always a suffix when it
appears at word endings a brother is not someone who
broths, and water is not a thing that wats,
"ity" after a verb to make it into a noun e.g. prosperity,
equality, security.
"un" before a verb to reverse its action e.g. undo, unpack,
unlace, unwind, unpick.
"ment" after a verb to turn a verb into a noun e.g.
embarrassment,
"ly" after an adjective to make it into an adverb e.g. kindly,
quietly, aggressively.
"ous" after an adjective to add the meaning "full of" or
"possessing" e.g. joyous, nervous, spacious.
Both inflectional and derivational affixes are used productively to
make new words. Children typically experiment with them a lot when
learning to speak, making cute mistakes, e.g. "I runned and falled
over", "It's the funnest", or "I scratched my legpit". Adults sometimes
deliberately get them wrong for comic effect e.g. asking whether
you've squozen the oranges.
These affixes also tend to have predictable spelling patterns, so that
once you know how build words in spoken language using the suffix
"ful", and you know how to spell words like "fearful", "joyful" and
"wilful", I can tell you about something "squessful" and ask you to
write it down, and you'll put FUL not FULL, FEL or something else.
People learn the affixes in spoken language naturally, because that's
how our brains are wired, but major spelling patterns like this should
be taught, because spelling is a learnt skill, not a natural process.
Bound stems (sometimes called word roots)
There are a further set of morphemes in English which aren't words
by themselves, but do carry specific meanings, and which can be
made into new words by adding one or more prefixes or suffixes.
These are called bound stems or word roots, linguists being rather
keen on trees as metaphors for language structure.
For example, the stem "tele" means "far off" as in "telegram",
"television" and "teleport". The stem "phon" meaning "sound" gives
us "phoneme", "euphonium" and, if combined with the stem "tele",
"telephone" (a bit like a compound word, but made out of two
stems). The bound stem "vac" means "empty" as in "vacuum",
"evacuate" and "vacant", even though it is not pronounced the same
in all three. English tends to keep stems spelt the same even when
their pronunciations vary considerably, think of the "anthrop"
(meaning "man") in "anthropology" and "misanthrope". So it's useful
to be taught some of the most common bound stems.
Word cropping
We get the word "Thursday" from the Old English words meaning
"Thor's day" (Thunresdaeg),Thor being the Germanic god of throwing
hammers across the sky, creating thunder.
To most of us "Thurs" is now just a stem that is part of the name of a
day, it's not a meaningful unit like "birth", "dream", "light" or "holy"
which we combine with "day" to get "birthday", "daydream",
"daylight" and "holiday". If I said, "I'm having a little Thursmo" or
"I'm feeling Thursish" you'd probably conclude I am a bit midweek-
weary, and wish the weekend would hurry up and come. You
wouldn't expect me to start throwing hammers round the office.
Words that are in current English made of two or more morphemes
can also sometimes be cropped but still carry the meaning of the
longer word, which is how the prefix "diss" came to mean
"disrespect". But this same cropping also happens to single-
morpheme words e.g. "bro" was cropped to"brother", and is now
being used as a morpheme in its own right, in words like "bromance".
Once-were-morphemes
Former Latin Masters and self-styled Language Mavens (let's call
them FLMs) like to devise tests containing questions like "what does
'alb' mean?" which are supposed to elucidate who has had a Really
Proper English Education. I think of these tests in the same category
as the 1930s Australian immigration department language test,
which was a dictation test. If the immigration officer wanted to
exclude you, but you spoke English and all the other major European
languages, the test could be administered in Scots Gaelic (click
here if you don't believe me).
To answer the FLM test question "what does the English bound stem
"alb" mean?", you either have to know some Latin or a derivative
language like Italian or Spanish, or you have to think about what
words in English containing "alb" (albino, albumen, albatross, albedo)
have in common, while ignoring unhelpful words like "albeit",
"balboa" and "album" (unless you know the first albums were white
tablets on which events and names were written) and be able to
isolate the common thread in meaning.
This is hard, and young children can't usually do it, plus whether in
real life it helps anyone to know that "alb" means "white" is kind of
arguable. It's not widely used to make new words, though if there is a
sudden upsurge in the need for unique URLs in the dairy, detergent
or dental industries, it might be. There's no morpheme "tross"
meaning "bird" or "fly" or "burden". So to most of us, the English
word "albatross" contains only one morpheme.
Which morphemes to teach, when?
With an overcrowded curriculum and diminishing marginal utility on
some content, teachers wanting to teach spelling in a logical,
patterned way need to decide which morphemes to teach, and in
what order.
Without a whole-school spelling/word study curriculum which knits
phoneme-grapheme correspondences (like the "ed" in "jumped" and
the "est" in "slowest") with the meanings of morphemes (like the
"ed" in "jumped" and the "est" in "slowest") there will inevitably be a
lot of doubling up, gaps, and confusion. So I'm always a bit surprised
how few schools have a whole-school spelling/word study curriculum.
An amusing video about English morphology
I found a great little YouTube video about morphology, which is a lot
funnier than the lectures I had about it as an undergraduate, if you
have a spare 7 minutes.
an introduction to morphology- youtube
Nonsense words
3 Replies
A big hoo-ha is going on in the UK because the new national literacy
test includes a test of nonsense word reading. Opponents say the
words are too hard for children, and don't mean anything.
However, this sort of testing is based both on sound logic and good
science.
Non-word reading and spelling tests explore a person's word attack
skills separately from their vocabulary. They show how well a person
can apply letter-sound patterns to new words.
When do we need word attack?
Word attack is a vital skill for readers and spellers of all ages, and we
need to use it constantly.
Books, movies, TV shows and computer games have been full of
made-up words since Jabberwocky, Heffalumps and Willy Wonka. JK
Rowling invented whole swags of them (Snape, Malfoy, quidditch,
Gryffindor), and the Simpsons are craptacular at new words.
There's a new fillum called Kath and Kimderella, Sheldon on Big Bang
Theory says "Bazinga", people play Blokus and do Sudokus, and on
TV there are loads of people with names we didn't know before, like
Poh, Devin and Miike.
People are sexting each other, wearing burquinis, supporting
Movember, suffering nomophobia and going glamping.
In my local shopping centre, there are businesses called Mosskito,
Sumos, Cellini, Frootz, Biba and Mien. The brands of things they sell
are mostly not in the dictionary, and brands are everywhere in our
homes- just thanks to the latest bout of hayfever I have Flixonase,
Rhinocort and Brauer nasal spray in the bathroom cupboard (nope,
didn't really use them, but thanks for asking).
Maps and street signs are full of new words, as are museums and
Dearm Noe
galleries. On recent visit to Gippsland, we learnt about calcite and
speleothems in Buchan, and went to Bairnsdale's Krowathunkooloong
Peopar financial Chooque Jauri Kough,
Keeping Place to find out about about the Gunai/Kurnai people.
d Pets advisors hair Gifts Podiatrist
Earlier this year on Sydney's trains I read loads of place names I
didn't know, like Tuggerah, Narara and Koolewong. Yesterday Confidently literate adults can pull these words apart into spelling
afternoon on the internet I read about the cutest little animal called patterns and apply the relevant sounds, but you probably weren't
a pika, and don't even start me on the new words that have invaded sure how to say:
every cookbook and menu taquito, edamame, soju, and dozens of
words for what my dear old dad calls "modern lettuce".
The ou in "shoup" is it like in "shout"? Or "soup"? (perhaps
Nonsense words = words we haven't met yet it's a cafe for large noisy groups?)
Think about how many more words adults know than children do.
Words that kids don't know yet are effectively nonsense words to The "ea" in "Breaf" like "leaf" (do they sell only very short
them. books?), "deaf" (audio books?) or "break"? (short
malfunctioning audio books?)
I've never had a young learner blink at being asked to read or spell
nonsense words, because from their perspective, they're doing it all The "ie" in "Prantine" like "praline" or "refine"? (bet you
the time. I tell them the test words are the names of aliens, deep-sea went for praline, anticipating Anne Hathaway in Les Mis)
monsters or games played in Biddleonia.
"ey" in "Gey" like "key" or "they"? (do a lot of GLBTI people
One of the ways children learn words and build their vocabularies is live in the area?)
by sounding them out. Once you know the main patterns, this works
most of the time, though most of us have tripped on words like "age" in "Classage" like "massage", "passage" or all jou-jou
"epitome", "hyperbole", "gazebo" and "pilates", if we read them and French, like "corsage" and "entourage"?
before we heard them.
"eo" in "Peopard" as in "people", "leopard" or two separate
What are we doing when we attack words? syllables, like "peony"?
Try this experiment on yourself. Imagine you are visiting a new
shopping centre, and read aloud these business names I just made "ear" in "Dearm" as in "dear" or "earn"? Or did you go for 2
up, listening to yourself and thinking carefully about what you're syllables, "de-arm", thinking they'd cost you an arm and a
doing: leg?
Prantine Gey
"ch" in "Chooque" as in "chips" or "chef"? "oo" as in "soon" or
Shoup Breaf fine locksmit Classage "look"? What if this business swapped names with the pet
shop?
cafe books dining hs beauty
"au" in "Jauri" as in "jaunty" or "kauri"? "i" as in "taxi" or
"Jedi"?'
 "oe" in "Noe" as in "Zoe" or "toe"? "Kough" as in "dough",
"plough", "through", "rough" or "cough"?
Literate adults know how to break these words up into syllables and
spellings, and which sounds each spelling is most likely to represent,
as though they had internalised this list. They think about other,
similarly-spelt words, and once they have a possible pronunciation,
consider meaning. Wouldn't Deed Poll have zapped Kough
pronounced "cow" by now? But maybe her parents called her "Noe"
pronounced "no" to counter the surname.
Did you think about the extent of homophobia and its impact on
business viability, the reciprocity of the pet-owner relationship, or the
main motivations of financial advisors when considering plausible
pronunciations? Reading is about letter-sound
relationships and meaning. To read well, you have to be able to do
both.
Nonsense word testing
In test situations, it's useful to separate out the letter-sound skills so
that you can see perzackly (my sister's word, which I am determined
to bring into common parlance) where learners are having problems.
Everything is a real word on the internet
By the way, I searched the internet for the business names I made
up for this blog post, and they are all in use as real, meaningful
words by someone, somewhere.
Shoup, Prantine, Dearm, Jauri and Kough are family names; Noe is a
place name; breaf and gey are slang; peopard is a pattern; classage
is a French word, and Chooque seems to be a prolific gamer's
nickname.
The gap between real and nonsense words is not wide (even "blog"
was a nonsense word 15 years ago), and we all need to be able to
read both.
Don't be scared: nonsense words are just words we haven't met yet.

Non-word reading and spelling tests can't be beat for pinpointing

how well learners can break up words into syllables and sounds,
which spelling patterns they already know, and what they still need
to learn.

Macquarie University now offers great little nonsense word tests free
on the MOTIF website. You have to sign in and promise not to misuse
them first. Some of these tests have been standardised on large
groups, so can be used to work out whether a young learner's word
attack is on track for their age.
It can be tricky for non-experts to tease out from the results of such
tests which spelling patterns a learner needs to practise, so I also
use my own tests which incorporate all the main spelling patterns
covered in this blog, match my workbooks, and which I'm putting on
this blog as fast as I can. There are also quite nice little nonword
tests here and here.
The UK Phonics Check could help reduce
teacher workloads
5 Replies

Theres an article in yesterdays Age newspaper about a proposal

from literacy expert Dr Jennifer Buckingham for compulsory use of
the UK Phonics check with Australian first grade children. Rather than
trying to paraphrase it, I encourage you to read the proposal
yourself, its in plain English and based on a behemoth of scientific
evidence.
Any teacher, school or interested person can already use the UK
Phonics Check. Its quick, free, simple, downloadable and a useful
assessment of early reading skills. Some Australian schools already
use it. Click here for the 2016 version.
The test asks children whove had about 18 months of literacy
instruction to read 20 real words like chin, queen and wishing,
plus 20 made-up words like doil, charb and barst.

Since its introduction in England in 2012, the proportion of children

passing the Phonics Check has increased each year, and the
proportion of children below the expected standard on Year 2 reading
tests has fallen by a third. The achievement gap between wealthier
and poorer students has also narrowed. Yay to that.
Of course correlation doesnt imply causation, and testing isnt
teaching. The improvement is probably largely due to the
implementation of the 2006 Communication, Language and Literacy
Development Strategy, which resourced, trained and required
teachers to teach explicit, systematic, synthetic phonics in the early
years of schooling.
However, the introduction of the Phonics Check probably helped
sharpen everyones phonics focus, as well as acting as an
accountability measure for government. If you cant measure it, you
cant manage it etc.
Theres no way to tell whether children who can read real words on a
test have memorised them as wholes or are able to sound them out.
However, made-up words, which children have never seen before,
can only be read successfully by sounding them out.
To successfully read charb a child needs to know that it contains
three graphemes/spellings, ch, ar and b, match them to the other free MOTIF tests, the PERA, the YARC or the UK Phonics Check.
relevant sounds/phonemes and blend them into a word.
Children encounter new vocabulary in books all the time, including
nonsense words like grinch and bottersnike and muggle, so types in order to work out which unscientifically-levelled books to
children who have grasped the basics of our sound-spelling system
dont blink at being asked to read nonsense words.
To make it absolutely clear which words are made-up ones on the UK
Phonics Check, each nonsense word is illustrated with a nice alien,
like these:
Most reading problems are the result of poor decoding, and nonsense
word reading tests are simply the best way to identify poor decoding
skills. Email me if youd like about a kilometre of supporting
references, or see the references in Dr Buckinghams paper.
NAPLAN starts in Year 3, way too late to identify children needing
early intervention. The running record type assessments currently
widely used in schools to assess reading skills are far too subjective,
not focussed on the things reading research tells us matter most,
based on the faulty theory of multi-cueing, and take far too long.
I wish teachers would throw these subjective, time-wasting
assessments out the window, and instead use efficient evidence-
based assessments like the Castles and Coltheart 2 (Free online!
Standardised on Australian children! Writes its own report!) and
Better assessments would immediately reduce teacher workloads. I
always want to weep when I see teachers at their desks long after
the kids have left and the cleaners are in, pointlessly evaluating error
give a child next (dont start me on levelled books for guided
reading), or rushing out the door with a bag full of running records to
work on at home.
Better assessments would mean better identification of children in
need of extra help, and of what kind of help they need. Fewer kids
would fall through the cracks, and intervention resources could be
better targeted.
However, the biggest reduction in workloads which could be
achieved with better assessments, plus better training and resources
in the early years, is for those teaching later in primary school, as
well as secondary and even tertiary educators.
The kids who dont crack the spelling code in their early years early literacy according to the best scientific evidence, and to rapidly
generate masses of extra work for other teachers downstream. and successfully identify children requiring extra help.

They misbehave to distract attention from their difficulties. Of
course. Would you want to be the naughty kid, or the dumb kid?
Because they cant participate effectively in the mainstream
curriculum, they generate huge amounts of curriculum differentiation
work for teachers.
Anyone who has worked in schools knows that there are many
conscientious teachers who put in massive amounts of extra time
outside class helping older students whose literacy skills are poor.
They come in early, stay back late and generally bust a gut trying to
either backfill basic skills that are lacking or compensate for them.
This week I was talking to a young man with serious literacy
difficulties who said he got through English in secondary school
because one of his teachers would stay back and explain the texts to
him, help him understand his homework etc. Perhaps nobody else
noticed, and certainly that teacher wasnt paid any extra. But like so
many teachers round the country, she or he was willing to go the
extra mile.
Today theres an article in The Conversation by University of
Canberra academic Misty Adoniou arguing against the
implementation of the Phonics Check, and she was also quoted in the
Guardian yesterday in an article called Researchers warn against
further use of phonics testing in schools.
In The Conversation, Adoniou writes, The phonics test has been
deemed successful because the children get better at doing it over
the course of the year, but my understanding is that most English
children only do the test once. Children in Year 2 only do it if they
didnt meet the standard in Year 1, or didnt do it before, and anyway
each year there are different words on the test.
Adoniou also disparages some UK teachers practice of teaching
children how to read made-up words. Id like to know how children
can be expected to read books like Harry Potter, Dr Seuss, Winnie the
Pooh, Lord of the Rings or Lewis Carroll if they dont have this skill.
What about Pokemon cards, road signs, menus, maps, the footy
record, train timetables, shop names and brands?

I want the proportion of children below the expected standard on

NAPLAN to fall by a third. I want the achievement gap between
wealthier and poorer students to narrow. If they can do it in the UK,
we can surely do it here.

Its sad that teacher organisations seem to view Dr Buckinghams

proposal as a criticism of teachers, rather than an idea which might
help address what literacy statistics tell us is a serious problem,
using a quick, inexpensive, evidence-based tool being used
effectively elsewhere. Its sad that they dont recognise the poor
quality of the tests currently widely used, or the amount of teacher
time they waste.

Theres nothing more anti-teacher than failing to provide early years

teachers with the training and tools they need to teach and assess
I wrote a 2012 blog post about the blurriness of the line between
real and nonsense words, if youre interested. Suffice to say that the
point of having an alphabetic code is that you can write anything you
can say. You make a new words up and write them down, just like JK
Rowling, how cool is that?
Apparently contradicting her earlier suggestion that measurable
improvements in childrens literacy in England since the introduction
of the Phonics Check are due to test practice effects, Adoniou writes
that six-year-olds in England are getting better at sounding out
individual decodable wordsWhat isnt clear is if they are getting
better at reading.
I find this baffling. Sounding out words is a part of reading. Skilled
readers do it quickly and automatically, while novice readers do it
slowly and laboriously. What Adoniou says makes about as much
sense as saying six-year-olds are improving their ability to pedal
and balance on a bike, but we dont know whether they are getting
any better at cycling.
Adonious other main arguments against the Phonics Check seem to
be:
Teachers already collect heaps of data and dont know what to
do with it all (stop requiring teachers to pointlessly collect so
much meaningless data, perhaps?)
Northern Irish children do well on the international PIRLS
reading test, and Canberra children do well on NAPLAN, yet
neither of them have a phonics-only approach to reading.
Whatever that is. Theres precisely nobody who advocates
teaching phonemic awareness and phonics without teaching
vocabulary, comprehension and fluency. How is the reading
performance of Irish or ACT children (where the Phonics Check
is not from) an argument against the Phonics Check? Also, I
dont know about Northern Ireland, but Canberra has the
second-highest income in the country, and wealthier kids tend
to do better on tests.
Phonics is only a part of reading. This is true. Everyone
agrees. Knowing the road rules is only a part of driving. Does
Adoniou propose we stop testing learner drivers road rule
knowledge?
The background to the UK Phonics Check is research done in
Scotland, which Adoniou writes was not peer-reviewed, has
been critiqued and the children from the study ultimately did
not perform any better than any other school in Scotlands
national standardised reading test in Year 7. She doesnt
name or link to this research so we can only assume she
refers to the 7-year Clackmannanshire study, luckily I have
the link here. The studys report on the Scottish government
website says, The children in Primary 7 comprehended what
they read 3.5 months above what would be expected for their
chronological age, which seems inconsistent with Adonious
statement that they were not better readers. I cant check this
out for you, because she doesnt provide a reference.
The Phonics Check is a distraction, presumably from
teaching as usual. Perhaps when we get the PIRLS 2016
results, we might all welcome a distraction.
The money would be better spent on Year Four deep
comprehension. Im trying to imagine how children in Year
Four who cant decode text very well will be able to deeply
comprehend it, however well they are taught, and I cant say
Im getting very far.
The teacher unions other, more understandable objection to the
Phonics Check is that its a distraction from the governments plan to
cut Gonski funding in 2017. Luckily those of us who care about
equity in education are not going to be so easily distracted, heres
the link to the I Give A Gonski campaign website if you havent
already seen it.