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Decoding the phonics screening check
British Educational Research Journal
Abstract
The statutory ‘phonics screening check’ was introduced in 2012 and reflects the current emphasis in England on teaching early reading through systematic synthetic phonics. The check is intended to assess children's phonic abilities and their knowledge of 85 grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) through decoding 20 real words and 20 pseudo words. Since the national rollout, little attention has been devoted to the content of the checks. The current paper, therefore, reviews the first three years of the check between 2012 and 2014 to examine how the 85 specified GPCs have been assessed and whether children are only using decoding skills to read the words. The analysis found that out of the 85 GPCs considered testable by the check, just 15 GPCs accounted for 67% of all GPC occurrences, with 27 of the 85 specified GPCs (31.8%) not appearing at all. Where a grapheme represented more than one phoneme, the most frequently occurring pronunciation was assessed in 72.2% of cases, with vocabulary knowledge being required to determine the correct pronunciation within real words where multiple pronunciations were possible. The GPCs assessed, therefore, do not reflect the full range of GPCs that it is expected will be taught within a systematic synthetic phonics approach. Furthermore, children's ability to decode real words is dependent on their vocabulary knowledge, not just their phonic skills. These results question the purpose and validity of the phonics screening check and the role of synthetic phonics for teaching early reading.
... It could be argued that the focus on phonics and decoding is having a detrimental impact on the wider reading skills of approximately 25% of 7 year olds. Darnell et al. (2017) analysed the content of the PSC over the first 3 years between 2012 and 2014 and found that a small number of GPCs accounted for the majority of GPCs assessed. Their analysis showed that just 15 GPCs accounted for 67% of all GPC occurrences, with 27 of the 85 specified GPCs (31.8%) not appearing at all. ...
... One possible interpretation of the data relates to what pupils were taught in Year 2, after failing the PSC in Year 1, compared to those that passed. It may be that teachers in their efforts to ensure that the Year 2 pupils passed the PSC, devoted an inordinate amount of time to teaching all the GPCs that could have been assessed, many of which rarely occur on the PSC (Darnell et al., 2017). ...
There have been few areas in England over the last 50 years where government has drawn more heavily on research to inform policy and practice than in the area of teaching reading. The focus of this article is an analysis of the research and evidence on early reading, in particular the role of phonics, on which government policy in England and the practice it promotes, are based. The article has three parts. The first examines the major policy initiatives in teaching reading from the Plowden Report in 1967 to the present day and provides an overview of their implications for practice. It highlights the tensions between opposing sides in the ‘reading wars’ between those prioritising phonics first, fast and only, versus those promoting a whole language approach to teaching reading. The second examines the evidence on which the government has drawn and the way in which teaching reading has become increasingly politicised in England to promote specific practices, some of which, but not all, are underpinned by research. Part 3 introduces instructional psychology that provides an alternative perspective on teaching phonics, whole language and the reading wars. The approaches to teaching reading generated by instructional psychology will be summarised and research presented to demonstrate how, despite the rhetoric surrounding the positive impact of current government policy on teaching reading, it is potentially a major cause of reading difficulties. Part 3 ends by highlighting the implications of instructional psychology for future policy and practice.
... The reader is entirely reliant upon their understanding of the letter-sound relationships (the alphabetic principle) and the precepts that govern those relationships. The inclusion, therefore, of real words in the check is counterintuitive and undermines its validity (Darnell et al., 2017). The check should consist entirely of pseudowords. ...
... More worrying, according to Darnell et al. (2017) is the restricted content of the test which enables many children to reach the threshold by exhibiting only partial code knowledge. This, of itself, would not be an issue, but with many schools ceasing phonics instruction after children have reached the threshold, the prospect of code mastery becomes uncertain. ...
By taking sides in the long-running ‘Reading Wars’ and terminating the existing model of early reading instruction with extreme prejudice, Michael Gove took one of the boldest, most contentious, unpopular and far-reaching decisions of his tenure as Education Secretary. This paper investigates the history, the battle lines, the weaponry and, if, indeed, he won the war, whether it resulted in more children in England being able to read. The results suggest that this, rather than his changes to curriculum and assessment, may be his greatest legacy.
... A sequence of policy documents and mandates issued by successive Conservative administrations have emphasised the dominant role phonics instruction is expected to play in the early stages of learning to read (Solity, 2020). Mandates include a phonics screening check, itself less a diagnostic assessment instrument than a teacher accountability measure (Darnell et al., 2017); and an injunction to schools to use programmes linked to decodable texts, limiting the vocabulary to the phoneme-grapheme correspondences that have been explicitly taught (Price-Mohr and Price, 2019). ...
... Students, that could not pass the evaluation on their first try, underwent the test next year, for the second time (Darnell et al., 2017). According to a study published in 2019, if the students who did not pass the evaluation on their first try, receive sufficient support (specific interventions aimed at improving phonological skills), they will show the same results 4 years later, as those students who successfully passed the test first time. ...
Reading as a skill is divided into many subskills, which take almost entire early childhood to develop. Children go through stages of getting comprehension of phonemes and grammar structure until they can connect letters to sounds and read without problems. Learning how to read in second language is usually harder because of new sets of phonemes and differences in alphabet. On the other hand, learning how to read Georgian Language might be easier than most other languages. Georgian Language has 33 phonemes and 33 letters of alphabet, which directly correspond to each other. Reading is straightforward due to no differences between what is written and how it should be pronounced. The article will be covering how reading skill develops in children and how these aspects might be connected to learning to read Georgian.
... The utility of a decoding test like the PSC lies in that it is a relatively quick way of identifying underlying decoding difficulties. There are concerns about the validity and value of the PSC (Darnell, Solity, & Wall, 2017) but it is not dissimilar to other tests used to screen for literacy difficulties. While many are concerned about the high stakes nature of test (see Clarke & Glazzard, 2018), we argue that this critique relates to how the test results are used to inform policy on instruction and intervention. ...
The purpose of this research was to analyze the performance of pupils (N = 6,023) who took part in Reading Recovery (RR) in England on a decoding test, the Phonics Screening Check (PSC), administered at the end of Year 1 when children are approximately 5 to 6 years of age. The data cover two academic years (2015/2016 and 2016/2017) and include demographic information, pre- and post-intervention achievement test scores and PSC results. Descriptive statistics and linear regression modeling (using a linear spline specification for timing) were used. Results indicated that pupils who had an RR intervention before the PSC performed better than peers who had the intervention during or after the PSC. There was a positive and statistically significant increase in PSC performance among those whose RR intervention began earlier relative to the PSC.
... Likewise, there were several studies that corroborated the efficiency of SP to reading in other countries (Loong & Aziz, 2019;Mustapha, 2019;Rong & Lee, 2020). Nevertheless, there are still doubts whether the universal adoption of this method can lead to success in reading and emergent writing skills (Darnell et al., 2017;Wyse & Goswami, 2008). ...
Reading and writing in English from early ages is both a need and a must. The search of an effective learning methodology to teach early literacy has made the application of the Synthetic Phonics method to expand, regardless of the lack of agreement concerning its results. This study is aimed at showing whether this method is effective or not in bilingual educational centres of Madrid (Spain), focussing on the written skills of 640 students, aged 8-9. The errors committed in a 15-frequenly-used-word dictation have been classified according to Corder’s taxonomy. The non-parametric statistic results show that there are differences in the errors made by the students without specific method instruction (less errors) compared to those students with Synthetic Phonics instruction. However, these differences have lower level of association and do not indicate a relevant direction. Therefore, it could be concluded that Synthetic Phonics does not seem to guarantee an efficient learning of spelling for the Spanish students. There is a need to adapt the Synthetic Phonics method for learners from bilingual schools, as well as to investigate the efficiency of other methodologies to teach writing in English at early stages of literacy.
... Students, that could not pass the evaluation on their first try, underwent the test next year, for the second time (Darnell et al., 2017). According to a study published in 2019, if the students who did not pass the evaluation on their first try, receive sufficient support (specific interventions aimed at improving phonological skills), they will show the same results 4 years later, as those students who successfully passed the test first time. ...
Reading as a skill is divided into many subskills, which take almost entire early childhood to develop. Children go through stages of getting comprehension of phonemes and grammar structure until they can connect letters to sounds and read without problems. Learning how to read in second language is usually harder because of new sets of phonemes and differences in alphabet. On the other hand, learning how to read Georgian Language might be easier than most other languages. Georgian Language has 33 phonemes and 33 letters of alphabet, which directly correspond to each other. Reading is straightforward due to no differences between what is written and how it should be pronounced. The article will be covering how reading skill develops in children and how these aspects might be connected to learning to read Georgian.
... Nationally (Gewertz, 2020) and internationally (e.g., Wyse & Bradbury, 2022), teachers are increasingly required to adhere to specific reading programs or curricula with an emphasis on explicit phonics, in spite of widespread questioning of such mandates. Torgenson et al. (2019) described a decades-long governmental push in England to require synthetic phonics instruction and phonics screenings for early learners and the ongoing concern (e.g., Darnell et al., 2017) over the efficacy of such an approach. In the United States, mandates spawned by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, in the form of Reading First subgrants awarded to 1,809 school districts, required instructional focus on phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension (Gamse et al., 2008). ...
Increasingly alarmed by instructional mandates more founded on journalistic rhetoric and popular opinion than on research findings or practitioner expertise, researchers gathered survey data from teachers to better understand the status of K–2 phonics instruction. Data demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of these K–2 teachers teach phonics, rely on a published curriculum, and teach phonics in systematic and explicit ways. These findings contradict media assertions that reading classrooms are largely devoid of phonics instruction and that teachers fail to include phonics as an important element of their reading instruction. Implications include calls for researchers to explore what teachers can share that helps us better understand what happens in the name of classroom phonics instruction and for decision makers to assume an informed stance before mandating instructional practices based on a narrow understanding of the needs of young readers and the teachers who support them.
... each pseudo word in the PSC. The selection of words is also an area of contention and explored by Darnell et al (2017) in some detail. There have been a range of voices that have criticised the Check from its introduction (United Kingdom Literacy Association, 2012;Moss, 2017;Clark, 2018;) with concerns raised about the test's fitness for purpose i.e. as a test of early reading skills; effectiveness in its identification of children in need of additional reading support and its appropriateness for all children, in particular children with English as an additional language and the more able reader (Davis, 2013). ...
The Phonics Screening Check (PSC) was introduced in England in 2012 for Year 1 children (aged 5 and 6). There have been criticisms of the check in relation to its reliability and appropriateness as an assessment for early reading, although advocates of the check see it as a valuable tool in securing progress in early reading. This mixed methods study sought to evaluate the intended and possible unintended consequences of the PSC, foregrounding the voices of children and their teachers. This article reports on findings from the teachers’ data. The study focused initially on questionnaire data from 14 schools (59 teachers) selected for their diversity in relation to attainment data (PSC and reading) and socio‐economic status. Focus groups in seven of the schools (25 teachers) enabled a more in‐depth exploration of teachers’ views and practices in relation to the PSC. The study identified the ‘negative backwash’ of assessment. The PSC was seen as an end in itself, rather than a way of securing progress in one of the skills of reading. It found that, the assessment had become the curriculum, to the detriment of specific groups of learners (higher‐attaining readers and children with English as an Additional Language). Teachers were found to use the assessment processes of the PSC as objectives for teaching rather than using them as the tools of assessment.
... The increased public and research acknowledgement of the importance of early phonics education prompted the English government to introduce a compulsory phonics check for state schools in 2012. The introduction of the phonics check was an extension of the English government's push for teachers to focus on systematic synthetic phonics instruction and was seen as a way to ensure schools had a rigorous phonics programme in place (Darnell et al., 2017). In the phonics check, the child is assessed independently by their teacher and asked to read aloud 20 words and 20 pseudowords. ...
The role of phonics instruction in early reading development has been the subject of significant conjecture. Recently, England implemented a phonics screening check to assess the phonetic decoding of 6‐year‐old students, to ensure that all students master this foundational literacy skill and attain adequate phonemic awareness in the early years of primary schooling. Students who fail this check are obliged to retake the assessment the following year. In this article, we compare the performance of students who initially pass this check (pass) and students who fail the original assessment but pass the retaken assessment (fail–pass), with students who fail both the original and retaken assessments (fail–fail). Using data from the Key Stage 1 assessment of reading and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), we examined the reading comprehension performance of these students approximately 1 and 4 years after their first phonics screening. The results suggested that fail–pass students performed substantially better than fail–fail students, even after performance on the initial phonics check was controlled for. While fail–pass students do not appear to entirely catch up with pass students in reading comprehension, their relatively better performance underscores the importance of intervening for those students who are identified as having problems with phonetic decoding to increase their likelihood of success at reading comprehension in later schooling.
... 'Ability' is a contested term, as I discuss later in the article, but for ease of reading I refrain from putting it in quote marks from this point onwards. 2 Ruth Miskin was one of the four 'phonics experts' who designed the PSC(Darnell et al., 2017).3 The National Education Union is the largest teachers' union in the UK, with over 450,000 teachers as members. ...
This article examines the impact of a statutory assessment in England, the Phonics Screening Check (PSC), on classroom practices of grouping children by ‘ability’. Bearing in mind the argument that assessment is the rudder that steers the otherwise slow‐moving battleship of educational practice, it is argued that the PSC has altered how teachers organise their classes and curriculum in both the affected year group (Year 1, children aged 5–6) and in earlier and later years. Using data from a nationwide survey of teachers (n = 1,373), focus groups and in‐depth interviews with teachers, the article examines how this relatively new phonics assessment forms part of a ‘policy storm’ of pressures relating to accountability, which encourage teachers to place children in groups on the basis of ability, even when they have doubts about this practice and there is little evidence to suggest grouping improves attainment. Practices include grouping children within classes, across year groups or even across several year groups, by phase of phonics learning, guided by advice from bought‐in private phonics schemes. There is also evidence of ‘educational triage’, where borderline children become the focus, and increased use of interventions which involve withdrawing children. Overall, the article uses the PSC to demonstrate how, in times of multiple policy pressures, assessment can rapidly alter practice, in this case making grouping a ‘necessary evil’, as one teacher respondent argued.
... Children who score below the 'threshold' or pass mark (32 correct out of 40) receive extra instruction during Year 2, and at the end of that year are re-tested; most pass on this second attempt, but some do not, and are not re-tested again in Year 3; nor is there (apparently) any further centrally directed support for them. The test continues in force despite vocal opposition and a detailed analysis (Darnell, Solity, and Wall 2017) showing that some items require word knowledge in addition to ability to use GPCs, and that some GPCs listed in the government's specification are not in fact tested. ...
Ten years after publication of two reviews of the evidence on phonics, a number of British policy initiatives have firmly embedded phonics in the curriculum for early reading development. However, uncertainty about the most effective approaches to teaching reading remains. A definitive trial comparing different approaches was recommended in 2006, but never undertaken. However, since then, a number of systematic reviews of the international evidence have been undertaken, but to date they have not been systematically located, synthesised and quality appraised. This paper seeks to redress that gap in the literature. It outlines in detail the reading policy development, mainly in England, but with reference to international developments, in the last 10 years. It then reports the design and results of a systematic ‘tertiary’ review of all the relevant systematic reviews and meta-analyses in order to provide the most up-to-date overview of the results and quality of the research on phonics.
A growing body of literature recognises the complexity of English literacy. It is well established that Phonics plays a pivotal role in its instruction, despite some uncertainty with regards to the degree to which practitioners should resort exclusively to the synthetic Phonics methodology and materials. This paper seeks to explore the Spanish academics' contribution to the existing research. The hypothesis established theorises that research in Spain lags behind investigations worldwide, since these began earlier, so there is a tendency to adhere to that worldwide predisposition. Findings suggest that the scarce research conducted thus far in Spain positively contributes to our understanding of the most suitable pedagogy of English literacy in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) environments. Similarly, the results endorse the need to adapt Phonics to non-native speakers. As a conclusion, considerably more work is needed, as many aspects remain to be elucidated of the appropriateness of Phonics within the idiosyncrasy of the Spanish educational system.
Australian Indigenous students’ literacy learning outcomes have continuously fallen behind national standards despite constant efforts and resources invested in education to minimise the gap. A variety of teaching pedagogies and programs have been introduced in schools with the aim of improving the academic performance of Indigenous students. Unfortunately, the invested resources and efforts have not paid off as Indigenous students’ learning, especially their literacy outcomes, are still well below achievement standards. This chapter reveals detailed and exact learning challenges that Indigenous students face during reading performance. It serves as baseline data for the explanation in Chapter 6 of the connectivity between the reading challenges and the culture-related factors and what role culture plays in shaping the way Indigenous students think, learn and communicate. It is my obligation as a researcher to investigate the issue holistically to identify intersectionality among factors and challenges in order to assist stakeholders and the public to gain an in-depth understanding of Indigenous culture and how the culture impacts students’ learning. These evidence-based findings will assist policy makers to target the areas that need to be reformed to provide the most appropriate education for Indigenous students, thus lifting their overall learning outcomes.KeywordsLiteracy learning outcomesIndigenous cultureReading challenges
We describe the rationale for‐ and content of‐ a freely available, novel, theoretically driven and evidence‐based approach to improving the teaching of word reading in reception classrooms called ‘Flexible Phonics’. Flexible Phonics (FP) adds measurable value to‐, rather than wholly replacing, existing synthetic phonics programmes. The rationale underpinning the FP approach concerns the need for multi‐componential, maximally efficient, and truly generative approaches to allow early independence in reading for all children that apply to all words in the opaque spelling system of English. Building from these three principles, contemporary reading theory and evidence from cognitive science, linguistics and scaled educational implementation research, FP embodies a 5‐element intervention differentiated to children's current attainment levels. FP augments mandated synthetic phonics through use of quality real books allowing ‘Direct Mapping’ of taught grapheme‐phoneme correspondences, targeted oral vocabulary teaching, strategy‐instruction on ‘Set‐for‐Variability’ and targeted preventative intervention for the most at‐risk readers to then access wider FP content. Implications for policy and enhanced professional practice in English schools are considered.
The teaching of reading has been a source of contentious debate for many years. Margaret Meek Spencer contributed her passion for the importance of specific texts to help children learn to read. In addition to the kinds of texts to be used, important aspects of the debateimportant aspects of the debate include the relationship between national curriculum policies and robust research evidence about what works in teaching reading This paper notes a historical trend in government policy that has included England's Department for Education in England’s strengthening its control of the curriculum and pedagogy for teaching reading in ways which run contrary to many of Meek Spencer’s arguments. The paper examines the use of statutory assessment, particularly a Phonics Screening Check, its influence on pedagogy and links with the politics of reading. We conclude that policy needs to be reformed to better reflect robust research evidence.
Teaching children to read is one of the most fundamental goals of early years and primary education worldwide, and as such has attracted a large amount of research from a range of academic disciplines. The aims of this paper are: (a) to provide a new critical examination of research evidence relevant to effective teaching of phonics and reading in the context of national curricula internationally; (b) to report new empirical findings relating to phonics teaching in England; and (c) examine some implications for policy and practice. The paper reports new empirical findings from two sources: (1) a systematic qualitative meta‐synthesis of 55 experimental trials that included longitudinal designs; (2) a survey of 2205 teachers. The paper concludes that phonics and reading teaching in primary schools in England has changed significantly for the first time in modern history, and that compared to other English dominant regions England represents an outlier. The most robust research evidence, from randomised control trials with longitudinal designs, shows that the approach to phonics and reading teaching in England is not sufficiently underpinned by research evidence. It is recommended that national curriculum policy is changed and that the locus of political control over curriculum, pedagogy and assessment should be re‐evaluated. The video abstract for this article is available at https://youtu.be/bJImJ79JKNI.
Context and implications
Rationale for this study
Teaching children to read is one of the most important elements of primary education because it is fundamental to children's educational development. For this reason it is vital that the teaching of reading, and curriculum policies on reading, are informed by robust research.
Why the new findings matter
If children are not being taught to read in the most appropriate way, because curriculum policy and teaching practices are not informed sufficiently by robust research evidence, then children's education will not be as effective as it should be.
Implications for practitioners, policy makers, researchers
The outcomes of the survey of teachers in England, and the new analysis of systematic reviews and meta analyses, and randomised controlled trials with longitudinal designs, reported in the paper show the need for changes to the teaching of reading and to national curriculum policy on the teaching of reading.
The teaching of phonics and reading in curriculum policy and practice should more closely reflect the evidence that contextualised teaching of reading, or balanced instruction, is the most effective way to teach reading.
Learning about being a reader is more than teaching phonics. A pilot study of shared picture book reading in early childhood education as a means to support young children in developing a broader understanding of literacy, in addition to phonics and phonological awareness, is discussed. The Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO) (Pre‐K) tool was administered in six early childhood contexts, revealing a range of strengths and weaknesses in classrooms observed. There was little evidence of picture book reading playing an integral part of the early childhood literacy programs. Shared reading activities were absent in some contexts. In others, books were selected on the basis of length or a phonics focus. In an era of phonics first, this article is a timely reminder that shared reading of quality children’s literature can support development of a range of reading strategies including phonics while developing a joy for reading.
When determining whether or not children have a difficulty in learning, the quality of instruction they have received during their school career must be excluded as a possible explanation for their lack of progress. To this end, educational psychologists (EPs) have for some time adopted a model of response to intervention known as assessment-through-teaching (ATT). This article describes an ATT intervention with three low achieving Year 4 students within a single primary school in the UK. Learning outcomes were monitored during a six-week half-term and views of both students and teachers on the intervention were investigated. The intervention group improved their performance in reading accuracy compared to the comparison group, whereas both groups performed less well on post-intervention scores of reading comprehension and motivation, although the decline in the performance of the intervention group was less than the comparison group. Both teacher and student views were positive about the intervention.
The phonics screening check (PSC) was introduced in England in 2012 for children in Year 1. There have been criticisms in relation to its reliability and appropriateness as an assessment tool for early reading although supporters of the PSC see it as a valuable tool in securing progress in reading. The DfE‐funded evaluation concluded, however, that it “did not find any evidence of improvements in pupils' literacy performance, or in progress, that could be clearly attributed to the introduction of the PSC”. This article reports some of the findings from a doctoral study that sought to illuminate the voices of those most affected by the PSC: children in Year 1 and their teachers. The study used an illuminative evaluation methodology (Kushner, 2017) and focused on a range of schools in a large city, selected for their diversity in relation to attainment data (PSC and reading) and socio‐economic status. The findings demonstrate the negative backwash from the assessment process which has influenced the way that phonics is taught and so raises some questions for teachers and policy‐makers about the approach to the teaching of early reading in the light of the PSC.
Background:
Synthetic phonics is the widely accepted approach for teaching reading in English: Children are taught to sound out the letters in a word then blend these sounds together.
Aims:
We compared the impact of two synthetic phonics programmes on early reading.
Sample:
Children received Letters and Sounds (L&S; 7 schools) which teaches multiple letter-sound mappings or Early Reading Research (ERR; 10 schools) which teaches only the most consistent mappings plus frequent words by sight.
Method:
We measured phonological awareness (PA) and reading from school entry to the end of the second (all schools) or third school year (4 ERR, 3 L&S schools).
Results:
Phonological awareness was significantly related to all reading measures for the whole sample. However, there was a closer relationship between PA and exception word reading for children receiving the L&S programme. The programmes were equally effective overall, but their impact on reading significantly interacted with school-entry PA: Children with poor PA at school entry achieved higher reading attainments under ERR (significant group difference on exception word reading at the end of the first year), whereas children with good PA performed equally well under either programme.
Conclusions:
The more intensive phonics programme (L&S) heightened the association between PA and exception word reading. Although the programmes were equally effective for most children, results indicate potential benefits of ERR for children with poor PA. We suggest that phonics programmes could be simplified to teach only the most consistent mappings plus frequent words by sight.
The simple view of reading describes reading comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension and the relative contribution of each to reading comprehension across development. We present a cross-sectional analysis of first, second, and third graders (N = 123–125 in each grade) to assess the adequacy of the basic model. Participants completed multiple measures to inform latent constructs of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. In line with previous research, structural equation models confirmed that the influence of decoding skill decreased with increasing grade and that the influence of listening comprehension increased. However, several additional findings indicate that reading development is not that simple and support an elaboration of the basic model: A strong influence of listening comprehension on reading comprehension was apparent by grade 2, decoding skill was best measured by word and nonword reading accuracy in the early grades and word reading fluency in grade 3, and vocabulary skills indirectly affected reading comprehension through both decoding skill and listening comprehension. This new elaborated model, which provides a more comprehensive view of critical influences on reading in the early grades, has diagnostic and instructional ramifications for improving reading pedagogy.
Following the election of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat UK coalition Government in 2010, there has been an urgent intensification and focus upon early years numeracy and literacy and promoting systematic synthetic phonics. This paper argues that the current narrowing of early years assessment, along with increased inspection and surveillance, operates as a policy technology leading to an intensification of ‘school readiness’ pressures upon the earliest stage of education. The paper suggests that this governance has encouraged a functional ‘datafication’ of early years pedagogy so that early years teacher’s work is increasingly constrained by performativity demands to produce ‘appropriate’ data. The article argues that early years high-stakes national assessments act as a ‘meta-policy’, ‘steering’ early years pedagogy ‘from a distance’ and have the power to challenge, disrupt and constrain early years teacher’s deeply held child-centred pedagogical values.
Background
Introduced in June 2012, the phonics screening check aims to assess whether 6-year-old children are meeting an appropriate standard in phonic decoding and to identify children struggling with phonic skills.AimsWe investigated whether the check is a valid measure of phonic skill and is sensitive in identifying children at risk of reading difficulties.SampleWe obtained teacher assessments of phonic skills for 292 six-year-old children and additional psychometric data for 160 of these children.Methods
Teacher assessment data were accessed from schools via the local authority; psychometric tests were administered by researchers shortly after the phonics screening check.ResultsThe check was strongly correlated with other literacy skills and was sensitive in identifying at-risk readers. So too were teacher judgements of phonics.Conclusions
Although the check fulfils its aims, we argue that resources might be better focused on training and supporting teachers in their ongoing monitoring of phonics.
In England, current government policy on children's reading is strongly prescriptive, insisting on the delivery of a pure and exclusive form of synthetic phonics, where letter sounds are learned and blended in order to ‘read’ text. A universally imposed phonics ‘check’ is taken by all five year olds and the results are widely reported.
These policies are underpinned by the claim that research has shown systematic synthetic phonics to be the most effective way of teaching children to read. Andrew Davis argues that there is a basic problem with this claim. Whatever it is that empirical researchers take themselves to be doing when they investigate synthetic phonics, they are not investigating a specifiable method of teaching reading. This is for two reasons. First, there are no such things as specifiable methods of teaching. Teaching is a vastly complex human activity involving contextual and reactive practical judgments that are responsive to the myriad contingencies of classroom life. The idea that teachers might proceed by way of prescribed methods rather than practical judgments is simply a fantasy.
Second, teaching children to correlate letter combinations with sounds, and to blend sounds into sequences, is not teaching them to read. Reading is a matter of grasping meaning conveyed by text. While sustained attention to letter-sound correspondences can be helpful to some novice readers, we should neither assume that it is helpful to all nor confuse mastery of such correspondences with the ability to read.
Davis's challenge to government policy on the teaching of reading, and to the empirical research that supposedly underpins it, is timely, radical and compelling. The zeal with which synthetic phonics is championed by its advocates has been remarkably effective in pushing it to the top of the educational agenda; but we should not mistake zeal for warrant.
The lexical quality hypothesis (LQH) claims that variation in the quality of word representations has consequences for reading skill, including comprehension. High lexical quality includes well-specified and partly redundant representations of form (orthography and phonology) and flexible representations of meaning, allowing for rapid and reliable meaning retrieval. Low-quality representations lead to specific word-related problems in comprehension. Six lines of research on adult readers demonstrate some of the implications of the LQH. First, large-scale correlational results show the general interdependence of comprehension and lexical skill while identifying disassociations that allow focus on comprehension-specific skill. Second, word-level semantic processing studies show comprehension skill differences in the time course of form-meaning confusions. Studies of rare vocabulary learning using event-related potentials (ERPs) show that, third, skilled comprehenders learn new words more effectively and show stronger ERP indicators for memory of the word learning event and, fourth, suggest skill differences in the stability of orthographic representations. Fifth, ERP markers show comprehension skill differences in meaning processing of ordinary words. Finally, in text reading, ERP results demonstrate momentary difficulties for low-skill comprehenders in integrating a word with the prior text. The studies provide evidence that word-level knowledge has consequences for word meaning processes in comprehension.
A review of the teaching of early reading in England commissioned by the UK Government recommended that synthetic phonics should be the preferred approach for young English learners. In response, all English schools have been told to put in place a discrete synthetic phonics programme as the key means for teaching high‐quality phonic work. In this paper we analyse the evidence presented by the review to support the change to synthetic phonics. We show that the review provided no reliable empirical evidence that synthetic phonics offers the vast majority of beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers. We analyse the available empirical evidence in English, and show instead that the data support approaches based on systematic tuition in phonics. There is also evidence that contextualised systematic phonics instruction is effective. However, more research is needed, particularly with typically developing readers, in order to determine whether contextualised systematic phonics is more effective than discrete systematic phonics.
A fiercely contested debate in teaching reading concerns the respective roles and merits of reading schemes and real books. Underpinning the controversy are different philosophies and beliefs about how children learn to read. However, to some extent debates have largely been rhetoric‐driven, rather than research‐driven. This article provides a theoretical perspective derived from instructional psychology and explores the assumptions that have been made about the use of real books and reading schemes, which have tended to polarise arguments about their respective strengths and limitations. It analyses the structures of adult literature, children’s real books, and reading schemes, and examines the demands that they make on children’s sight vocabulary and phonic skills. The critical high‐frequency words and grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) are identified that will enable children to read the majority of phonically regular and irregular words that they encounter which, perhaps surprisingly, occur more often in real books than structured reading schemes. Learning additional sight words or GPCs is of limited value due to their relatively low occurrence in written English and, thus, potentially minimal impact on children’s reading. Finally, the implications of this research for teaching reading are considered, particularly the complementary roles of real books and teaching methods derived from instructional psychology. In the past they have been viewed as diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive.
The Rose Report, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Education for England, recommended in March 2006 that early reading instruction must include synthetic phonics. This paper evaluates the extent to which research evidence supports this recommendation. In particular, a review of international research into the teaching of early reading shows that the Rose Report's main recommendation on synthetic phonics contradicts the powerful body of evidence accumulated over the last 30 years. In this paper it is argued that action already taken by the UK government to change the National Curriculum in line with the Rose Report's recommendations represents a change in pedagogy not justified by research.
A simple view of reading was outlined that consisted of two components, decoding and linguistic comprehension, both held to be necessary for skilled reading. Three predictions drawn from the simple view were assessed in a longitudinal sample of English-Spanish bilingual children in first through fourth grade. The results supported each prediction: (a) The linear combination of decoding and listening comprehension made substantial contributions toward explaining variation in reading comprehension, but the estimates were significantly improved by inclusion of the product of the two components; (b) the correlations between decoding and listening comprehension tended to become negative as samples were successively restricted to less skilled readers; and (c) the pattern of linear relationships between listening and reading comprehension for increasing levels of decoding skill revealed constant intercept values of zero and positive slope values increasing in magnitude. These results support the view that skill in reading can be simply characterized as the product of skill in decoding and linguistic comprehension. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the simple view for the practice of reading instruction, the definition of reading disability, and the notion of literacy.
A computational analysis of a large British English database was performed and frequencies occurrence of grapheme-phoneme correspondences were obtained. A computer program was implemented, which used these frequencies to predict the probabilities of all possible pronunciations of any given string of graphemes. These results led to a proposal for a quantitative method of measurement of the orthographic depth of different languages.
Within alphabetic languages, spelling-to-sound consistency can differ dramatically. For example, English and German are very similar in their phonological and orthographic structure but not in their consistency. In English the letter a is pronounced differently in the words bank, ball, and park, whereas in German the letter a always has the same pronunciation (e.g., Ball, Park, Bank). It is often argued that reading acquisition has a reciprocal effect on phonological awareness. As reading is acquired, therefore, spoken language representation may be affected differently for English and German children. Prior to literacy acquisition, however, phonological representation in English and German children should be similar due to the similar phonological structure of the two languages. We explored this hypothesis by comparing phonological awareness at the rime and phoneme levels in prereaders and beginning readers in English and German. Similar developmental effects were indeed observed in prereaders, but differential effects had emerged within the first year of reading instruction.
The simple view of reading describes reading comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension and the relative contribution of each to reading comprehension across development. We present a cross-sectional analysis of first, second, and third graders (N = 123–125 in each grade) to assess the adequacy of the basic model. Participants completed multiple measures to inform latent constructs of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. In line with previous research, structural equation models confirmed that the influence of decoding skill decreased with increasing grade and that the influence of listening comprehension increased. However, several additional findings indicate that reading development is not that simple and support an elaboration of the basic model: A strong influence of listening comprehension on reading comprehension was apparent by grade 2, decoding skill was best measured by word and nonword reading accuracy in the early grades and word reading fluency in grade 3, and vocabulary skills indirectly affected reading comprehension through both decoding skill and listening comprehension. This new elaborated model, which provides a more comprehensive view of critical influences on reading in the early grades, has diagnostic and instructional ramifications for improving reading pedagogy. 阅读的简单观念描述阅读理解为单词解码和聆听理解这两个成分的相乘组合,而每个成分对阅读理解的相对贡献跨越发展阶段。为评估这基本模型的适当性,本文作者提供一个对小学一、二和三年级学生(各级人数为123-125名)的横向研究分析报告。研究参与者完成了多项测验,以厘定单词朗读准确性、单词朗读流畅度、聆听理解、阅读理解和词汇等五个潜在构念的变数。结果与先前研究相一致,结构方程式模型证实字词解码的影响力随年级晋升而减少,聆听理解的影响力则随之而增加。但本研究的另外几个结果亦显示,阅读发展并不是这样简单,因而支持一个较详细阐述的基本模型:就二年级学生而言,聆听理解对阅读理解的强烈影响是明显的;就低年级学生而言,有意义和无意义单词阅读准确性是测定单词解码的最佳方法;就三年级学生而言,单词朗读流畅度却是测定单词解码的最佳方法;词汇是通过单词解码和聆听理解而间接影响阅读理解。这个新的而经详细阐述的基本模型,对研究低年级阅读能力的关键影响提供一个较全面的观点,并在改进阅读教学方面具有诊断方法和教学方法的影响力。 La perspectiva simple de la lectura describe la comprensión lectora como producto del desciframiento y la comprensión auditiva y la contribución relativa de cada uno a la comprensión lectora a través de su evolución. Primero presentamos un análisis representativo de primer, segundo y tercer grados (N = 123-125 en cada grupo) para evaluar lo apropiado del modelo básico. Los participantes completaron múltiples medidas para informar constructos latentes de la precisión lectora de las palabras, la fluidez de la lectura de la palabra, la comprensión oral, la comprensión lectora, y el vocabulario. Al igual que en investigaciones previas, los modelos de ecuaciones estructurales confirmaron que la influencia de la habilidad de descifrar se reducía a medida que subían de grado y que la influencia de la comprensión oral incrementaba. Sin embargo, varios resultados adicionales indican que el desarrollo de la lectura no es tan simple y apoyan una elaboración del modelo básico: Una influencia grande por parte de la comprensión oral en la comprensión lectora era aparente ya en el segundo grado, la habilidad de descifrar se podía medir mejor por medio de la precisión lectora de palabras y hápax en los grados menores y la fluidez lectora en el tercer grado, y la habilidad de aprender vocabulario afectaba indirectamente la comprensión lectora tanto por medio de la habilidad de descifrar como de la comprensión oral. Este nuevo modelo elaborado, el cual provee una perspectiva más amplia de influencias importantes en la lectura en los primeros grados, tiene ramificaciones diagnósticas y didácticas para el mejoramiento de la pedagogía de la lectura. إن النظرة البسيطة للقراءة تصف استيعاب القراة منتجاً لحل الرموز واستيعاب الاستماع والمساهمة النسبية لكليهما في استيعاب القراءة عبر التنمية. ونقدم ها هنا تحليلاً مقطعياً للطلاب في الصف الأول والثاني والثالث (عددهم = 123-125 في كل صف) كي نقيم صلاحية النموذج الأساسي. لقد أخذ المشتركون عدة امتحانات للإفادة بتراكيب باطنة في دقة قراءة الكلام وطلاقة قراءة الكلام واستيعاب الاستماع واستيعاب القراءة والمفردات. وتماشياً مع أبحاث سابقة، أكدت نماذج معادلة هيكلية أن تأثير مهارة حل الرمول تناقص مع التقدم في الصفوف وأن تأثير استيعاب الاستماع ازداد. بيد أن بضع نتائج إضافية تشير إلى أن تنمية القراءة ليست سهلة إلى هذه الدرجة وتدعو لتوسيع النموذج الأساسي: اتضح تأثير قوي لاستيعاب الاستماع على استيعاب القراءة عند الصف الثاني، ويتم أفضل تقييم لحل الرموز في دقة قراءة الكلام الحقيقي والكلام الوهمي في الصفوف المبكرة وطلاقة قراءة الكلام في الصف الثالث، ومهارات المفردات أثرت على استيعاب القراءة تأثيراً غير مباشر في مهارة حل الرموز واستيعاب الاستماع. وهذا النموذج الموسع الذي يوفر نظرة أكثر شمولاً لتأثيرات نقدية على القراءة في الصفوف المبكرة له نتائج تشخيصية وتعليمية من أجل تحسين تعليم القراءة. Пpocтoe пpeдcтaвлeниe o чтeнии oпиcывaeт пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo кaк пpoдyкт yмeния дeкoдиpoвaть и вocпpинимaть тeкcт нa cлyx. Cчитaeтcя, чтo имeннo coвoкyпнocть этиx yмeний и cocтaвляeт ocнoвy для пoнимaния пpoчитaннoгo. Для oцeнки aдeквaтнocти тaкoгo пoдxoдa в cтaтьe пpeдcтaвлeны peзyльтaты пepeкpecтнoгo aнaлизa чтeния cpeди yчaщиxcя пepвыx, втopыx и тpeтьиx клaccoв (N = 123-125 в кaждoй вoзpacтнoй гpyппe). Учacтники тecтиpoвaния выпoлнили мнoгoчиcлeнныe зaдaния нa тoчнocть и бeглocть чтeния cлoв, вocпpиятиe нa cлyx, пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo и oцeнкy cлoвapнoгo зaпaca. Пoдтвepдилиcь вывoды paнee пpoвeдeнныx иccлeдoвaний: влияниe нaвыкoв дeкoдиpoвaния нa пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo c вoзpacтoм yмeньшaeтcя, a влияниe нaвыкoв вocпpиятия нa cлyx pacтeт. Oднaкo дoпoлнитeльныe peзyльтaты, пoлyчeнныe в xoдe иccлeдoвaния, пoдcкaзывaют, чтo нe вce тaк oднoзнaчнo и пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo тpeбyeт дaльнeйшeгo изyчeния, пocкoлькy cильнoe влияниe пoнимaния нa cлyx выявляeтcя кo втopoмy клaccy, нaвык дeкoдиpoвaния лyчшe вceгo зaмepяeтcя тoчнocтью чтeния cлoв и нe-cлoв y пepвoклaccникoв, бeглocть чтeния cлoв – в тpeтьeм клacce, a cлoвapный зaпac кocвeннo влияeт нa пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo чepeз дeкoдиpoвaниe и пoнимaниe нa cлyx. Этa нeдaвнo paзpaбoтaннaя мoдeль oбecпeчивaeт бoлee вcecтopoннee пpeдcтaвлeниe o фaктopax, кoтopыe влияют нa чтeниe млaдшиx шкoльникoв, и имeeт диaгнocтичecкoe и мeтoдичecкoe знaчeниe для coвepшeнcтвoвaния oбyчeния чтeнию. La conception simple de la lecture comme produit du décodage et de la compréhension orale, avec une contribution variable de chacune d'elles selon le moment du développement. Nous présentons ici une analyse transversale d’élèves de première, seconde, et troisième année de scolarité (N = 123-125 à chaque niveau) afin d’évaluer la pertinence de ce modèle de base. Les participants ont répondu à plusieurs évaluations afin de savoir ce que sont les constructs sous-jacents de la lecture exacte de mots, de la lecture courante de mots, de la compréhension orale, de la compréhension en lecture, et du vocabulaire. Dans le prolongement des recherche antérieures, les modèles d’équation structurale confirment que l'influence da la compétence à decoder diminue quand le niveau scolaire augmente et que l'influence de la compréhension en lecture augmente. Cependant plusieurs résultats supplémentaires indiquent que le développement de la lecture n'est pas si simple et plaident en faveur d'une révision du modèle de base: en 2e année, on observe un important effet de la compréhension orale sur la comprehension de la lecture; on évalue mieux la compétence à décoder par l'exactitude dans la lecture de mots et de non-mots dans les premières classes et par la lecture courante en 3e année, et les compétences en vocabulaire jouent indirectement un rôle dans la compréhension de la lecture par le biais à la fois de la compétence en décodage et de la comprehension orale. Le nouveau modèle élaboré, qui fournit une conception plus intelligente de ce qui influe sur la lecture pendant les premières années, a des ramifications pour l’évaluation et l'enseignement en vue de développer la pédagogie de la lecture.
This study examines the effects of teaching common complex grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) on reading and reading motivation for at-risk readers using a randomised control trial design with taught intervention and control conditions. One reading programme taught children complex GPCs ordered by their frequency of occurrence in children's texts (a ‘simplicity principle’). The other reading programme taught children word usage. Thirty-eight students participated in the 9-week programme of 30 supplemental small group sessions. Participants in the complex GPC group performed significantly better at post-tests with generally large value-added effect sizes (Cohen's d) at both by-participant and by-item for spelling, d = 1.85, d = 1.16; word recognition with words containing taught GPCs, d = 0.96, d = 0.95; word recognition, d = 0.79, d = 0.61, and reading motivation, d = 0.34, d = 0.56. These findings suggest that the simplicity principle aids in structuring maximally effective supplemental phonic interventions.
This paper focuses on outlining, contextualising and theorising the rise of global and complementary national modes of test-based, top-down accountability in schooling systems. The effects of these infrastructures of accountability on schools, teachers’ pedagogical work, on the width of curriculum and on the goals of schooling are also alluded to. These developments are theorised in terms of rescaling of the policy cycle globally, as a well as the topological turn that sees the globe reconstituted as a single space of comparative and commensurate measurement of the performance of school systems, as part of the move to new global forms of networked governance. We argue that we are seeing a new global panopticism, with national school systems variously positioned within the global market place and global educational policy field with important effects within national policy-making. The analysis and theorising provided serves as a contextual backdrop and introduction to the papers included in the special issue of the Journal of Education Policy on the theme of Testing Regimes, Accountabilities and Education Policy. We argue, and the papers demonstrate, the significance for policy sociology today of recognising testing as a, perhaps the, major policy steering systems and the work of schools today.
In England, Higher Education institutions, together with the schools whose staff they train, are being required to incorporate synthetic phonics as one of the key approaches to the teaching of reading. Yet even if synthetic phonics can be identified as one of the component ‘skills’ of reading, an assumption vigorously contested in this paper, it does not follow that it can or should be taught explicitly and independently of reading for meaning. Imposing such a ‘method’ is, at a deep level, incompatible with teachers acting as teachers and potentially constitutes a kind of abuse of early readers. Moreover, because of the conceptual difficulties confronting any attempt to specify synthetic phonics as an approach, there cannot exist, in principle, empirical research that actually supports its value. Current policy in England since the Rose Report, at least, assumes the opposite. All this cannot be dismissed as a little local difficulty for England concerning the teaching of reading English with all its spelling irregularities: there are broader implications for the relationship between research and teaching, together with continuing tendencies to impose ‘teacher proof’ approaches on schools and their staff in many countries.
This paper argues that direct control of the early years literacy curriculum recently exercised by politicians in England has made the boundaries between research, policy and practice increasingly fragile. It describes how policy came to focus most effort on the use of synthetic phonics programmes in the early years. It examines why the Clackmannanshire phonics intervention became the study most frequently cited to justify government policy and suggests a phonics research agenda that could more usefully inform teaching. It argues that, whilst academics cannot control how their research is eventually used by policy-makers, learned societies can strengthen their ethics policies to set out clearer ground rules for academic researchers working across knowledge domains and with policy-makers. A stronger framework to guide the ethical interpretation of research evidence in complex education investigations would allow more meaningful conversations to take place within and across research communities, and with research users. The paper suggests some features for such a framework.
To clarify the role of decoding in reading and reading disability, a simple model of reading is proposed, which holds that reading equals the product of decoding and comprehension. It follows that there must be three types of reading disability, resulting from an inability to decode, an inability to comprehend, or both. It is argued that the first is dyslexia, the second hyperlexia, and the third common, or garden variety, reading disability.
Children with specific reading comprehension difficulties were compared with control children on tests of language skill. The two groups performed at a similar level on tests requiring predominantly phonological skills, but the poor comprehenders performed less well on tests tapping semantic ability. Although the two groups were matched for decoding ability (as assessed by nonword reading), the poor comprehenders were worse at reading words with irregular spelling patterns and low-frequency words. These results show that despite having adequate phonological decoding skills, poor comprehenders have problems reading words that are typically read with support from semantics. These findings are related to connectionist models of reading development in which phonological and semantic processes interact.
AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE TO REPEAT, WITH REFINEMENTS, THE RESEARCH DESIGN OF THE HANNA-MOORE STUDY (1953) CONCERNING PHONEME-GRAPHEME RELATIONSHIPS. OBJECTIVES OF THIS STUDY WERE--(1) TO EXAMINE THE SOUND-TO-LETTER CHARACTERISTICS OF AN EXTENDED LIST OF 10,000 WORDS, (2) TO DISCOVER TO WHAT DEGREE THE SAME 80 PERCENT CRITERION OF PHONEME-TO-GRAPHEME OCCURRENCE IS TRUE THROUGHOUT THE AMERICAN-ENGLISH LANGUAGE, (3) TO ESTABLISH AN INDEX OF DIFFICULTY FOR EACH WORD LIST, (4) TO TEST RELIABILITY OF CERTAIN ORTHOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLES, AND (5) TO STUDY THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE THEORETICAL DIFFICULTY OF SPELLING FROM SOUND-TO-LETTER AND THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF PUPIL SPELLING PERFORMANCE. AN INDEX OF SPELLING DIFFICULTY OF EACH PHONEME FOR 10,000 WORDS WAS ESTABLISHED. COMIT PROGRAMING PROVIDED (1) LISTS OF WORDS FOR EACH PHONEME, (2) AN INDEX OF DIFFICULTY, AND (3) INFORMATION ON RELIABILITY. THE STUDY WAS CONDUCTED IN TWO PHASES. THIS REPORT IS FOR PHASE ONE ONLY. DATA FROM PHASE ONE SUGGESTS THAT THE AMERICAN-ENGLISH ORTHOGRAPHY MAY BE DESCRIBED IN TERMS OF PHONOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE. SEVERAL INFERENCES ARE MADE. (JC)
Instruction for beginning readers is thought to be needed on several fronts, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. The National Reading Panel reviewed the findings of many experiments to determine whether there was sufficient scientific evidence to indicate the effectiveness of these forms of instruction in helping students learn to read. This paper reviews one part of their report, that involving the evidence of systematic phonics instruction. The paper states that because the writing system in English is more complex and variable than in some languages, it is harder to learn, making systematic phonics instruction even more important to teach, because children will have difficulty figuring out the system on their own. It points out that a primary goal of phonics instruction is to teach students to read words in or out of text. It explains that phonics is a method of instruction that teaches students correspondence between graphemes in written language and phonemes in spoken language and how to use these correspondences to read and spell words. It notes that phonics instruction is systematic when the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught and they are covered in a clearly defined sequence. According to the paper, the phonics review sought to determine whether there is experimental evidence showing that systematic phonics instruction helps children learn to read more effectively than unsystematic phonics instruction or instruction teaching little or no phonics and whether phonics instruction is more effective under some circumstances than others and for some students more than others. The paper discusses the 38 studies were reviewed in the meta analysis. Appended is a list of the 38 studies. (Contains 2 tables and 41 references.) (NKA)
This study investigated the hypothesis that vocabulary influences word recognition skills indirectly through set for variability, the ability to determine the correct pronunciation of approximations to spoken English words. One hundred forty children participating in a 3-year longitudinal study were administered reading and reading-related measures at four time points. Hierarchical regression and path analyses indicated that vocabulary and phonemic awareness made independent contributions to variance in set for variability; that vocabulary directly influenced future reading comprehension and indirectly influenced future decoding and word recognition through set for variability; and that set for variability influenced future reading comprehension indirectly through both decoding and word recognition, controlling for autoregressive effects.
In this paper a rationale for choosing how many and what types of spelling-to-sound units of English to teach children to learn to read is introduced. The rationale is based on an analysis of the frequency with which various units of spelling-to-sound mapping occur in monosyllabic words of the English language. Analysis of spelling-to-sound mappings at three levels (whole words, onsets and rimes and graphemes) reveals that the distribution of these mappings in English text approximates Zipf's Law. Further analyses reveal that a substantial proportion of text can be read if knowledge of the most frequent mappings at each level is assumed. It is suggested that viewing reading from this perspective can be useful in developing reading instruction so that children are taught information that is most useful in achieving the endpoint of learning to read. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Prior probabilities of graphemes and conditional probabilities for their pronunciation as specific phonemes are given based
on a corpus of 17,310 English words. Phonemes are as given in recent editions ofWebster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, with minor revisions; graphemes are defined as letters or letter clusters corresponding to single phonemes. Grapheme-phoneme
probabilities were derived from a revised table of frequency of occurrence of phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences generated
in a study of spelling regularities (P. R. Hanna, J. S. Hanna, Hodges, & Rudorf, 1966). This quantitative descriptive information
provides an index of the strength of particular grapheme-phoneme associations in English. Suggestions are made for the utilization
of these probabilities as estimates of spelling/sound predictability in reading research.
This study investigated the hypothesis that the contributions of oral language comprehension (C) and word recognition (D) to reading comprehension (R) in the simple view of reading (SVR) are not independent because a component of C (vocabulary knowledge) directly contributes to the variance in D. Three analysis procedures (hierarchical regression analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling) were used to analyze data obtained from a sample (N = 122) of 7-year-old students who were administered tests of vocabulary knowledge, nonword reading, word recognition (two standardized tests), and parallel forms of listening and reading comprehension. Results from the regression analysis indicated that vocabulary made a contribution to R beyond that made by word recognition and listening comprehension; results from the exploratory factor analysis showed that two factors (Decoding and Linguistic Comprehension) were extracted, with vocabulary and listening comprehension loading highly on the Linguistic Comprehension factor; and results from structural equation modeling revealed that the latent construct, C, influenced R not only directly but also indirectly through the latent construct, D.
Debates concerning the types of representations that aid reading acquisition have often been influenced by the relationship between measures of early phonological awareness (the ability to process speech sounds) and later reading ability. Here, a complementary approach is explored, analyzing how the functional utility of different representational units, such as whole words, bodies (letters representing the vowel and final consonants of a syllable), and graphemes (letters representing a phoneme) may change as the number of words that can be read gradually increases. Utility is measured by applying a Simplicity Principle to the problem of mapping from print to sound; that is, assuming that the "best" representational units for reading are those which allow the mapping from print to sounds to be encoded as efficiently as possible. Results indicate that when only a small number of words are read whole-word representations are most useful, whereas when many words can be read graphemic representations have the highest utility.
Two distinct factors limit the orthographic regularity of English words: (a) Most characters can correspond to several different sounds and (b) characters can either stand alone or be combined in various ways for pronunciation as a single phoneme. This study addresses the second of these issues through the analysis of a large corpus of English words. Data are presented describing the frequency that each character (or character cluster) functioned in the corpus as a correspondent of a single phoneme rather than being combined with other characters (or decomposed). Examples are provided regarding potential applications of these data in the construction of stimulus materials for cognitive studies, in neuropsychological investigations of dyslexia, and in computational models of word naming.
Word recognition in beginning literacy
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Evaluation of the phonics screening check: First interim report
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- Dfe