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Аннотация

To do well at school and in life, kids and adults need to know and to use lots of words.

The words we know and use – our vocabulary – has a big impact on our success at school and work. Vocabulary is one of the Big 5 skills we need to read well; and school failure is often caused by under-developed literacy and language skills (Duncan & Murnane, 2011, Murnane et al., 2012). Arguably, a good vocabulary is more important that ever in the digital/knowledge age.

But there are so many words to learn, and so little time:

• One research group estimates there are at least 520 million words in use in English (Corpus Contemporary American English, 2017).
• Another group cites more than 2 billion words out there to learn (Cambridge English Corpus, 2017)!

1. Choosing the right words to teach matters (a lot)

Teaching a child a new word does not automatically improve the child’s knowledge of, or ability to learn, other words (e.g. Elleman et al., 2009). To make things worse, some kids find it really hard to learn new words, for example:

• kids with developmental language disorders;
• kids learning English as a second (or third, or fourth) language (ESL); and
• kids growing up in poverty, in foster care, or kids at in or at risk of entering the youth justice system.

Kids with developmental language disorders may need to hear and use a word scores of times before they can be said to know the word well enough to use it in conversation. Learning new words for these kids takes lots of time and effort.

So which words should we teach kids to help them get the most out of school and their lives?

2. Some words are more useful than others

If you look at many educational products marketed to parents, teachers and speech pathologists, you’d think the most important words in the world are the names of farm animals, fruits and vegetables, forms of transport, colours and shapes; and concepts like “big”, “small”, “between”, “up”, and “after”. But how useful are these words in the real world? How often do adults talk or read about big, green frogs and little, purple grapes in general conversation? And don’t most kids – even kids with learning difficulties – pick up these easy to picture, high-frequency words from context at some point?

As kids move from Kindergarten to Year 12, the language used in books – including the words – becomes less easy to picture in their heads. Kids start with story-books about things they can see, hear, smell, touch and imagine moving: pigs and sheep and ducks and lions and trains and buses and trucks. But, by the end of school, kids are expected to read and understand histories, comedies, tragedies, poetry, philosophies, geographies, and treatises on maths and science. Books filled with:

• abstract ideas and concepts that can’t be understood with our senses alone; and
• words used in serious texts, but rarely if ever spoken in general conversation.

3. Kids (and adults) need school/academic/professional words

What kids really need for school and work success is an “academic vocabulary”: useful words that are used a lot in school books across different subjects, but not in general conversation (e.g. Baumann & Graves, 2010; Nagy & Townsend, 2012).

4. Where can I find an evidence-based list of academic words to teach?

Right here!

As a student speech pathologist, I struggled to find good words lists, and often ended up making my own – a time consuming process unsupported by evidence. But there are some great, free resources out there: if only I’d known where to look!

Way back in 2000, Dr Averil Coxhead published her “Academic Word List” (AWL). It’s used all over the world by teachers, speech pathologists, researchers, dictionary makers, people learning English as a second language, and website and app makers (Coxhead, 2016). The AWL contains 570 word families that make up about 10% of the total words used in academic texts outside the 2,000 most frequently used words in English. The full list can be accessed here.

In 2013, Professor Charles Browne published a “New Academic Word List”, which can be accessed here.

For those of you looking for a useful list of words to teach, here is a list of the most frequent words in the original AWL list:

analysis

approach

area

assessment

assume

authority         

available

benefit

concept

consistent

constitutional

context

contract

create

data

definition

derived

distribution

economic

environment

established

estimate

evidence

export

factors

financial

formula

function

identified

income

indicate

individual 

interpretation

involved

issues

labour

legal

legislation

major

method

occur

percent

period

policy

principle

procedure

process

required

research

response

role

section

sector

significant 

similar

source

specific

structure

theory 

variables

The words in bold are some of my personal favourites to teach school-aged kids. Why?

• Verbs/action words (e.g. “analyse” (from “analysis”), “research”, “assume” and “indicate”), are so important to language development generally, and are used a lot in exams.
• Words with Latin or Greek roots (e.g. “benefit”, “contract”, “specific”), can be used to help kids develop morphological awareness and general word-attack strategies for related words.
• Words like “procedure” and “evidence” are used in the school curriculum in lots of different contexts, and can help build links to lots of other words (so-called “semantic networks”) (e.g. Baumann et al., 2010).
• Words like “financial”, “legal”, “economic”, “theory”, “role”, “per cent” and “source” are highly useful words to know for people to participate meaningfully in society (and to avoid being exploited by others).

5. How should we teach academic words?

A mistake many educators and speech pathologists make is to teach words in lists, and/or to focus only on words’ definitions/meanings. This approach doesn’t tend to work well, especially for children with developmental language disorders.

At the single word level, we’ve talked about the “nuts and bolts” of how to teach new vocabulary before. Education and speech pathology research published over the last 20 years has improved our knowledge of how best to improve kids’ academic vocabularies. There’s even an acronym for it: “ALIAS”, which stands for “Academic Language Instruction for All Students”.

ALIAS principles to teach new words

When teaching students new words, we should:

• do it while reading real books and other works (e.g. in novels and non-fiction articles), rather than through lists (e.g. Stahl & Nagy, 2006);
• consciously choose “general purpose” academic words, like those listed above, rather than on basic words (like “car”) or specialised words used only in one context (like “photosynthesis”) (e.g. Lasaux et al., 2014);
• teach word knowledge deeply by looking at words from lots of different angles, including:
  • different meanings of a word in different places, including general and specific meanings;
  • how the word is pronounced (its “phonology“);
  • how the word is spelled (its “orthography“);
  • how the word is structured, including its prefixes, root, and suffixes (its “morphology“); and
  • other words related to a word (e.g. Stahl & Nagy, 2006);
• focus on teaching kids strategies to help them learn the process of how to get new words – not just the words themselves (e.g. Baumann et al., 2003);
• give kids practice reading, writing, listening and saying the words (e.g. Beck et al., 2002);
• give kids multiple exposures to new words, spaced out over time (e.g. Lasaux et al., 2014); and
• emphasise interaction among students, with lots of opportunities for kids to work and talk together (Lesaux et al., 2014).

6. What does ALIAS/academic word teaching look like in practice?

In 2014, Professor Nonie Lesaux and colleagues published the results of their attempt to put the ALIAS principles into practice with more than 2,000 US-based Year 6 students from urban primary (‘middle’) schools (almost 1,500 were from an ESL background). The program:

• went for 20 weeks, featuring nine, 2-week units;
• units each consisted of a 9-day lesson cycle, and two 1-week review units;
• had 45-minute daily lessons;
• used short non-fiction articles featured in a kids’ magazine to teach the words;
• used articles that were appropriate for Year 6 readers and contained academic words like those listed above; and
• targeted 70 words, favouring academic words, but also some general words.

The researchers found that the program improved students’ vocabulary, morphological awareness, written expression and reading comprehension of texts that included the target words (but not reading comprehension generally), as well as overall oral language skills. Crucially, they found that the program had its most significant positive effects on students learning ESL and students who started the program with underdeveloped vocabulary – in other words, the students most at risk for academic failure.

The study had some limitations, including ceiling effects on some tests, and no measures of teacher buy-in or sustained use of strategies. But, overall, the study showed that ALIAS principles work in the “real world” to help school-aged kids learn, understand and use new academic words.

Clinical bottom line

Having a poorly-developed vocabulary increases a child’s risk of reading, school, and work failure. Teaching kids the right words – useful academic vocabulary – is crucial, especially for children at risk of academic failure. So, too, is teaching children new words in the right way.

Teachers, speech pathologists, and parents can access free, evidence-based available academic word lists to help choose the rights words. Kids learn new words best when teaching is based on the ALIAS principles (summarised above).

Free teacher/speech pathologist/parent resources

Free word lists

Word corpora

Cambridge English Corpus

Free to use resources built on or for Academic Word Lists

Sandra Haywood’s AWL Highlighter Tool

Principal sources:

(1) Lesaux, N.K., Kieffer, M. J., Kelley, J.G., & Harris, J.R. (2014). Effects of Academic Vocabulary Instruction for Linguistically Diverse Adolescents: Evidence from a Randomized Field Trial. American Educational Research Journal, 51(6), 1159-1194.

(2) Coxhead, H. (2016). Reflecting on Coxhead (2000), “A New Academic Word List”, TESOL Quarterly, 50(1), 181-185.

(3) Justice, L. (2017). Keynote address at the Speech Pathology Australia 2017 National Conference, Sydney, on 31 May 2017. (You can read more about Dr Justice’s fantastic work in literacy here.)

Image: http://tinyurl.com/ydykwpoc

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Reading wars, Whole word VS. Phonics, whole language advocates vs. phonetics enthusiasts…

Who would imagine that learning to read could be such a controversial topic?

But sadly, it is!

And I use the word SADLY for a good reason: Because the ones that normally pay the consequences of this disagreement are our children!

In this article we will look at the differences between the whole word approach and the phonics approach, so you can learn the ins and outs of this hot debate and form your own opinion.

If your child is learning to read, this is a crucial topic for you to understand as a parent. The reading success of your child can depend very much upon the actual approach used to teach your child to read; and, as you will discover on this article, schools do not always use the most effective method.

When it comes to teaching children to read there are two main teaching methods.

These two main methods are the whole word approach (also called the “sight words” approach) and the phonetic or phonics approach.

Some prefer the whole word method, while others use the phonics approach.

There are also educators that use a mix of different approaches.

But, who is right?

The Whole Word Approach

The whole word approach relies on what are called “sight words”. This method basically consists of getting children to memorize lists of words and teaching them various strategies of figuring out the text from a series of clues. Using the whole word approach, English is being taught as an ideographic language, such as Chinese or Japanese.

One of the biggest arguments of whole word advocates is that teaching to read using phonics breaks up the words into letters and syllables which have no actual meaning. Yet they fail to acknowledge that once the child is able to decode the word, they will be able to actually read that entire word, pronounce it and understand its meaning. So, in practicality, this is a very weak argument, from our point of view.

Unlike Chinese, English is an alphabet-based language. This means the letters of the English alphabet are not ideograms (also called ideographs), like Chinese characters are.

An ideogram (or ideograph) is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or a concept. Simply put, ideograms are like logos.

So, in a way, you could say that in the Chinese language you need to teach children to memorize “logos” and the meaning of each of them.

It is not logic to think that English should be taught using an ideographic approach…

So, the very popular reading programs that use a whole word approach simply get children to memorize words using different strategies, but without teaching any proper decoding methodology.

Think of the example we used before of the logos and the Chinese language.

Besides, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that teaching your child to using the whole word approach is an effective method. However, there are large numbers of studies which have consistently stated that teaching children to read using phonics and phonemic awareness is a highly effective method.

The Whole-Word Approach in Schools…

So, is your child learning to read using sight words? Or maybe a mixture of phonetics and sight words? What is the standard approach in our education system?

Well, every country – and even every educator / school – is different.

However, in English speaking countries in general -with the exception of the UK, which has been encouraging schools to adopt a systematic synthetic phonics approach since 2011-  reading instruction is normally more heavily weighted towards the teaching of sight words, emphasizing the learning of “word shapes”.

Despite all the evidence to suggest otherwise, the whole word method of teaching still dominates how reading is taught at schools.

Why? Well, our guess is that children can appear to make fast progress with the whole language approach, and that makes everybody happy…

That is until their progress stalls, which is what usually happens, because with this method many children do not learn the relationships between letters and sounds correctly.

Some children can finally understand the letter-sound relationships from the words they have learned, but unfortunately many children aren’t able to figure this out. So, they are left with only one strategy for learning to read: memory and continuous repetition.

This is a very poor strategy these children are left with, in our opinion.

On the other hand, the reading ability of children is normally exaggerated on whole word programs as the texts used are very repetitive and extremely predictable. The children know what to expect. So… They are basically guessing!

When children are presented with a less predictable text without pictures, they struggle with words they had previously been able to figure out in a repetitive text with illustrations.

Another strategy used in whole word programs consists of focusing on word shapes. 

Just have a look at this image. This is a “reading strategy” used on whole word programs.

Encouraging children to learn to read by looking at word shapes is completely madness! They are told to look at words as if they were “pictures”, focusing on the overhangs in the shapes of words! This does not apply for the English language!! Again, this is a method used for ideographic languages, such us Chinese or Japanese.

It does not make sense! There are just so many words with very similar shapes!

For example, look at this:

• hat vs. bat

• tree vs. free
• fall vs. tall vs hall

• hunt vs. hurt vs. hard

And the list goes on and on and on… Honestly, we could find thousands of words that have similar shape if we had the time to do this exercise!

The Whole- Word Method and Spelling

Even if a child has some early success learning to read using whole words programs, it gets him/her into the habit of ignoring the letters in words. This causes serious reading problems later on (when texts get more complicated), including spelling problems.

Another strategy that we are told to do on whole word programs is encouraging our children to look at the pictures in storybooks to “guess” or “predict” words.

• Can they use the picture to help?

• Can they look at the initial letter and predict what word would make sense that starts with that letter?

• What word makes sense based on the context?

A little bit of history on the Whole-Word Approach

The main idea behind this theory is that if you see words enough number of times, you eventually store them in your memory as visual images.

They also embrace the idea that kids can naturally learn to read if they are exposed a lot of books.

Since the 1980s, these beliefs had strongly influenced the way children in North America and most English speaking countries are taught to read and write.

These ideas start to emerge in the 1970’s, and they become extremely popular for teaching reading in the 80’s and 90’s.

There is a strong focus on meaning, rather than sounds.

The Phonics Approach

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we find reading instruction based on phonemic awareness and phonics.

The phonics approach focuses on the sounds in words, which are represented by the letters (or groups of letters) in the alphabet.

There is a myriad of methods and systems within the phonics approach itself, but the the two main methodologies for teaching phonics are Synthetic and Analytic phonics.

Even though they both have the label “Phonics” attached to them, they are in fact quite different ways for teaching children to read.

However, for the sake of this article (and to keep things simple) we will just say that the main difference is that in the Synthetic Phonics approach skills are taught in a highly structured ‘systematic’ way.

Children start with very simple sounds and decoding regular words. Gradually, they are introduced to more complex sounds (such us letter combination sounds) and to irregularities and exceptions. Every step of the way is planned, and children only move to the next stage of phonics once they have mastered the previous one.

In the Analytic Phonics approach, reading instruction is less structured, and learning happens in a more ‘embedded’ fashion. Children are encouraged to analyze groups of whole words to identify similar sounds and letter patterns. Instruction relies a lot on the analysis of “families of words”.

For instance, the family of words ending up in -all, such us “tall, fall, mall, hall, small”, or the family of words ending up in -at, such “mat, cat, rat, bat, fat, pat”.

If you are interested in knowing more about the differences between analytics and synthetic phonics, you can check this video.ç

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Is there a Winner in the Reading Wars?

What Research / Modern Science has to say…

The best way to put an end to this controversy and start making decisions that are RIGHT for our kids – and not based on personal preferences or ideology-  is by looking at what research and scientific studies have to say.

However, you may think that if opinions on the topic are still so divided, then it must be that the results of these studies are somehow inconclusive.

Well, not really…

Look at these statements by the US National Reading

“Teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective under a variety of teaching conditions with a variety of learners across a range of grade and age levels and that teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading more than instruction that lacks any attention to Phonemic Awareness.”

“Conventional wisdom has suggested that kindergarten students might not be ready for phonics instruction, this assumption was not supported by the data. The effects of systematic early phonics instruction were significant and substantial in kindergarten and the 1st grade, indicating that systematic phonics programs should be implemented at those age and grade levels.”

^* Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Excerpts from the meta-analysis of over 1,900 scientific studies.

Overwhelmingly research has found that phonemic awareness and phonics is a superior way for teaching children to read!

But wait there is more…

Modern Scientific Research on the Brain and How we learn to read

For a very long time many experts have embraced the idea that we store words in our memory in the same way we store visual memories, such us faces or objects. That belief is at the core of the whole word approach.

And, in fact, many reading experts still believe this is the cse.

However, modern scientific research proves otherwise…

But before I tell you how we actually store words in our memory, look at the following factors already pointing out at how visual memory -contrary to still popular belief – is NOT involved:

• We can read mixed case letters without difficulties.

• We can read words with different fonts, in print and cursive, and handwritting without difficulties.

• Word recognition works faster than object recognition, indicating that we are using different storage and retrieval processes.

Let me tell you about the sound scientific evidence now…

Brain scans show that the parts of the brain activated while performing visual memory tasks are different than the parts of the brain activated while reading… 

Moreover, scientists in the visual memory area (not related to reading research, therefore unbiased) have indicated that we don’t have the cognitive capacity to remember 30 – 90,000 words for immediate retrieval.

As reading instruction still assumes that we store words as visual images, students who struggle to remember words are many times presumed to have poor visual memory.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. There is only a small relationship between visual memory and our capacity to store words for immediate retrieval while reading.

However, there is a very strong relationship between HEARING skills and our capacity to store words for immediate retrieval while reading (fluent reading capacity).

To be more specific, children that have been trained to hear the actual sounds that form words (phonemic /phonological skills) and are capable to recognize and store those common strings of sounds and visually link them to the letters / words they know become fluent readers.

There is no evidence to suggest that visual memory has a role in word recognition /reading fluency once the letters and the connection between letters and sounds have been learned.

If there seems to be a winner on the ‘Reading Wars’, why do we keep arguing?

Phonics instruction cons…

These are the main arguments against phonics instruction:

• Children only read phonics books: This is one of the main pillars of a proper phonics system. Children should only attempt to read books that are in line with their level of phonics. Otherwise, it is overwhelming for them and can get confused, since they may be exposed to too many exceptions and irregularities. While this is true, that doesn’t mean that parents can’t read more difficult books to their children. And, in fact, they are encouraged to do so.
• Phonics doesn’t help with reading comprehension. Besides, teaching to read using phonics breaks up the words into letters and syllables, which have no actual meaning. However, once the child is able to decode the word, he/she will be able to actually read that entire word, pronounce it and understand its meaning.
  
• Children learn to read naturally, therefore they don’t need tedious phonics instruction. Whereas it is truth that some children can learn to read by themselves, most won’t be able to figure it out. Besides, there is no harm in receiving phonics instruction for those that are able to learn to decode by themselves.
• There are just too many exceptions and irregularities in English. While it is true that English is full of irregularities and exceptions, there are less of these than what we are led to believe. Besides, there are some rules, patterns and tips and tricks that apply to those “irregular” words that certainly do help in the process of learning to read.

So, saying that phonics has won the war is quite far from what happens in reality.

As we stated at the beginning of the article, there are different ways for teaching phonics.

What our schools have evolved to do to keep both sides of the war happy is establishing a “balanced literacy” strategy that combines both whole word and phonics principles.

What in practicality ends up happening is that there is only a little bit of phonics instruction here and there, rather than a proper curriculum based on phonics.

That is an ineffective method for teaching phonics, and certainly doesn’t work. And this is precisely the sort of evidence that whole word enthusiasts hold on to.

Final thoughts on the Reading Wars

The debate is still hot. This is bizarre as, in our opinion, based on the latest scientific evidence, the number one skill that we need to develop in our children is phonemic awareness.

This way we would have far fewer students with reading difficulties.

And, after having developed strong phonological / phonemic awareness skills, using a proper phonics approach (and not just a little bit of phonics instruction here and there) seems like the way to go.

Free Resources you may be interested in!

Phonemic Awareness Activity Worksheets
Nursery Rhymes Ebook
44+ English sounds chart
List of CVC Words