The Relevance of Psycholinguistic Insights
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THE RELEVANCE OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC INSIGHTS INTO THE READING PROCESS FOR CURRICULUM PLANNING AND TEACHING PRACTICE by Harvey Mendham B.A. (U.N.E.) A report submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Education School of Education University of New South Wales 1978 ii. This report, entitled "The Relevance of Psycholinguistic Insights into the Reading Process for Curriculum Planning and Teaching Practice", has not been submitted for an award to any other institution. Signed\'IJ~ iii. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Professor L.M. Brown for his assistance and encouragement; Or. Peter Rousch and Dr. Brian Cambourne for their advice and for supplying me with sources from the United States which I was unable to procure here; Dr James Fitzgerald for his advice and help with European sources; librarians of the Riverine College of Advanced Education; and Vivienne Mendham for her unfailing encouragement - and for her typing the manuscript. iv. ABSTRACT The research of psychologists, linguists and psycholinguists is examined to find implications for curriculum planners and teaching practitioners in the area of reading. It is argued that Noam Chomsky was instrumental in establishing a new "paradigm" so that research into reading has followed a new direction. Thus many older findings can be seen to have a new significance while more recent research (which is sometimes quite "mentalistic") emphasises the very complex nature of the reading process. Previous ideas that readers simply took up graphic information from the page and recoded it to sound are discounted. Beginning and mature readers, alike, are viewed as active participants in a constructive act of information processing. Successful readers bring much more than print decipherment skills to the page; their experiential background and linguistic ability are of as much importance to their proper recreation of authors' meanings. Curriculum planners and classroom teachers might pay attention to these factors and their recognition will be evident in learning-context analyses, goal and objective formation, choice of learning situations and manners of assessment. The implications for practitioners are quite as serious and modification of instructional styles, lesson emphases, arrangements of time and space, and manners of diagnosis and remediation might be seen to be necessary. v. CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 PART 1 Chapter 1 CHOMSKY'S STIMULUS TO RESEARCH INTO THE READING PROCESS 21 2 PSYCHOLOGISTS' FINDINGS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE READING ACT 45 3 LINGUISTS' STUDIES OF THE MANNER OF CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 68 4 PSYCHOLINGUISTS' VIEWS OF READING AS AN ACTIVE PROCESS 98 PART 2 5 IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRICULUM PLANNING 123 6 IMPLICATIONS FOR CLASSROOM PRACTICE 144 CONCLUSION 161 BIBLIOGRAPHY 166 APPENDICES 1 When is a Word Not a Word 174 2 My Poltergeist 175 The Little Lost Bear vi. FIGURES 1 • The "outside-in" model of reading 4 2. The "inside-out" model of reading 5 3. Reading viewed as a simple translation of graphic symbols to sound 6 4. Reading viewed as a process of bringing meaning to and extracting meaning from print 6 5. A diagrammatic representation of Chomsky's theory of transformational-generative grammar 36 6. Chomsky's conception of dual structure when applied to reading - from the author's point of view 38 7. Chomsky 1 s conception of dual structure when applied to reading - from the reader's point of view 38 8. The place of meaning in the reading process 38 9. A detailed immediate constituent analysis to reveal hierarchical structures in a child's utterance 77 10. A simplified constituent analysis to reveal hierarchical structures in a child's utterance 77 11. A representation to illustrate how cues, strategies and analytical techniques fit into a cyclical arrangement with comprehension as the continuous focus 111 Introduction This report is written in the hope that it will assist curriculum planners and classroom teachers as they develop reading programmes that take account of recent research findings in the area. As Aims of Primary Education in New South Wales states: Changes in administrative patterns are placing more responsibility for the school program in the hands of the principal and staff. Approaches to curriculum development have changed. Rather than being detailed prescriptions, syllabuses have become guides providing a broad framework within which schools operate.1 A later passage admits the consequent challenge facing each school: The greatest difficulty is to move from generally accepted aims and priorities of a school. Many decisions can be made only at the local level by forming judgements in practical situations about a complex of factors. Given that a statement of broad guidelines is provided from a central source, the responsibility of the school is to interpret those guidelines and to make decisions in terms of the school's professional initiatives, needs, priorities and resources.2 School administrators, then, have new and demanding responsibilities. Apart from their leadership, supervisory and "human relations" role, they have to be expert in curriculum development and its corollary, in-service education: Instructional excellence is dependent upon administrative leadership and expertise in curriculum and teaching. In smaller administrative units, the administrator should, ideally, be expert in all curriculum areas. This expectation may be impossible for most administrators and it may be necessary to select certain crucial areas for emphasis. For several reasons, knowledge in the area of reading instruction would seem to merit a high priority. 3 2. One of these reasons might well be the evident concern amongst professionals and lay people about the quality of reading instruction and reading standards, especially as they apply to the young. It is obvious that this concern is, to an extent, a function of the large amount of space and time allocated to discussion of "the first R." in research papers, 4 serious journals,5 the popular press6 and on the electronic media. 7 Some would argue that the controversy is sometimes motivated by more than purely educational concerns; views about "the right way" of teaching reading can be seen to reflect more of their exponents' larger systems of belief than their knowledge of reading or educational theory. But more authentically-based concern certainly exists and educationalists are duty-bound to provide some realistic answers to the questions raised. Professor Crisp of the Australian National University suggested that "the present situation in universities is very desperate - and getting worse at an increasing rate •••• Some university students are only semi-literate when they graduate .... "8 The late Dr F. Just argued similarly when speaking on behalf of the Australian Council for Educational Standards; he said, "We believe that standards have declined in reading, writing and arithmetic". 9 At the other end of the educational spectrum, the Victorian Federation of State School Mothers' Clubs claimed that, on the basis of a survey involving 77,000 children attending Victorian schools, one in six pupils needed special assistance to improve reading skills. 10 A secondary teacher in New South Wales, genuinely concerned and rather more bold in his assertions insists that 30% to 40% of high school children are functionally illiterate. 11 3. A survey that was specifically designed to assess fourteen-year olds' ability to handle necessary day-to-day reading tasks revealed a very different picture12 but that teacher went on to level several specific charges worth considering: teacher education in the area of reading instruction is inadequate; children from homes with no (or few) books are disadvantaged; reading failure tends to be self-reinforcing, leading to further and more general failure; many older children seem to lack those reading skills they need if they're to handle the most usual tasks demanded of them by modern society; reading failure often leads to personality disturbance and sometimes to a childvs relegation to a group whose needs are different from his.. 13 If aware of some or all of these "symptoms", many teachers are less sure about causes and quite unable to suggest remedies • ••• most teachers feel insecure to a substantial degree about the teaching of reading. They want guidance, encouragement, in-service training, time for planning, and relief from some of the 14 obstacles which inhibit effective reading instruction. Doubts and confusion among practising teachers become easier to understand when one puts oneself in their place and seeks "the truth" in the mass of research15 conducted in the area. Perceptual 16 psychologists such as Jerome Brosner are at theoretical odds with cognitive psychologists like Kenneth Goodman 17 and both are in disagreement with their behaviourist-inclined colleagues e.g. Dr Carl Bereiter.18 All the same, it is in the research that answers can be found and teachers should be urged - as they were by James Britton at the U.N.E.S.C.D. Seminar on the Teaching of English, 19 in Sydney, 1972 - to seek authoritative answers themselves. 4. Teachers' professional organisations have a prominent role to play here, encouraging members to examine their practice and its underlying theory in the light of research findings. The Primary English Teachers' Association has done just this; in its recent newsletter (P.E.N.5 "Towards a School Reading Policy" by Norman 20 McCulla ) tan precepts, comments and "discussion starters" were presented to challenge teachers' assumptions and to guide them as they worked towards the creation of their individual schools' reading programmes. Although the document was directive in tone, teachers were asked to read further through the reprinting of an abridged address by Professor Walter McGinitie. 21 Precept 5 is central in the document, describing the nature of the 22 reading act itself. Obviously derived from the thinking of Huey, Chomsky, 23 Smith, 24 and Goodman, 25 it encourages reading teachers to reorient their thinking to align with late, psycholinguistic findings.