Written language works exactly like spoken language
Understanding print is just like understanding speech
Sounding out written words bit by bit (phonics)
is just like sounding out heard words
when we learn to speak
All children can learn to:
understand print
at their interest level
read aloud
ALL CHILDREN
FULLY LITERATE
BY THE AGE OF SEVEN
by Felicity Craig
Illustrations by Debbie Smith
We’re strait-jacketed in the ways we think about learning to read
We assume that children have to learn spoken language first, and that written language always has to be learned in relation to spoken language.
We assume that learning to read is a matter of learning to read aloud, and that children who cannot read aloud are not reading.
We assume that literacy learning must be performance based. Children should be able to demonstrate what they can do as soon as possible, and if they can’t ‘perform’, they haven’t learned anything.
Drawbacks
Sadly, these assumptions are not yielding very good results.
Around 10% of children are still leaving primary school with a reading age of seven or less – not nearly sufficient to meet the demands of their secondary education.
write or type at their interest level
spell correctly
Disaffected youngsters who run riot in our cities are often illiterate.
Up to half the inmates in our prisons are literacy strugglers. Faced with a school system that gave them so little, and made them feel rubbish about themselves, they drifted almost inevitably into a life of crime. What a waste of their creativity and potential – and what a waste of public money spent keeping them in prison.
Another way of thinking
There is another way of thinking about written language. Here it is:
Written words are quite capable of conveying meanings all by themselves, without any reference to spoken words at all.
We can learn to ‘see meanings’ in written words in the very same way that we learn to ‘hear meanings’ in spoken words – language through the looking glass.
Reading words is even easier than hearing them. For some groups of children (deaf, brain damaged, those with speech defects, or youngsters for whom English is a second language) it makes sense if they learn to read words even before learning to hear and say them.
Matching written words with spoken words is a useful thing to be able to do – but it is not the same process as understanding them. All children need to be able to do both.
Written words can be matched with spoken words as wholes, or bit by bit (phonics). Phonics, or sounding out written words, is a powerful aid to reading – and speaking – and to spelling. It enables children to transfer meanings from spoken words to written words when they are learning to read; from written words to uttered words when they are learning to speak; and from inner speech to words on the page when they are learning to write. Even profoundly deaf children can learn phonics. It won’t help their reading, but it will help their speaking. (See Section 8, How about deaf children?)
All children should learn systematic phonics, alongside reading.
When we teach written language like spoken language, we can use an experience based approach (instead of a performance based one). We give all children massive experience of understanding print, and massive experience of sounding out written words. We just never allow them to fail.
We really can achieve total literacy, for all children, by the age of seven. (Well, we could do it by the age of five, but I don’t want to frighten the horses…) By ‘total literacy’, I mean they will be able to read and understand any material at their interest level, read it aloud, and write anything they want to write, in neat handwriting (or typing), spelling and punctuating their work correctly. They will love books and reading, and flourish throughout their school careers.
I have spent my adult life trying to put this way of thinking in front of as many people as possible. Some teachers and schools have taken the ideas and flown with them, but the necessary – and hugely liberating – revolution in our thinking hasn’t happened, to any great extent. I think this is because articles and books are not the right medium.
So I am taking my courage in both hands, and trying to ‘get it out there’ in the form of a website. It’s a sort of mini-booklet, which works best if you read the sections in order, but of course you can move around between the sections as you choose. Section 10, Different word forms, similar routes – a complete theory of language, puts forward a new and revolutionary theory of written language, and is worth reading because it examines the very exciting implications for our literacy teaching methods, at school or in the home.
NOTE - This website employs a dyslexia friendly font, which works very well on PCs and laptops. However, it can occasionally appear truncated on iPads, smart phones etc. So for practical use, try to access it on a PC whenever possible.
To view the different sections, use the navigation tab, in the bar at the top of the page.