She was playing Civilization on the computer. "Despotism," I said. "The word is 'despotism'. The ruler of a despotism is a 'despot'."
Along many axes my daughter is a potential genius. But she has low "phonemic awareness." She learned to read, by herself, whole language: starting with guess the word from its first letter and its length, and proceeding to learn how to read from the shape of the word itself with little awareness of what phonemes were inside it, or how they were strung together.
She reads voraciously. Her comprehension is, I think, excellent. Yet she can still look at "despotism" and say "desoptism."
How can this be? An email that came over the transom suggests that there is much, much more redundancy in English prose than I had imagined possible:
"... randomising letters in the middle of words [has] little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. This is easy to denmtrasote. In a pubiltacion of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon. Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work. The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang.
I, at least, think this is fascinating.
Posted by DeLong at July 20, 2002 08:03 PM | TrackbackChanging the letters around is no problem for skilled readers, who already have the vocabularies and content knowledge to figure out what the words mean. It's quite different for non-genius beginning readers, many of whom are ill served by "whole language" reading instruction.
Posted by: rncarpio on July 21, 2002 01:31 AMHow does this work with Chinese characters? Do Chinese readers tend to scan the top and bottom of characters? Or only the top and bottom characters of a sequence of characters forming a word? Just curious how this kind of insight translates to other writing systems.
Did skilled Neandertalian readers just look at the head and tail of their buffalos? :)
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on July 21, 2002 01:55 AMBrad,
That _is_ fascinating. I read that paragraph with complete comprehension at about (my guess) 80% of normal speed.
I also have a daughter who essentially taught herself to read in about 3 months, via whole language. She cannot spell. I think those phenomena are not unconnected.
What it means is, there is more than one way to learn to read, but I suspect out of all possible different approaches, one is best suited for each new reader. Unfortunately for the teacher facing 20 illiterate first grade faces, several different techniques will be needed to cover the field.
JC
Posted by: John Casey on July 21, 2002 10:23 AMWell, if you've learned to read via whole language, why would you learn to spell? If you are identifying words from context and from initial and final letter groups, spelling is kind of irrelevant...
Brad DeLong
But, this is not merely a question of
teaching, but of economics!
Suppose the outcome (reading) is equally
obtainable via two teaching methods (or learning
streams, for those who focus on students
rather than teachers...)
Method "A" requires one-on-one tutoring
for about two hours per day for 180 days.
Method "B" requires less than one hour
per day for small groups of six-to-ten
students for 100 days. At the end of
each program, about 90% of the students
who entered the program emerge, sucessfully,
in advancing from pre-reading (Kindergarten?)
level skills to reading at 2nd grade
skill levels. (This, assunimg thier secnod
garde texbtooks are corerctly spleled...)
Assuming each method requires a certified
instructor who earns a professional's salary;
the same money invested in 5 or 10 children
using method "A" could be, alternatively,
invested in some 50 to 100 kids in method
"B" -- or thereabouts. (This is economics,
not arithmetic...)
However, the incentives for choosing between
programs are strongly skewed; toward
method "A" among teachers (More jobs!
Fewer students to keep records on! )but toward
method "B" among taxpayers (Fewer
salaries to pay! Shorter schoolyears ==
smaller utility bills! )
But then, taxpayers don't control the research
on the effectiveness of the methods.
I have been dyslexic for most of my life and from an early age was thought to be "lazy" by many an annoying teacher.
I tend to read words different than they are spelt and I tend to read can't with can and don't with done which when speaking aloud can pose a problem.
However when I read to myself I understand entirely what I am reading even when I come across words which I mix up.
Oh and I don't think this has much to do with learning how to read or write on your own. It is more to do with being able to understand certain words that you are reading and process them for spoken language as a dyslexic.
Henry
Posted by: Henry on September 13, 2002 05:25 PM