Memorandum submitted by Jennifer Chew
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
From 1978 until my retirement in 2000, I taught
English at a Surrey sixth form college and was also responsible
for Specific Learning Difficulties. I tested the spelling of all
new students from 1984 to 1999 (more than 6,000 students in total)
and found most students under-performing, despite the fact that
they entered the college with GCSE results well above the national
average. There were signs that the problems had started in primary
schools, and to gain information about teaching methods used there
I began to read as much research as possible and to attend courses
and conferences. I closely followed, sometimes contributing to,
national developments concerning the teaching of literacy, and
had several pamphlets and articles published. In 2000, I was awarded
the OBE for services to literacy. Since my retirement, I have
been Literacy Governor at St Jude's CE School in Englefield Green,
Surrey, which caters for children aged 7+ to 11+. I spend several
hours a week in the school working voluntarily with children of
all abilities, the best of them reading at adult levels and the
weakest being virtual non-readers. This has made me realise that
too many children are still emerging from Key Stage 1 with very
poor reading skills, apparently because teaching methods are still
not good enough. I have recently become editor of the UK Reading
Reform Foundation Newsletter: the RRF aims to make information
about literacy research and practice easily accessible to all
interested parties (see www.rrf.org.uk).
COMMENTS ON
THE "SUGGESTED
FOCI"
Whether policy/guidance has a sound base in research
evidence, looking at relative weight given to synthetic/analytic
phonics, whole word/language, onset/rhyme etc
Policy/guidance does not yet have a sound enough
base in research evidence. In particular, insufficient attention
has been paid to the Johnston and Watson research in Scotland,
which has provided strong evidence that English-speaking children
learn to read and spell better with synthetic phonics than with
the more analytic type of phonics found in the National Literacy
Strategy (NLS). "Synthetic" phonics teaches beginners
letter-sound correspondences, starting with the simplest, and
immediately teaches them to use this knowledge as their first
strategy for reading all words: they produce a sound for each
letter (and, in due course, digraph etc.) and synthesise (blend)
the sounds. "Analytic" phonics allows and even encourages
beginners to identify words by non-phonic strategies as a first
step (eg whole-word recognition or the whole-language type of
reliance on picture- and context-cues) and only then to "loop
back", in the words of the NLS paper for the March 2003 DfES
phonics seminar, to analyse the words to see how the letter-sound
correspondences work. NLS guidance thus continues to lie towards
the analytic end of the spectrum, diluting phonics with non-research-based
whole-word and whole-language elements at the crucial beginner-level.
If some teachers encourage children to use phonics strategies
only "as a last resort", as noted in the NLS paper mentioned
above, this is arguably because they see NLS guidance as implying
that this is exactly what they should be doing: as stated in the
Ofsted report The National Literacy Strategy: the first four
years, 1998-2002, "the `searchlights' model of reading
gives insufficient emphasis in the early stages to the teaching
of phonics". The onset-rime approach never had a sound basis
in research. It assumed that beginners would start with whole
words learnt as "sight words" rather than with single
letters and their sounds, but its leading UK proponent (Prof Usha
Goswami) subsequently conceded that "it may well be easier
to begin teaching children about letters . . . and then to proceed
to instruction about larger units such as rimes" (Journal
of Experimental Child Psychology 82, 2002).
Putting policy into practice—how effectively
is guidance being translated into practice? What variation exists
in practice?
Much of the guidance is probably being translated
quite faithfully into practice, but this is part of the problem,
because, as suggested above, some of the guidance is itself poor.
In my voluntary work at a Key Stage 2 school, I can see that many
children have been taught, in the Key Stage 1 schools they have
previously attended, to identify words by using picture-cues and
context-cues exactly as suggested by certain NLS materials: the
Early Literacy Support video, for example, shows a teacher encouraging
children to work words out from the pictures (see critique on
pages 12-15 of Newsletter 47 at www.rrf.org.uk). Poor guidance
leads to poor teaching practices which leave too many children
not understanding that the first step in reading is to translate
letters into sounds and blend the sounds together.
Introduction of early literacy strategies—teaching
children to read from a very early age
UK research has shown that synthetic phonics
can enable children to make a very good start on reading even
before the age of five, can produce excellent short- and long-term
results with both boys and girls, and can greatly reduce under-achievement:
see Johnston and Watson's study presented at the March 2003 DfES
phonics seminar, and also the Grant study published in Newsletter
52 at www.rrf.org.uk. This is because children are allowed to
walk before being expected to run: they learn to produce sounds
in response to letters and to read simple words by sounding out
and blending. The NLS, however, expects them to run before they
can walk, working words out from context and grammar and learning
irregular words as "sight words" before being given
time to master the alphabetic principle in a straightforward way.
The success or otherwise of current policies compared
to those being pursued in other countries—paying due attention
to differences dictated by different languages
With a genuine synthetic phonics approach, "differences
dictated by different languages" are largely irrelevant in
the earliest stages, in the sense that English-speaking children
can be started off on reading words which are as simple as any
which German, Italian or Spanish beginners would be required to
read. This allows them to apply letter-sound knowledge just as
well as children learning to read in other languages—see,
for example, the article by Dr Karin Landerl in European Journal
of Psychology of Education XV, 2000. Children learning to
read in English certainly need eventually to master complexities
which other children do not encounter, but this is not a reason
for confronting them with the complexities from the outset. They
should first be given time to master the basic principles of the
alphabetic code. Landerl makes the point that phonics teaching
may be even more important in English than in other languages
because children are less likely to work out the complex letter-sound
correspondence system for themselves. The evidence suggests that
the best results are produced when beginners are taught to rely
fully on phonic decoding, not on memorising sight-words or working
words out from pictures and context as sanctioned by the NLS.
The relative value of pre-literacy experience—by
comparison to those countries with later age start to education
"Pre-literacy experience" is genuine
pre-literacy experience in other countries: oral language skills
and an interest in reading are fostered (eg through stories read
aloud by adults), but the children themselves are not expected
to read any words at all, least of all by using cues from pictures,
context or grammar. When reading instruction starts, it is purely
phonics-based, and children are not confused by being expected
to use non-phonic as well as phonic strategies. The methods used
to teach beginners are more important than the age at which instruction
starts. Teaching can start before children turn five, but it needs
to be simple and research-based.
Points to ponder
Are there any studies which have shown NLS methods
producing better short- and long-term results than the Johnston
and Watson study in Clackmannanshire or the Grant study at St
Michael's School, Stoke Gifford, both of which have followed children
to the end of their primary education? If so, where are these
studies? If not, how can the NLS continue to be officially regarded
as the best option for raising reading standards?
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