[AAACE-NLA] CASAS or EFF: Faith- or Evidence-Based?

[Kaizen Program]

Most teachers who utilize wholistic approaches, including me, teach phonics
as only one part of a complex mix of important elements that students need
to grasp in order to become literate. We put a great deal of emphasis on
building on what students already know, encouraging students to extrapolate
and think about meaning--context and understanding--and we do a lot of
modeling, both in demonstrating sounding out and pronunciation and in
reading aloud with meaning in mind, etc.

I do not know any teachers who think that students will automatically learn
to read if texts are just given to them, and I do not know any wholistic
teachers who ignore phonics when it is appropriate for students to learn and
practice.

When teaching adults or children who are speakers of other languages, we
become acutely aware of the difficulties of "sounding out" words in the
English language, when exceptions to the rules for sounding out must be
utilized something like fifty percent of the time, and the fact that those
words that sound as if they rhyme for those of us who speak English as our
first language may not sound as if they rhyme for those who come from
different language backgrounds. And words we think sound somewhat different
may be difficult to distinguish for those who come from other language
backgrounds.

Also, older people may be particularly challenged in this area, not
necessarily because they have cognitive difficulties, but because they have
slight hearing loss and find it difficult to distinguish consonants.

But, a lot of this can be overcome when we teach literacy by building on
what students already know, with the emphasis on meaning and context, and
remember that the purpose of learning literacy is communication (be it with
oneself for reminders and record keeping or with others for diverse
purposes).

Here, below, is some more food for thought.

+++

Phonics And Dialects Of English

What is Phonics?

English, together with many other European languages, is written with the
Roman alphabet.  Each of the languages that use this alphabet modifies it to
fit the particular nature of that language.  For example, Spanish and French
use accent marks over vowels.  Scandinavian languages add some vowel
letters.  English uses some letter combinations--th, sh, ch, ph--to
represent single sounds.
Phonics refers to the system of relationships between the sound system of a
language and the writing system of that language.  Phonics is not the
relationship between letters and sounds, but the relationships between
systems.  The relationships are much more complicated than letters to
sounds. In alphabetic writing, the letters and patterns of letters relate to
meaning as well as to the sounds and sound patterns of the oral language.
Sometimes, it may seem like the relationship is between letters and sounds.
In writing the word "man," for example, the letters m, a, and n each relate
to a sound of the oral word.  But consider the word "mane".  The change in
vowel sounds from "man" to "mane" involves the addition of an extra letter
as a marker.  The writing system uses the vowel-consonant-e pattern to
differentiate two sets of English vowels.  So we have pan-pane, can-cane,
van-vane.  There is another pattern in spelling that contrasts man-main,
pan-pain, ran-rain.  This illustrates that phonics really involves relating
patterns to patterns, not individual sounds to individual letters.
But now consider other words, "main" and "Maine", which sound the same as
"mane"; they are homophones.  All languages--not just English--have
homophones, words that mean different things but sound the same.  Having
different spellings for words that sound the same may help a bit in reading.
For writing, however, one must remember which which-witch is which, and
which pair-pear-pare is the fruit.  And, of course, words which sound
different may be homographs, sharing the same spelling.  Read-read,
lead-lead, and desert-desert are examples.
English tends to have such complexities because of the multiple language
roots that contributed to the language.  The letter n seems to be a stable
spelling of the last sound in "man".  But from our Danish roots we get kn as
in "know", "knew", "knee", "knight", "knife", etc.  From our Greek roots we
get "gnaw", "gnat", "gneiss".  We also get the pn spelling in "pneumonia"
and "pneumatic".  A variant of the n sound can be spelled gn at the ends of
words, as in "campaign", "reign", and "sign," "resign," "design."  That
comes from our French roots.
But notice that when "sign" becomes "signal", the g and n represent separate
sounds.  That happens also with "designate".  But if the affixes are
grammatical, like s, ed, or ing, there is no g sound:  "signs", "signed",
"signing".
Here's another problem with our n sound spellings.  The n sound is what
linguists call a nasal.  It kind of goes up our noses.  In many dialects of
English, it all but disappears up our noses, and can't really be heard,
before certain consonants, particularly t and d.  Examples are "want",
"went", "band", "bend".  The spelling keeps the n even though the sound is
hardly heard.
This is not a unique complexity.  A unit like "man" may represent a
different sound pattern depending on the word it is a part of (for example
"manic" and "maniac").  In oral language, sounds change in regular ways
depending on other sounds following them.  That's partly because of where
the mouth parts are for each sound; as tongue, lips, teeth, vocal chords
change position, they change the sounds.  The spelling, however, often does
not change.  An example is "site".  Add an affix and that becomes "situate".
The t of "site" is still there but the sound is not t  but ch.  When
"situate" becomes "situation", the second t stays in the spelling but the
sound goes from t to sh.  By keeping the spelling, we preserve the meaning
relationship which would be lost if we kept the phonic relationship
constant.
Add one more common complexity of English phonics.  Several hundred years
ago, the sound of all unaccented vowels shifted to a common sound, usually
called schwa by language scholars.  So the vowel in the unaccented second
syllable of "woodsman" is not the vowel in "man" but a schwa.  Function
words like "to", "can", "was", "were", "and", "or" are usually unaccented.
That means that at least the second most common sound of any vowel is this
very common sound.  Think of the sounds of the vowels in this sentence:
"Can I have a ticket to the game?"  Five of the vowels shift to the schwa in
ordinary usage.

Dialects of English

All English speakers speak and understand at least one dialect, or variant
form, of English.  In the United States, for historical reasons, there are
three major dialects spoken in areas that stretch from East to West.  These
are called Northern, Midland, and Southern.  But there are some more
contained dialects as well, mostly in the Eastern areas settled first:
Downeast Maine, Boston, New York City, Jersey City, Tidewater Virginia, Sea
Islands Gullah (Carolina and Georgia), Appalachian, Cajun, New Orleans and
many more. And, of course, England, Canada, Australia and other English
speaking countries also have regional dialects.
The dialect patterns in the U.S. are complicated because as industry
developed in Northern cities, people came seeking jobs, and brought their
regional dialects with them.  And in many parts of the country, class and
ethnic differences as well as immigrant language influences are also
reflected in dialect differences.
Before the twentieth century spelling was not really conventional or
standard across dialects; people invented their own spellings to represent
the way they thought their own speech sounded.  But as printing became
widespread, spelling became standard across dialects.  And to add another
complication, English is somewhat unusual in that a group of American
intellectuals, including Noah Webster, deliberately rejected some British
spellings in order to make North American literature easily recognized.
Some examples are the British "labour" replaced by the North American
"labor", the British "jewellery" replaced by the North American "jewelry",
the British "centre" replaced by the North American "center".  Now, there is
standard American spelling and standard British spelling.
The problem different dialects presents for phonics is this:  there is a
single spelling across North American English dialects that pronounce words
very differently.  In Northern dialects there are double consonants at the
end of "test", "breakfast", and "desk".  In Southern speech these are
pronounced "tes'", "breakfas'", "des'".  There is an l sound in "help" in
the North, none in the South ("he'p").  But in midland dialects, "help" has
two syllables, "hey-ulp".  There are at least four ways of saying "almond",
two with and two without the l.  In certain dialects an r sound is added to
words ending in vowels ("idea", "Cuba", "media") but not produced in words
that already have an ending r ("car", "dear", "meteor").
Vowels vary considerably from dialect to dialect.  Which of these words have
the same vowel for you:  frog, fog, bog, cog, dog, hog, smog, grog, log,
clog, tog.  In some English dialects the vowels are all the same.  In others
there are two vowels; one in frog, fog, dog, hog, log and the other in bog,
cog, smog, clog, tog.  Where does your list break?  None of these are right
or wrong.  It's just a dialect difference.
Each of us develops phonics rules that fit the speech sounds of our own
dialects.  That doesn't have to be a problem unless teachers insist there is
a single set of phonics rules for all American English speakers.
Unfortunately, people who speak lower class dialects and regionally
transplanted people of all classes are the ones who will suffer most from
such an insistence.  They will be confused by being taught that letter
patterns represent sound patterns that are foreign to their ears.  The worst
problems will come if teachers try to change the speech of their students to
fit the phonics rules.  One common English spelling is the gh in words like
"fight", "eight", "light", "might", "night", "right", "sight", "tight".
That seems to be a holdover from Scottish and other United Kingdom dialects
which do, in fact, have a throaty h found in other Germanic languages but
not usually in English.  But it would confuse most North American English
pspeakers if teachers insisted they must say "likht" because the word is
spelled l-i-g-h-t.  In just the same way, it confuses many North Americans
when they are told they must produce an l in "help", "almond", or "palm".
What rhymes in one dialect doesn't in another ("aunts" rhymes with "wants"
in some dialects, with "pants" in others).  Homophones (marry, Mary, merry)
in one dialect sound different in others.
Phonics is a complicated set of relationships between the sound system and
the writing system.  It includes a set of relationships among sounds (e.g.,
the way the middle vowel and the accented syllable in "telegraph" changes
when the word becomes "telegraphy").  Phonics relationships are complicated
by homophones (pair, pear, pare) and homographs (read, read), by the
multiplicity of roots of English (Greek, German, Latin, Danish, French) and
by the fact that our spelling system is based in part on sound, in part on
meaning, and in part on grammar.  Phonic relationships are learned best the
way language is learned:  through actually using the abstract system (the
phonics system, in this case) in the context of trying to make sense of
meaningful language (language that is read and written, in this case).
Out-of-context, uninformed phonics instruction is not only confusing; it
makes the learning of phonics harder.  And when the rules being taught in
out-of-context lessons do not match the learner's own dialect, it is that
much more confusing and that much harder to learn.

How People Read

By now you may be thinking, "if phonics is so complicated, how can people
read at all?"  The answer is that people don't depend on phonics to read.
In meaningful language contexts it is easy for a reader to sort out the
complexity because the meaning and the grammar, or language structure,
clarify the phonics complexities.  Here are some examples:
The main feature of the male lion is his red mane.  I read about that in a
book I got in the mail last week.  I like to read such books.
In the above sequence, telling "red" from "read" or the past tense from the
present tense of "read" is no problem.  The context makes it clear.
Readers never rely solely on phonic relationships as they read.  Their
preoccupation is with meaning, as it should be.  They predict what will be
in the text and only need a little of the phonic information to make sense
of the whole.  So they are rarely stopped while they figure out what a word
might be from its spelling.  They have plenty of other cues to tell them
what the meaning must be and what part of speech they need.  Furthermore,
the way we eventually learn the alternate spellings of homophones is through
our reading.
Some people argue that students only need to learn  to match letters and
sounds to be able to read.  That leads to the conclusion that if they have
difficulty learning to read it is because they haven't been taught phonics.
But the phonic relationships are not simply a matter of matching letters and
sounds.  Furthermore, these relationships are abstract:  phonics isn't about
the relationship between written letters and sounds; it's about the
relationship between abstract systems.
What we've learned from the study of language development, both oral and
written, is that language is easy to learn when it is used functionally in
the real world to make sense.  Little children understand and make
themselves understood in oral language long before they fully control the
sound system.  That's because they learn language in the context of its use.
New readers learn written language in the same way.  They may learn the
names of letters and even have some sense of how they relate to sounds as
they're learning to read.  But they can only learn the abstract phonics
system in the context of trying to make sense of meaningful written
language.  It is very easy to learn language in meaningful contexts.  It is
not very easy to learn abstractions out of context.  Current research shows
very young children becoming aware of the alphabetic nature of written
English.  They invent spellings as they experiment with writing and are able
to test out their own developing phonics rules.  These invented phonics
rules often show how keenly these young learners discriminate sounds.  They
hear features adults have learned to ignore.  Gradually, young learners also
tune out features which are not important in the system.  Direct instruction
in phonological rules is not what helps babies learn to talk; direct
instruction in phonics is not what helps people learn the complex system of
phonics relationships.
Phonics is an important part of reading alphabetically written language.
But it is only a part.  How do you say "going to?"  Try it in:  "I'm going
to the store." Now try it in:  "I'm going to go home now." Most of us say
something like "gonna" in the second case.  But we don't say it that way in
the first sentence.  That's because the words have different grammatical
functions in the two sentences.  We can't pronounce it until we decide,
intuitively, what its grammar is.
Phonics is an important part of reading English, but when we make it into
the primary focus in teaching reading, we're making these mistakes:  1.
We're turning reading from a process of making sense to one of saying sounds
for letters.  2.  We're ignoring what people already know about how to make
sense of written language.  3.  We're ignoring the meaning and structure of
the language.  That means we are distorting the phonics by taking it out of
the language context. 4.  We're making the learning harder by beginning with
abstractions instead of making the learning easier by beginning with
functional meaningful language. 5.  We're confusing speakers of different
dialects who, therefore, have different sound systems.  6.  We're confusing
speakers whose first language is not English,  who have also learned
different sound systems.   7. We're postponing the payoff:  the joy of
getting the story or the message of the writing.
If we support our students in developing their phonic generalizations while
they are learning to make sense of writing, then we avoid these mistakes.
In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll said it well:  "Take care of the
sense and the sounds will take care of themselves."


Sylvie

Sylvie Kashdan, M.A.
Instructor/Curriculum Coordinator
KAIZEN PROGRAM for New English Learners with Visual Limitations
810-A Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA  98144, U.S.A.
phone:  (206) 784-5619
email:  kaizen_esl at literacynet.org
web:  http://www.nwlincs.org/kaizen/



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <andresmuro at aol.com>
To: <aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] CASAS or EFF: Faith- or Evidence-Based?


If you guys want to understand how people learn to read, and how they
process language, the best text on the subject that I've found is
called "understanding Reading" by Frank Smith. This text is based on
studies with children, but, in my opinion, it applies to adults.

In the past, I've found that most people that advocate phonics and
decosing, don't understand what they are talking about. I got in an
argument with a guy called Tom (I think that his last name was greek).
He would post stuff in support of phonics but could not back up any of
his claims. I posted a message with lots of info on the subject with
references and everything at the request of David Rossen. I'll try to
look for it in the archives.

Andres

Please take a look at my artwork: www.geocities.com/andresmuro/art.html

-----Original Message-----
From: Anita Landoll <amlandoll at yahoo.com>
To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE
<aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 07:35:10 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] CASAS or EFF: Faith- or Evidence-Based?

  Tom,

You are correct. I am seeing and hearing the same
thing within the schools. Teachers are frustrated.
Some students continue to learn to read, and others
continue to not experience success appropriate to
age-level. Yet we continue to have faith that they
will eventually succeed, using present methods.

I think that we make a mistake when we fail to make
every word  decodable for every student. (I believe
that the natural reader uses the decoding center of
the brain to do just that). Many words do not make
natural sense to the visual-spatial learner. However,
when they are able to make "sound sense" of all words,
they learn to read.

Yet NCLB and Reading First continue to teach the idea
of "sight words", presently renamed as "high-frequency
words." "Of course," they say, "we know that these
words just have to be memorized." And we are being
taught all kinds of cute methods to help students
memorize the words.

Yet many students still are unable to process the
words into the automatic recognition area of the
brain, and reading problems persist. Logical sense
would say that we need to teach those students more
efficiently...

Anita   www.learntoreadnow.com



--- tsticht at znet.com wrote:

> January 12, 2006
>
> Competency- or Standards-Based Education for Adult
> Literacy Education:
> Faith-Based or Evidence-Based?
>
> Tom Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
>
> K-12 standards-based education has been around now
> for the last decade, and
> has been reinforced by President Bush?s No Child
> Left Behind program.
> Unfortunately, data from the National Center for
> Education Statistics
> released this year indicate that from 1971 up to
> 2004, a  graph of average
> scores on the NAEP for 9, 13, or 17 year olds for
> the thirty year period
> from 1971 to 2004, on a scale ranging from 200 to
> around 320 scale scores,
> shows that 9 year olds increased from 208 in 1971 to
> 215 in 1980, then fell
> to 209 in 1990 and then rose again to 219 in 2004.
> This is only 4 scale
> score points higher than in 1980.  This is evidence
> of ups and downs over a
> thirty year period but no real improvement. There is
> a more pronounced lack
> of evidence of any average improvement in reading
> for 13 and 17 year olds
> over this period.
>
> The lack of evidence for gains by 9 year olds is
> made even more apparent,
> and disappointing,  when the data for 9 year olds at
> differing percentiles
> of achievement are examined. In 1971 students at the
> 90th percentile scored
> 260, then rose gradually to 266 in 1990 and then
> fell to 264 in 2004. Nine
> year olds at the 50th percentile scored as indicated
> above. Really poorly
> reading students, those at the 10th percentile
> scored 152 in 1971, then
> rose to 165 in 1980 and then rose again to 169 in
> 2004, though the latter
> was not statistically greater than 25 years ago in
> 1980.
>
> Thirteen year olds  at the 10th percentile scored
> 208 in 1971, rose to 213
> in 1988, and then fell to 210 in 2004. The least
> able 17 year old readers,
> those at the 10th percentile, scored 225 in 1971,
> rose to 241 in 1988, and
> then fell to 227 in 2004.
>
> Though there were some improvements in the scores
> for 9 year old
> African-Americans and Hispanics from 1988, scores
> for 13 year olds were
> flat and they actually dropped for 17 year olds.
> Hence there is little
> evidence for the practical impact of standards-based
> education on the
> reading skills of various ethnic groups in over the
> last decade and a half.
>
> The data for the three decades from 1971 to 2004 do
> not show substantial
> increases in reading achievement for 9, 13, or 17
> year olds at various
> percentile ranks, even for the decade after the
> start of standards-based
> education. The NCES data do show that as children go
> up through primary,
> elementary, and secondary school, they do get better
> at reading across the
> percentile spectrum. But in 2004 the bottom ten
> percent of 17 year olds
> scored below the median for 13 year olds, and were
> just 6 scale score
> points above the median for 9 year olds. These
> poorly scoring students will
> no doubt be those who will later discover the real
> life importance of
> literacy and will enter into adult basic education
> to try to gain skills
> needed to support themselves and their families.
>
> Mathematics
> Regarding mathematics, there were gains for 9 and 13
> year olds across the 30
> year period starting in 1971, but no evidence that
> the implementation of
> standards-based education in the decade of the 1990s
> up to the present made
> any acceleration in the rate of improvement which
> started before the
> standards-based education movement. And for 17 year
> old African-Americans
> there were declines in mathematics from 1990 to 2004
> and declines for
> Hispanics from 1992 to 2004.
>
> Overall, the NCES long term trend data for reading
> and mathematics do not
> support the claim that standards-based education
> over the last decade has
> had a positive effect on student achievement in
> these curricula areas.
>
> Efforts to implement either competency-based or
> standards-based  education
> in adult literacy education over the last quarter
> system have also produced
> no evidence to support these reforms. There has been
> no evaluation of the
> Equipped for the Future (EFF) effort and the
> Comprehensive Adult Student
> Assessment System ( CASAS) with its competency-based
> education (CBE)
> approach has produced no evidence that programs
> implementing CBE are more
> effective than programs that do not implement CBE.
>
> At the present time, then, the movement to implement
> either CBE or EFF
> content standards education in adult literacy
> education is progressing as a
> faith-based rather than an evidence-based movement.
>
> Thomas G. Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
> 2062 Valley View Blvd.
> El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
> Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
> Email: tsticht at aznet.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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>



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