The simple view of reading - explained

The Simple View of Reading- explained
What is the 'Simple View of Reading'? Henrietta Dombey from the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) takes us through the background to our understanding of how children actually learn to read. In this article she unpicks and questions the thinking behind a diet based on SVR.
What is it?
As a formula, The Simple View of Reading (SVR) presents Reading Comprehension (RC) as the product of Listening Comprehension (LC) and Decoding (D). That is, RC = LC x D. as demonstrated in the diagram in Figure 1.
The SVR was adopted by the Rose Report and forms a central part of the Primary National Strategy’s view of literacy learning (Rose, 2006; DfES, 2006). But it is not a recent idea. In the 1980s, when the ‘reading wars’ raged, this equation was put forward as an attempt to reconcile the two opposing camps of early literacy teaching – the Whole Language or ‘Real Books’ approach on the one hand and the Phonics view on the other (Gough and Tumner, 1986). These two approaches are often represented as ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’.
Gough and Tumner claimed that the SVR acknowledges the value of the Whole Language approach by positioning reading as a linguistic activity, but also gives Phonics an essential role. However, neither side was happy: those in the Whole Language camp saw insufficient recognition of the complexity of linguistic competence and the reader’s expectation of text, while those in the Phonics camp saw insufficient detail about the processes involved in decoding. Most researchers and professionals now agree that reading involves both, but many consider that the relationship between them is not shown adequately in the SVR equation.
It has nonetheless been used to frame what is now a mandatory approach to the teaching of reading in England’s primary schools (DfES, 2006). With decoding equated with synthetic phonics, it is used to support the idea that synthetic phonics “should be the prime approach used in the teaching of early reading” (DfES, 2006, p. 54).
English spelling and synthetic phonics
The complexity and lack of consistency of the relationship between spoken words and their written representations in English poses a very real problem for literacy learners. As we all know well, in such common words as ‘was’ and ‘said’, there is no straightforward one to one match between every phoneme and grapheme (the letter or group of letters representing a phoneme).
The vowels in words such as ‘fast’ and ‘ball’ pose problems. However, many apparently irregular spellings in English follow rime patters, that is to say that the pronunciation of the vowel is determined by the following consonants. So although the letter ‘a’ represents different phonemes in ‘cast’ and ‘call, the rime units have the same value in ‘fast’ and ‘fall’, and also ’past’ and ‘pall’.
Words such as ‘duvet’ and ’foyer’ retain their French spelling. The letters ‘ed’ on the end of ‘strolled’, ‘jumped’ and ‘landed’ all mark the past tense, but are pronounced in three different ways.
Synthetic phonics teaches children to ‘build up’ words, through sounding them out, one grapheme at a time. This works well for languages such as Spanish and Finnish. But it simply does not work for many of the commonest words of English. Given this complexity, the term ‘decoding’, when applied to reading English, must be taken to mean more than synthetic phonics.
Meanwhile, there have been significant advances in studies of decoding, which is taken here to refer to the identification of English words, rather than the pseudo words with ‘phonic’ spelling. A number of studies have proposed a ‘dual route’ model of reading (e.g., Castles, 2006). In this model, the straightforward phonological path (‘sounding out’) is supplemented by an additional ‘orthographic’ path for reading English.
Morphology and semantic knowledge
So it is hardly surprising that researchers such as Plaut (2005) have shown that word recognition in English is influenced by morphology and semantics, as well as phonology and orthography. Our knowledge of morphology (units of word meaning) aids our recognition of complex words such as ‘misled’.
Written language differs in a number of important respects from spoken language. The vocabulary and syntax (Crystal and Davy, 1969), the larger structures (Tannen, 1982) and the use of cohesive devices (Halliday and Hassan, 1976), which knit it into a textured whole, combine to make written language markedly distinct from spoken. Even a story written for young children, such as Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak, 1970) differs in all these respects from the language spoken between parent and child.
The extent to which batteries of ‘objective’ questions posed on short passages can assess a child’s capacity to make sense of more demanding texts such as a long story or a detailed account of global warming has been called into question (e.g. Paris and Stahl, 2005). These kinds of texts require more than decoding and listening comprehension. They need skilled reading.
There is much more to word identification than synthetic phonics and much more to text comprehension than understanding spoken language. We need to interpret the terms of the equation with care and recognise its limitations.
• Decoding must be seen to denote the identification of words typical of English texts, including irregular words such as ‘said’ and ‘island’. It should not be equated with synthetic phonics, but should involve ‘flexible unit size strategies’ (Brown and Deavers, 1999), morphology and semantics.
• Listening Comprehension should be taken to include comprehension of written text.
• Reading comprehension should be thought of in more complex ways than standardised comprehension tests imply.
• The two aspects of learning to read should not be conceptualised as rigidly separated. Instead we should see reading as a multi-level interactive process (Rumelhart, 1976).
The difference between spoken and written language, and between the processes involved in listening and reading, coupled with the overlap between decoding and comprehension indicate that to teach children to read English effectively, we need to do more than teach them synthetic phonics and careful listening.
Classroom implications
Currently the SVR frames and justifies the heavy emphasis given to synthetic phonics in England’s official view of the teaching of reading to young children (DfES, 2006). But in so doing it neglects much of what we now know about language, spelling and the processes of making sense of spoken and written language.
We need to recognise that the complexity of English orthography makes learning to read in English particularly challenging. So we need to:
• encourage children to use rime and other sources of information to identify words;
• help them adopt ‘flexible unit size’ strategies;
• alert them to the morphological and orthographic patterning of English words;
• familiarise them with the language of books;
• teach them to make the most of the opportunities written text offers to the reader to search for meaning in a focused and flexible way.
All this needs to be done in a rich environment of meaning-making, where children are helped to draw on their developing understanding of a text to aid in the identification of its words, and to look at those words in close detail to refine their comprehension.
We also need to ensure that children are helped to see the rewards in terms of the construction of interesting meaning that can come from reading. To this end we must ensure that, as we teach children to read, a simplistic equation does not obscure the need for attention to such essential matters as enjoyment, engagement and perseverance.
Among its many activities, the United Kingdom Literacy Association is currently engaged in Building Communities of Readers (Cremin et al., 2009). This research project involves primary schools in five LAs working to develop the range of children’s reading, addressing concerns that the Simple View of Reading puts at serious risk.
References
Brown, G.D.A. and Deavers, R.P. (1999) Units of analysis in non-word reading: evidence from children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 73, pp. 208-242
Castles, A. (2006). The dual route model and the developmental dyslexias. London Review of Education, 4(1), 49-61.
Cremin, T., Mottram, M., Collins, F., Powell, S. and Safford, K. Teachers as readers: building communities of readers. Literacy 43, 1, pp. 11-19
Crystal, D. and Davy, D. (1969) Investigating English Style. London: Longman
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2006) Primary National Strategy: Primary framework for literacy and mathematics. Norwich, OPSI
Goodman, Y.M., Watson, D.J. and Burke, C.L. (2005) Reading Miscue Inventory: From evaluation to instruction Katonah NY: Richard C. Owen
Goswami, U. (2008) Reading, complexity and the brain. Literacy, 42,2 pp. 67-74
Goswami, U. and Bryant, P. (1990) Phonological Skills and Learning to Read. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Gough, P. B. & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.
Halliday, M.A.K. and Hassan, RRR. (1976) Cohesion in English. London: Longman
Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Paris, S. G. & Stahl, S. A. (Eds.) (2005) Children's reading comprehension and assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Plaut, D. C. (2005). Connectionist approaches to reading. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook . pp 24-38 Oxford UK: Blackwell publishing.
Rose, J. (2006). Independent review of the teaching of early reading. Department for Education and Skills. www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/rosereview/ Retrieved 26.3.2009.
Rumelhart, D. (1976) Toward an Interactive Model of Reading. Technical Report No. 56. San Diego Center for Human Information Processing, University of California at San Diego
Sendak, M. (1970) Where the Wild Things Are Harmondswoth, UK: Penguin
Tannen, D. (Ed.) (1982) Spoken and Written Language: Exploring orality and literacy. Norwood NJ: Ablex
Ziegler, J. C.& Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 3-29.
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