The National Party’s website states that ‘under a National Government, every child will learn to read using the proven “structured literacy” approach in order to turn around declining educational achievement and give all kids the best chance of success in life.’ This is to be lauded, but it is not as simple as it first seems. If there is to be a mandate, what, precisely, should that entail?
No branch of the social sciences has been as thoroughly researched as the science of reading. Thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – of highly credible, peer-reviewed research studies all point in the same direction, telling us what competent decoding and spelling involve. But how this best translates into classroom practice has not had the same rigorous research attention; credible comparative research into the efficacy of various evidence-based approaches to delivering this science into the classroom is thin on the ground. No one approach can yet claim to be the silver bullet, the gold standard.
So what does the term structured literacy mean? On the face of it, it means teaching literacy in a structured way. By itself that is meaningless. All teaching should be sequential and structured, building the skills: how to drive a car, how to play a guitar, how to walk a tightrope, and how to read. But it is also a term that has been adopted to mean a specific structured approach to teaching children to read and spell. Ownership of the term is not ownership of the science. There is more than one approach firmly based on the science of reading used in this country and elsewhere, and we do not yet have the evidence telling us definitively which, if any, is best, which, if any, should be mandated.
We know that learning to read is phonics-based, developing the skills involved in matching letters to the sounds of speech, and the spelling of a word to its pronunciation. We know it involves the ability to detect the individual sounds in spoken words, to match those sounds to letters or letter clusters, and the ability to convert the string of letters/sounds on the page into the spoken form. All competent readers and spellers have developed the skills involved, often in spite of the teaching methods they were exposed to.
But of course it is more complicated than that. English is a complex language with multiple parent strands, each with their own spelling conventions. The sh of shop and shut is represented most commonly by ti, ci or si in the Latin strand (patient, precious, tension), and by ch in words that have come to us from French (machine, parachute). Pronunciation has changed, often markedly, for many words since their spelling was standardised: ‘said’ and ‘laugh’ probably once made perfect phonetic sense. Discovering how to make the match for all words demands sophisticated skills. It becomes a question of how to most effectively develop those skills.
Should children be taught a series of rules? Rules that apply in one strand do not necessarily apply in the others. Teaching rules, many argue, helps young children make sense of the most basic elements of the code, but if these rules do not apply in the Latin or Greek strands of English, encountered as students advance, is it appropriate to develop this thinking at all? Does teaching rules add an unnecessary layer of complexity, or is it truly helpful?
How should longer words be analysed to make blending possible? Syllables are the most obvious divisions in spoken English, but in written English repeating patterns emerge, often crossing syllable boundaries. Units such as att, emb, ump, str, acious, or ution have just one possible pronunciation. Which should be the focus, the syllables of speech or the patterns of print? Or both?
Beginner readers will encounter many words that do not fit with the most common patterns they have been taught: ‘they’, ‘was’, and ‘come’, for instance. Should these words be treated as exceptions, with bits that need to be learnt by heart? If we do this, are we teaching students that many words do not make sense, cannot be figured out from their make-up alone? As they advance, students will come across the vast array of orthographic patterns, the myriad ways letters and letter clusters relate to speech sounds, far more than it is possible to directly teach. How are they to persevere with figuring out these words if they believe that the spelling pattern of many words makes no sense? How should this all be managed?
How far should we go teaching our students about the structure of English and how it works? Kids do not need to know all there is to know about the science in order to learn to read. What do they need to know? The goal is, after all, to teach children to read and write, not to teach the science of reading.
How is progress to be measured? We must not lose sight of the ultimate goal of producing truly literate adults. Is the student who reads effortlessly at eight developing the more sophisticated ways of thinking about words that they will need in secondary school and beyond, when they will encounter unfamiliar vocabulary and technical language? Or will this student stall just a few years down the track, as so many do?
It is simply wrong to mandate one specific approach, certainly until we know more. But there are some basic principles that should – must – be followed.
The old three-cueing approach, in essence guessing at words, must go.
Students must systematically learn how words work, how letters relate to speech sounds, and how the make-up of a word in print relates to its pronunciation. Much should be directly taught, but the huge complexity of English requires students to figure out the rest themselves, and they must develop the skills to do so.
They must also learn to comprehend text, and to write.
Before anything more specific is mandated, we need definitive evidence. We need to know which route or routes are the most reliable and reach all students, including those diagnosed as dyslexic. We need a system or systems that are manageable in the classroom and cost-effective.
We are not there yet. We must remember that popular does not necessarily mean best, and that what seems logical and intuitive may not stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. Let’s not make hasty decisions, mandating a narrow path based on good but ill-informed intentions. Our future as a country of literate adults able to fully engage in society depends on getting this right.
