Learning to read is an incredibly complex task for the human brain to accomplish. It is not a natural process that we are born knowing how to do. “As adults, we systematically underestimate how difficult it is to read.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 230) As I worked my way through chapter 5 of Stanislas Dehaene’s book Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read, I was struck with how many exact quotes I wanted to cite. In this chapter, Dehaene gets to the heart of learning to read, explains how the brain is impacted, and offers advice for educators. (Note: I receive a commission from Amazon if you purchase the book from any link in this blog.)
Join me in this blog series to summarize each chapter of his research-based book and how it changes what we know about learning to read. To start back at the beginning, read a summary blog of Stanislas Dehaene and the introduction to this book.
Learning to Read – Advice #1
Mythbusters. Dehaene points to clear, convincing, and repeated research to debunk several myths that surround learning to read:
- We are born as blank slates ready to be taught via our perceptions or sensory experiences. NOT TRUE according to Dehaene. The brain’s circuitry, already functioning at birth, just needs a tiny reorientation to begin the unnatural process of reading and writing. “Even in the first year of life, however, the two main faculties that will later be recycled for reading are already being put into place: speech comprehension and invariant visual recognition.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 197) From speech to vision to facial recognition, an infant’s brain within the first few months of life is already the language acquisition network.
- Learning to read happens via the global or whole language method. NOT TRUE according to Dehaene. Instead, he directly refutes these types of methods and states “grapheme-phoneme conversion radically transforms the child’s brain and the way in which it processes speech sounds…[and this process] must be taught explicitly.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 219) Microphone drop.
Learning to Read – Advice #2
Another mythbuster: there are many reliable ways to teach reading. NOT TRUE. Dehaene is loud and clear on learning to read. “It is simply not true that there are hundreds of ways to learn to read. Every child is unique…but when it comes to reading, all have roughly the same brain that imposes the same constraints and the same learning sequences.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 218)
Regardless of the language (French, English, Chinese, Hebrew, etc…), learning to read ought to take children 2-3 years of mapping the sticks and circles for reading to begin to take on meaning. Dehaene does NOT state that by grade 2 or 3 that children no longer need reading instruction. Rather, for those who have solid grapheme-phoneme correspondence, reading instruction continues to focus more on vocabulary building, more oral language growth, more background knowledge growth, and more fluency – just to name a few.
Learning to Read – Advice #3
Another mythbuster: Recognizing a whole word (the whole language approach) is fast and more efficient than sounding out a word letter-by-letter. NOT TRUE. All learners begin slowly in the first few years of learning to read. When a reader is orthographically mapping each sound-to-letter correspondence, reading time is related to the number of letters in a word.
As expert adult readers, we have forgotten that we had to orthographically map these sound-letter routes in our brains. As those sound-letter correspondences became more automatic, our speed in reading increased. Our expert adult brains process many letters (up to 8) simultaneously and in parallel with meaning (rather than one letter after the other as with new readers).
“The punchline is quite simple: we know that conversion of letters into sounds is the key stage in reading acquisition. All teaching efforts should be initially focused on…the grasp of the alphabetic principle whereby each letter or grapheme represents a phoneme.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 228)
Also, “the children with the best scores in decoding single words and pseudo-words also perform best on sentence and text comprehension.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 227)
Microphone drop again. However, this does not mean that the Simple View of Reading should be ignored. Both decoding and language comprehension skills are needed for reading acquisition.
Learning to Read – Advice #4
When learning to read, massive complex operations take place in the brain before decoding a word. “Our brain takes each string apart, then recomposes it into a hierarchy of letters, bigrams, syllables, and morphemes. [It’s only because of] effortless reading … that these decomposition and recomposition stages (segmenting and blending) have become entirely automatic and unconscious.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 219)
I feel as though with the above quote, Dehaene simplified into one sentence the process of learning to read. As adult expert readers, we do not recognize the complexities involved in reading acquisition. This research-backed evidence strengthens the need for explicit and systematic instruction when learning to read.
Learning to Read – Advice #5
Comprehension is ALWAYS the end goal of reading. Always. What is the goal of reading instruction?
“It must aim to lay down an efficient neuronal hierarchy, so that a child can recognize letters and graphemes and easily turn them into speech sounds. All other essential aspects of the literate mind – the mastery of spelling, the richness of vocabulary, the nuances of meaning, and the pleasures of literature – depend on this crucial step.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 219)
Can a single quote be the entire “Learning to Read” advice? It has to be. His quote is so succinct and spot on.
Learning to Read – Advice #6
Dehaene finally becomes direct when giving suggestions to educators:
- Grapheme-phoneme correspondence must be explicitly taught.
- “Introduction of graphemes must occur in logical order” beginning with the simplest. (Dehaene, 2010, p. 228)
- Grapheme-phoneme correspondence “is not an end in itself – in the long run, it only makes sense if it leads to meaning.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 229)
- “Each reading period should end with reading words or sentences that can be easily understood and that the child can repeat, summarize, or paraphrase.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 229)
- Do not trace the global outlines of words.
- Do not draw a child’s attention to the letter patterns of tall, short, and dipping letter formations in a word.
- Do not distract a child’s attention with illustrations that outweigh the text when learning to read.
- Do not overstimulate a child’s brain when learning to read. Return to plain texts and writing on a small whiteboard to practice the gesture of handwriting.
- Do not go too fast and introduce words or sentences with graphemes and phonemes that have not been explicitly taught.
Learning to Read – Advice #7
Dehaene’s explicit and expert advice on learning to read continues:
- Do not improvise or decide at the last minute to work on a new sound or a specific new set of words. Stick to the cumulative and sequential scope and sequence of your foundational skills program.
- Do not include words beyond their current knowledge. Do not include:
- Unusual pronunciations
- Silent letters
- Double consonants
- Peculiar endings such as the suffix “-tion”
This does not mean that those components are not taught. Rather those components are taught as part of a systematic and cumulative scope and sequence that moves from the simplest of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (one letter, one sound) to more complex correspondences.
Learning to Read – Final Thoughts
Much research has gone into the conclusion “that phonemic awareness is a prerequisite to reading acquisition. In other words, the discovery of phonemes precedes that of graphemes.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 202) How can we discard and ignore the results of a body of evidence and research? The idea of the science of reading is not just a French neuroscientist offering up a random hypothesis. There is a wealth of studies for the past 50 years to show the findings that Dehaene states in chapter 5.
The question becomes, Do we feel a sense of urgency to shift our instructional practices towards an evidence-based, data-driven approach? A final quote from Dehaene for this blog: “I expect teachers and educators […] to invest as much obsessive care in the design of lessons as my colleagues and I do when we prepare a psychological experiment.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 230)
As we answer the question of urgency within ourselves, we also should commit to:
- be kind to myself, make peace with the unavoidable reality that there are things I have missed, misunderstood, and misinterpreted
- honestly appraise my current practices with an open heart and open mind
- recognizing and reflect on my own triggers and biases
- actively work to lower my defenses so I can raise my awareness
- reconsider, reprioritize, or simply let go of less helpful practices, in order to make space for some that are more effective
- take action rather than giving in to the paralysis of self-doubt (Burkins & Yates, 2022, p. 7)
My name is Lisa with L’Essentiel French Resources and join me again for Chapter 6 of this amazing book about learning to read. There are videos on my YouTube Channel: L’Essentiel French Resources – consider watching and giving me a like, please.
Resources:
Burkins, J. M., & Yates, K. (2022). Shifting the balance: 6 ways to bring the science of reading into the balanced literacy classroom. Hawker Brownlow Education.
Dehaene, S. (2010). Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read. Penguin Books.
(I receive a commission from Amazon if you purchase the book from any of the links in this blog.)
Grainger, J., & Ziegler, J. C. (2011). A dual-route approach to orthographic processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00054
