Learning to read is almost as complex as learning to write. (But that’s a different blog.) How do we learn to read? As a classroom teacher, this is a critical question to answer. When we understand how people learn to read, then we can optimize how we teach people to read.
While I do not explore the detailed neuroscience of the brain in this blog, I will summarize the first part of chapter 1 in Stanislas Dehaene’s book Reading in the brain: the new science of how we read. If you’re looking to find out information on Dehaene, head back to the previous blog where I introduce him and the book: “Introduction to Reading in the Brain – Stanislas Dehaene – 3 Important Wow Moments.”
Learning to read – 3 myths
Myth #1 – Seventeenth century philosopher John Locke believed that one is a blank slate at birth. Everything we learn is from our environment and our experiences.
NO
Stanislas Dehaene states that we are born with intact circuitry. Where is the proof? Many studies have been done to study the surprise of babies and toddlers and objects or faces that appear, disappear, and multiply in number. Scientists measure their degree of surprise, length of their gaze, or where their eyes track. (Dehaene, 2021, p. 54) Suffice it to say that the neuroscientists are ON IT. There are many examples of studies in chapter 1 of the book.
When we get to elementary school, we repurpose parts of our “born-with” circuitry when learning to read. The occipital lobe is the part of the brain that recognizes faces and these facial-recognition circuits are repurposed to recognize letters when learning to read. (The reading brain: Essential practices for educators 2023)
Where is that proof? Non-invasive technology, such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), allows us to see which areas of the brain light up when non-readers are learning to read.
Myth #2 – A good reader’s eyes will glide smoothly across a page like an efficient scanner.
NO
Stanislas Dehaene explains that the eyes do not glide across a page. When we read a sentence, the center of our retina (the back of the eyeball) captures a fixation point. Each fixation point captures only ten to twelve letters at a time and this narrow field of vision forces our eye sensors to read the page “by jerking our eyes around every two or three tenths of a second…[like a] series of snapshots.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 17)
Myth #3 – The pathway in learning to read is to transform words on a page (print) into sound (reading out loud or reading quietly in our heads). NO
The pathway in learning to read is to read a string of letters in a word then move to the meaning of the word and then move to the meaning of the sentence. NO
“In adults, both reading routes exist, and both are simultaneously active.” (Dehaene, 2010, p. 26) This means the brain has two processing routes and both work together at the same time:
- the phonological route (letters become speech sounds)
- the lexical route (meaning is pulled from our lexicon / our mental dictionary)
Learning to read – The two routes
Phonological route – Psychologists treat the brain and learning to read like the insides of a computer and its algorithm. At birth, our brains are naturally hard-wired with circuitry to learn any of the world’s 7,000 languages. (Kuhl, How babies learn language 2024) Even though it takes over a year for a baby to pronounce his first word, already after six months, a baby tunes into the “unique acoustic properties” of the language. This phonological route is fine-tuned with exquisite care and precision to be able to hear a parent’s voice from among many voices.
Lexical route – Our brains (for children or adults) are constantly searching for meaning when presented with unknown information. Our brain circuitry speeds through its system of previously known mental models as it works to sort the new information and attach it to something we already understand. The brain defaults automatically to do this in the fastest and most efficient way possible.
Learning to read – What does it mean for our classrooms?
It is essential that teachers understand the two processing routes and how efficiently and quickly they want to work together. Hollis Scarborough’s Rope shows the two major routes and how they are raveled together/unraveled with the sub-skills that make up the two processing routes:
Gough and Tunmer (1986) displayed the two routes in their “Simple View of Reading”:
Today, Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright expand and update the above reading models with what is called the “active view of reading’:
We think learning to read is effortless but actually, it is an automaticity develops after years and years of structured and explicit practice to train our brain circuitry.
Whew. That was a blog full of brain moments – but our melons, our nogens, our coconuts can handle this new information. I diverted slightly from Stanislas Dehaene’s book during the “Classroom Implications” section but the reading model visuals are helpful to break up the text.
My name is Lisa with L’Essentiel French Resources. Find videos of these blogs at my YouTube channel: L’Essentiel French Resources. Join me in the next blog where I’ll still be in chapter 1 of Dehaene’s book Reading in the Brain. Please clicking “like” below and following me on my YouTube channel. I’m just starting my journey to learn about learning to read.
Resources:
– Dehaene, S. (2021). How we learn: Why brains learn better than any machine…for now. Penguin Books..
– Dehaene, S. (2010). Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read. Penguin Books. (I receive a commission if you purchase either Dehaene book from Amazon.)
– Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25-S44. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rrq.411
– Geiger, A. (2024, February 12). The simple view of reading and Scarborough’s reading rope. The Measured Mom. https://www.themeasuredmom.com/the-simple-view-of-reading-and-scarboroughs-reading-rope/
-Kuhl, P. K. (2024, February 20). How babies learn language. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-babies-learn-language/
– Scarbreadingrope. Arizona Department of Education. (2021, August 6). https://www.azed.gov/scienceofreading/scarbreadingrope – The reading brain: Essential practices for educators. Lexia. (2023, May 1). https://www.lexialearning.com/blog/the-reading-brain-essential-practices-for-educators#:~:text=It%20is%20only%20through%20explicit,through%20instruction%2C%20to%20recognize%20letters.
