An introduction to
psycholinguistics
Danny D. Steinberg & Natalia V. Sciarini
Presented by:
Niusha Hosseinan
Chapter 3
Reading principles and
teaching
•Focus of this chapter is on nature and teaching
of reading
Principles of reading
1. Writing system and speech
2. The whole-word vs. phonics/decoding controversy
3. A universal four-phase reading program
Writing system and speech
1.1 writing system based on speech
sound
-Writing is to present spoken word of
language
Writing is based on
sound
meaning
orthography
Writing system and speech
a) Phoneme or syllables: each symbol represent a sound or
phoneme or syllable. There are many script or alphabet to
represent the sounds.
e.g. Cyrillic alphabet in Russia and etc.
most of these sounds are related to their orthography forms.
b) The unpredictable of English orthography: the English is not
consistent.
_ why English orthography poorly represents English phonemes?
Because the base of English is Latin and there are fewer
phonemes. So English had to make adaptation in order to suits
its language.
The adaptation of English:
1) A letter could be assign more than one sound. More on vowels.
2) The failure of English spelling to reflect the changes that the
spoken language has undergone.
Writing system and speech
The origin of English alphabet:
The origin of Roman alphabet lie with the Semitic peoples in the
middle east thousands of years ago. The Phoenicians adapted it to
their needs and then carried that alphabet to Greek, from where
it travelled to Rome. Both the Greek and then the Romans made
adaptation to suit their languages.
For example letter A went from the Semitic name aleph, to the
Greek alpha, to the Roman ah and the English a.
Writing system and speech
c) Meaning (morpheme):
Chinese and Japanese have the system which the symbols represents the
morphemes.
For example, kowtow is a Japanese word. It mean kneel and touch the
ground with one’s forehead.
The whole-word vs.
phonics/decoding controversy
Long-standing pervades reading theory and teaching methods concern what
The focus of learning should be.
Whole-word: advocate that focus be on meaning
Phonic/decoding: advocate that focus must be on speech and phoneme
Both goal is children’s reading fluently
Phonic/decoding approach
Nature of reading according to phonic/decoding:
Reading convert written word form of language to speech form. And
reading is the ability to decode reading materials into speech. They
believe that there is a meaning after speech.
they want children first learn the sound and letter combination, then
they would be able to read by decoding words. It means that children
must be able to decode written form into the phonemic form.
Supporting research evidence for phonic/decoding is sparse.
Most of the researchers know phonic better than whole-word. They
observe that children’s reading improve, but, Are they able to
recognize the meaning?
Phonic/decoding approach
Problems:
1. Wrongly focuses on sound rather than
meaning
2. Decoding is a very difficult process
3. Sounding out a new word relies on meaning
Whole-word approach
What should be done in teaching whole-word approach:
1. teaching reading should focuses on meaning and communication
and not on speech
2. Fluent readers use a whole-word strategy
3. Children learn to segment their native language, morphemically,
syntactically, and phonologically, by induction
4. Research evidence in support of learning letter-sound value by
induction
5. Learning to discriminate individual letter shapes: best in word
6. Reading should involve only meaningful words, phrases, and
sentences
7. Reading should not depending on teaching new language or new
concepts
8. Reading should be based on speech understanding and not on
speech production
9. Reading should not depend on the teaching of writing
10. Learning to read should be enjoyable
A universal four-phase reading programme
1.
2.
3.
4.
Word familiarization
Word identification
Phrase and sentence identification
Paragraph, stories, and book reading
Then the researchers recognize that a child is ready to read when
the child can understand spoken words
So early reading is good