EDCI 690/RDG 692: Learning to Read,
Spring 2013

1. “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”(Maya Angelou)
2. There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book. (Marcel
Proust)
3. "Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own.“ (Charles
Scribner, Jr.)
4. “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”(Ray Bradbury)

Guiding Question
“ Is there a causal connection between socioeconomic status, language experience in the preschool years, and educational achievement?
If so, what are the specific linguistic skills, important for success in school, that are associated with membership of one social group rather than another, and what can be done to give children from all types of family background a more equal opportunity to succeed at school?”
(Wells, 1986, p. xi)

M.A.K. Halliday
•
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M.A.K.
Halliday) (born 13 April 1925) is a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistic (SFL) model of language.
•
Halliday's work represents a competing viewpoint to the formalist approach of Noam Chomsky. Halliday's concern is with "naturally occurring language in actual contexts of use" in a large typological range of languages, whereas Chomsky is concerned with the formal properties of languages, such as, their Universal
Grammar (UG).

M.A.K. Halliday
Meaning, Situations, and Language
Halliday states that meaning is constructed through language that arises from situations, (e.g., his son,
Nigel’s wound).
•
The child’s protolanguage
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Meaning-making situations become typified; content/expression pairs become encoded as signs; and the process of language building begins.
•
The building blocks of language intersect with the situation; “all text is situated”.
–
Learning How to Mean (1975), (287).

M.A.K. Halliday
Meaning, Situations, Functional
Purpose of Language
In Learning How to Mean , Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years. Children are motivated to acquire language because it serves certain purposes or functions for them.
The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and social needs: Instrumental (needs),
Regulatory (commands), Interactional (relationship),
Personal (feelings, opinion)
The next three functions help the child with his/ her environment: Heuristic (to gain knowledge), Imaginative,
Representational (to convey facts/info)

M.A.K. Halliday
Language and Socialization
•
In Language and Socialization: Home and
School (1988) Halliday explains that the child who is learning how to mean is trying to be a communicator.
• functions, conditions, and symbols (text) to use
• cultural and social situations.
• inform and integrate socio-semiotic system into adult world.
–
(In Language and Education, Volume 9, in The
Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. By J.
Webster. 2007. London: Continuum., 69).

M.A.K. Halliday
Language and Socialization
•
For a child, learning to become a semiotic being means filling in this entire box complex, with all of the arrows, across, up and down, and diagonally.
•
The diagonal arrow is very important; you use the linguistic instance for constructing the social system.
• Language and Socialization: Home and School (1988)

MAK Halliday
Culture, Language, and Social
Meaning-Making (Semiotics)

MAK Halliday
Culture, Language, and Social
Meaning-Making (Semiotics) (2)
•
There is meaning potential on an individual, social, and cultural level. Courtney Cazden, in
Classroom Discourse (2001), on p. 2 cites
Halliday’s Language as a Social Semiotic (1978), in which Halliday expresses the notion that any social institution can be a communication system,
“a sharing of experience, expression of social solidarity, decision making and planning, if it is a hierarchical institution, forms of verbal control, transmission of order, and the like.”(Halliday, pp.
230-231).

MAK Halliday
Language and Education
Goal: Linguistic Creativity
•
In Language and Education , (Volume 9, in The
Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. By J.
Webster. 2007. London: Continuum.), we learn that
Halliday advocates that language development is the responsibility of the schools. Halliday believes that teachers should make the language learning (L1, L2) experience rich and meaningful.
•
He applied his linguistics background in the 1960’s developing “Breakthrough to Literacy” an innovative curriculum for children. Wrote a series of papers, relating how to teach the mother tongue. Halliday’s language education goal of linguistic creativity (7-8).
Teachers must enable children to respond and create with language.

MAK Halliday
Language and Education
Goal: Mother Tongue Mastery
• The school’s role is to help the child master his mother tongue (14). Halliday criticized the use of “linguistic approaches” being used in the
US for teaching initial literacy that historically were not able to aid in the teaching of the mother tongue.
–
In Language and Education, (Volume 9, in The
Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed. By J.
Webster. 2007. London: Continuum.),

MAK Halliday
Language and Education
Deviations from the Goal of Mother Tongue Mastery
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Linguistic approaches that were applied to various techniques, such as limited vocabulary introduced in a series of carefully controlled reading primers, based on their relative frequency or the phonic-graphic regularity, produced unnatural sentences such as “Pick the thick stick off the brick, Chick.” “See Spot run.
Run, Spot, run!” was an improvement, but still not ideal.
•
Older students: linguistic approach known as the
“structural approach” (analyze sentences into their structures)
In Language and Education, (Volume 9, in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday, ed.
By J. Webster. 2007. London: Continuum.), p.14

Gordon Wells
Biography, Education and Training
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B.A. Cambridge University, UK; Ph.D.
University of Bristol, UK.
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Director: "Language Development at Home and at School," University of Bristol.
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PI: "Developing Inquiring Communities in
Education," University of Toronto.
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Collaborative action research in Toronto and
University of California, Santa Cruz. http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/

Gordon Wells
The Meaning Makers: Children Learning Language and Using Language to Learn (1986)
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Bristol, England. Gordon Wells followed 32 of the original representative sample of 128 children for 9 years, from 15 months through the final year of their elementary education.
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Observations were made every 3 months until they got to school. Then followed them through their elementary school for 5 years.
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6 were detailed in the Meaning Makers.

Gordon Wells
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Rosie - youngest, 15 months old, had older bros & sisters. Father, a laborer, was not regularly employed
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Abigail - had several older siblings, family was fairly well off, had a nice home, garden
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Garyhad 3 older siblings. Gary’s father was a diesel engine mechanic, was often at home during the day, but spent time in garage.
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Penny - Father, a firefighter. Penny was a little housewife.
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Anthony - only child, older than average parents. Mother had a job outside the home before Anthony was born, some resentment. Anthony was slow in learning to talk and, although his mother tried to be patient, she obviously found his limited abilities frustrating on occasion.
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Jonathan - only child, older than average parents, lover of books and stories, parents and child enjoyed doing things together. Mother sang nursery rhymes while getting him ready for bed

Similarity of length of talking:
Brief
•
1st reason for short, and few exchanges=children are limited in what to say
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2nd reason- adult's lack of time or patience
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3rd reason- adult pretends to not understand or not hearing request, "we'll see...
•
4th reason- incoherence btwn what is said and embedded activity, unless one is present.
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Rarely found time to talk with their children
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Reasons were considerable: family breakdown, shortage of money, ill health and overcrowded housing, to mention (18)
•
All showed love and affection and a concern for his or her well-being (18)

•
Rosie was not read to once before she started school. (158) Her complete absence of stories had a strong relationship to her lowest ranking. Rosie lacked the experiences necessary to nourish her intellectual and linguistic development (169)
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Jonathan had about 6, 000 book and story experiences before starting school (158). He entered school at the highest linguistic level and remained academically successful all years.

Gordon Wells
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The experience of listening to stories prepared the children for learning to read and write. (200)
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Reading and writing are complimentary, one informs and enhances the other. (201)
•
Wells rejected behaviorism and innatism, favored
Halliday’s functionalism. “[L]anguage is at it is because of the functions it was originally developed to serve in the past and now serves in the present.” (238)

Gordon Wells
Children are active meaning makers; the best way for adults to help is give them evidence, guidance, and encouragement (215)
Wells noted three stages of a child’s development of language
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Stage 1 : 9 months, beginning to communicate with a combination of gestures and idiosyncratic ‘words’.
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Stage 2 : 14 months, word, rudimentary statements to get attention, request, early grammar of 2 words. 24 months, name categories.
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Stage 3 : 24 months, questions appear, grammatical development at this stage=three-constituent structures:
Subject + Verb + Object/ Adjunct or Prepositional phrases: Preposition + Article + Noun

Gordon Wells
•
We are the meaning makers—every one of us: children, parents, and teachers. To try to make sense, to construct stories, and to share them with others in speech and in writing is and essential part of being human. For those of us who are more knowledgeable and more mature—parents and teachers—the responsibility is clear: to interact with those in our care in such a way as to foster and enrich their meaning making. (222)

Gordon Wells
• “Children enter school with varying degree of understanding about how written language works. On the face of it, this might seem to pose problems in organizing for the development of twenty or so children.
However, the variability can be turned into an asset through children helping each other and sharing what they know.”
• http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Papers_Folder/Talk-Literacy.pdf

Born in England. Published over 20 books and numerous papers related to literacy, thinking, learning, and education.
Education
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Undergraduate studies at the University of Western Australia
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PhD in Psycholinguistics from Harvard University,1967
Positions held
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He started out as reporter and editor for several media publications in Europe and
Australia
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Southwest Regional Laboratory in Los Alamitos, California
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Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (12 yrs.)
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Professor of Language in Education, University of Victoria, British Columbia
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Professor and department-head of Applied English Language Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
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Associate Professor, Columbia University, New York (may be in emeritus status)

Smith’s book
Understanding Reading: A
Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read is regarded by many as a fundamental text in the development of the whole language movement. It has been described as a synthesis of psycholinguistic and cognitive psychology research applied to reading.
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Amongst others, Smith's research and writings in psycholinguistics inspired cognitive psychologists Keith
Stanovich and Richard West's research into the role of context in reading.
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Contributed to the study of reading, worked with prominent literacy leaders, and inspired others to enter the field.

Frank L. Smith
Smith's writings challenge conventional teaching and diverts from popular assumptions about reading.
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Young children are born to learn. They are innately wired with the curiosity to want to learn and reading is just another form of learning.
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Children do not need to be taught to read, instead teachers need to create the conditions for them to want to.
If reading is active process, that respects their ideas and worlds, they will want to join the reading club.
•
Reading is not rocket science.

•
Working from diverse perspectives, Frank Smith and Kenneth S. Goodman developed the theory of a unified single reading process that comprises an interaction between reader, text and language. Smith and Goodman are singled out as originators of the modern psycholinguistic approach to reading instruction
•
Prediction simply means that uncertainty in the listener or reader is limited to a few probable alternatives…(Smith, Understanding Reading ,
1000)

•
What do infants do when they are born into this wholly natural world? They do as they will for the rest of their lives: They try to make sense of it “to discover how it relates to everything else that they know, to understand its relationship to them, its meaning. Trying to make sense of any facet of the environment’ including print is a natural activity. ( Understanding Reading , 263)
•
Situation-dependent speech is the spoken language with which infants first become familiar, and it is the basis on which they begin all their learning about language.
…the speech is directly related to the physical and social situation in which it is uttered. ( Understanding
Reading , 1092-1093)
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Similar to M.A.K. Halliday in Learning How to Mean .

•
Children who are read to before formal schooling gather a great deal of knowledge about many other aspects of language on which they can build in the classroom. Such children can be dismayed by the exercises and anxieties attached to the senseless bits of language provided by “direct instruction.”
(Understanding Reading, 131)
–
In The Meaning Makers , 1986, Gordon Wells, studied children in Bristol, England. The major factor for a child’s success found in the 9-year longitudinal study was if his/her parents read stories to them.

Acquiring a language a basic part of being human.
“More and less intelligent children acquire language, more and less economically fortunate children acquire language, more and less physically able children acquire language, more and less emotionally healthy children acquire language” (90-91). It does not matter if the child grows up in a technologically advanced society or a hut; affluent or poor, schooled or not, all children acquire at least one verbal language (91).
“Perspectives on Language Acquisition.”
Published in Judy Wells Lindfors textbook:
Children’s Language and Learning.(90-110).

•
Children are not taught language in the traditional pedagogical classroom style. Family members and caregivers do not provide a language-learning curriculum.
•
Children hear language as real communication in a wide range of contexts and situations. Sometimes the communicative interaction is directed to the child, such as to explain, answer, scold, but often it is not.
•
The child is a participant-observer of oral and written expression and is making connections to the cognitive and social meanings of language in many interaction contexts.
With this exposure, the child is building a deep-level system of language’s structure and use.
(93-94)

•
Children are little field linguists, figuring out language, what verbal strings go with which contexts. They make hypotheses about the sound-meaning relationships and test them.
The constant feedback and continuous exposure to language in context allows the child to revise his hypotheses (95).

Behaviorist reliance on reinforcement was proven not to be the least likely answer for acquiring a complex linguistic system. The innatist view of stressing the importance of an innate capacity for human language and the interactionist view of characterizing the child's language learning as an ongoing interaction between the innately endowed child and his social world, each provided partial answers.

Language Acquisition
Debating/Accommodating Views
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Innatist : Stephen Krashen (1982; 1989) is a proponent of this theory
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Interactionist : Jim Cummins (1979, 1994) is a proponent of this theory.
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Some accept all three theoretical approaches , as each explains a different aspect of first language acquisition.
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Behaviorists (learning through imitation, practice, reinforcement, habit-formation) – the acquisition of vocabulary and grammatical morphemes.
–
Innatists (LAD/UG) – the acquisition of complex grammar
(structure of the language).
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Interactionists (social interaction) – the acquisition of how form and meaning are related, how communicative functions are carried out, and how language is used appropriately.

Reactions to Goodman’s Guessing
Game Metaphor in L2,the teaching of language to Non-Native Speakers
Karim Kahled , Department of Curriculum and
Instruction Faculty of Education University of
Victoria, B.C., Canada
•
Kahled differs with Goodman in that guessing is not an equally productive strategy across languages.
•
Although in both L1, and L2 contexts, the reader is interacts with the text, the process differs in L2.

The Guessing Strategy in L2 is not equally useful across all languages (Kahled, 2)

The Guessing Strategy in L2 is not equally useful across all languages (Kahled, 3)
•
English vocabulary is a primary determinant of reading comprehension, and that those whose first language has many cognates with English have an advantage in English vocabulary recognition.
•
Spanish-speakers have an advantage over other speakers whose language not only because of shared cognates, but also commonality in alphabetic and syntactic systems, and other linguistic features. (Kahled, with additional
MVW comment)

The Guessing Strategy in L2 is not equally useful across all ages (Dycus,1)
David Dycus, Aichi Shukutoku University, differs with Goodman in that guessing is not an equally productive strategy for second language learners
(L2), especially older language learners.
Several studies were cited using the guessing strategy, one got such poor results in their own study that they concluded that the guessing strategy is so unproductive that it should not be taught at all.
Something different is happening with L2 readers.

The Guessing Strategy in L2 is not equally useful across all ages (Dycus,2)
The threshold vocabulary
•
Dycus discusses the role vocabulary plays in reading. Insufficient vocabulary can prevent the
L2 reader from constructing enough context to guess unknown words, and this deficit can prevent L1 strategies from being transferred to L2 reading.”
•
L2 reader needs to automatically recognize a certain number of vocabulary words to reach the threshold level. Transfer of L1 strategies to L2 reading
(appx. 3000 word family level / 5000 lexical items.)
Conclusion: Effective in L1 reading, esp. with children, but not adult L2 readers.

•
M.A.K. Halliday-various
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Gordon WellsThe Meaning Makers
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Frank L. SmithUnderstanding Reading: A psycholinguistic Analysis
•
Judith Wells LindforsPerspectives on
Language Acquisition
•
Karim Kahled- L2
•
David Dycus- L2

Cazden, Courtney B. (2001). Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching &
Learning,(p.2). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Dycus, David. (1997). Guessing Word Meaning from Context: Should We Encourage
It? Literacy Across Cultures , September, (1/2). www2.aasa.ac.jp/~dcdycus/LAC97/guessing.htm
Goodman, Kenneth. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. In H. Singer
& R. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (2 ed.) .
Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Available online through the
Journal of the Reading Specialist , 6(4), 126-135. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19388076709556976
Halliday, M.A. K. (1975). Learning How to Mean. In In J. Webster (Ed.), Language of
Early Childhood, Volume 4, in The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday,
2004, (pp. 14, 287). London: Continuum.
______________. (1988). Language and Socialization: Home and School. In J. Webster
(Ed.), Language and Education, Volume 9, in The Collected Works of M.A.K.
Halliday . 2007, (pp. 7-8, 69). London: Continuum.
______________. (1975). The Social Context of Language Development. In J. Webster
(Ed.), Language and Education, Volume 9, in The Collected Works of M.A.K.
Halliday . 2007 (pp. 14, 285). London: Continuum.

References (cont)
Karim, Khaled. (2003). First language (L1) influence on second language (L2) reading: the role of transfer.
Department of
Curriculum and Instruction Faculty of Education University of
Victoria, B.C., Canada. http://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/WPLC/article/view/5164
Lindfors, Judith Wells. (1991). Perspectives on Language Acquisition, In
Children’s Language and Learning, 2 nd ed.
(pp. 90-110).
Austin: Pearson.
Smith, Frank. (2004). Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic
Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read ,6 th ed. Mahwah, NJ:
Routledge.
Wells, Gordon. (1986). The meaning makers: Children learning language and using language to learn . Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.
____________. (2003). Children talk their way into literacy. Published as
‘Los niños se alfabetizan hablando’. In J.R. García (Ed.) Enseñar a escribir sin prisas… pero con sentido. Sevilla, Spain: Publicaciones
M.C.E.P, 2003. Available in English, retrieved from http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Papers_Folder/Talk-Literacy.pdf