Learning to Read: A Call from Research to Action - Página 3

Other Factors that Influence Learning to Read

Learning to read is a relatively lengthy process that begins very early in development. Children who receive stimulating literacy experiences well before they enter formal schooling appear to have an edge when it comes to vocabulary development, understanding the goals of reading, and developing an awareness of print and literacy concepts. Children who are read to frequently at very young ages become exposed in interesting and exciting ways to the sounds of our language, to the concept of rhyming, to other word and language play activities that serve to provide the foundation for the development of phoneme awareness, and the ability to recognize and discriminate letters. They will have less to learn upon school entry and will be better oriented to the alphabetic principle of how letters and sounds connect.

Ultimately, children's ability to understand what they are reading is inextricably linked to their background knowledge. Very young children who are provided opportunities to learn, think, and talk about new areas of knowledge will gain much from the reading process. With understanding comes the desire to read more and to read frequently, ensuring that reading practice takes place.

Difficulties Learning To Read

Difficulties learning to read result from a combination of factors. In general, children who are most at-risk for reading failure are those who enter school with limited exposure to language and, thus, less prior knowledge of concepts related to phonemic sensitivity, letter knowledge, print awareness, the purposes of reading, and general verbal skills, including vocabulary. Children raised in poverty, youngsters with limited proficiency in English, children with speech and hearing impairments, and children from homes where the parent's reading levels are low are clearly at increased risk of reading failure. Likewise, youngsters with sub-average intellectual capabilities have difficulties learning to read. However, it is very important to note that a substantial number of children from highly literate households and who have been read to by their parents since very early in life also have difficulties learning to read.

Deficits in Phoneme Awareness and Developing the Alphabetic Principle

Difficulty linking letters with sounds is the source of reading problems for many children. Their reading is hesitant and characterized by frequent starts and stops and multiple mispronunciations. If asked about the meaning of what has been read, they frequently have little to say because they take far too long to read the words, taxing their memory and leaving little energy for remembering and understanding what they have read.

Unfortunately, there is no way to bypass this decoding and word recognition stage of reading. A deficiency in these skills cannot to any meaningful extent be offset by using context to figure out the pronunciation of unknown words. While one learns to read for the fundamental purpose of deriving meaning from print, the key to comprehension starts with the immediate and accurate reading of words. There are some children who can read words accurately and quickly yet do have difficulties comprehending, but they constitute a very small portion of those with reading problems.

If the ability to gain meaning from print is dependent upon fast, accurate, and automatic decoding and word recognition, what factors hinder the acquisition of these basic reading skills? The main culprit appears to be a deficit in phoneme awareness-the understanding that words are made up of sound segments called phonemes. Whether genetic or neurobiological in origin, or whether attributable to a lack of exposure to language patterns and usage during infancy and the preschool years, children who lack phoneme awareness have difficulties linking speech sounds to letters-their decoding skills are labored and weak, resulting in extremely slow reading. This labored access to print renders comprehension nearly impossible.

In studying approximately 10,000 children over the past 15 years, NICHD research has documented the importance of phonemic awareness in the development of phonics skills and fluent and automatic word reading. We have learned that:

Phonemic awareness skills assessed in kindergarten and first grade serve as potent predictors of difficulties learning to read. With a test that takes only 15 minutes to administer, we have learned how to measure phonemic awareness skills as early as the beginning of kindergarten, and over the past decade we have refined these tasks so that we can predict with approximately 92 percent accuracy who will have difficulties learning to read.

The average cost (including materials) of assessing each child during kindergarten or first grade with the predictive measures is approximately $10 to $15.

The development of phonemic awareness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for learning to read. Children must integrate phonemic skills into the learning of phonics principles, must practice reading so that word recognition is rapid and accurate, and must learn how to actively use comprehension strategies to enhance meaning.

Genetics are involved in learning to read, and this knowledge may ultimately contribute to early identification efforts through the assessment of family reading histories. We have also learned that the environment plays a major role in learning to read and that environmental and genetic factors interact in complex ways yet to be fully understood.

The brain itself appears to carry out different steps of the reading process. We can now "see" the actual neural systems used when both good and poor readers try to sound out novel words. Differences between neural patterns in these groups of readers may provide new insights into more precise and effective intervention strategies.

Specific teaching methods change reading behavior and changes in the brain appear to emerge as reading develops. As we continue to conduct this type of research, we are hopeful that this information may help us understand how to best tailor specific teaching strategies to individual children.

Just as many girls as boys have difficulties learning to read. The conventional wisdom has been that many more boys than girls had such difficulties. Now, females should have equal access to screening and intervention programs.

For 85 to 90 percent of poor readers, prevention and early intervention programs that combine instruction in phoneme awareness, phonics, spelling, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies provided by well-trained teachers can increase reading skills to average reading levels. However, we have also learned that if we delay early intervention until nine-years-of-age, (the time that most children with reading difficulties first receive services), approximately 75 percent of these children will continue to have difficulties learning to read throughout high school and their adult years. The wasted time and expense of waiting is so enormous compared to what is required to teach them when they are five or six years old.

No single method, approach, or philosophy for teaching reading is equally effective for all children. Rather, the key to ensuring that all children reach their potential in learning to read rests with the formal training and experiences that teachers receive in assessing individual differences during preschool, kindergarten, and primary grade years.

Teachers who have in-depth knowledge about reading development and difficulties have a clear understanding of the skills that are critical for learning to read and reading to learn, and have a depth and breadth of knowledge that will allow them to tailor reading programs for those children who do not respond to reading methods selected by state, local, or school authorities are the answer. In short, teacher preparation is the key to teaching our nation's children to read, to learn from reading, and to enjoy reading.