APPENDIX A:
Report on the
Review of Research
1
ALABAMA READING PANEL
REPORT ON REVIEW OF RESEARCH
INTRODUCTION
The following report is a synthesis of research consisting of over 70 articles and books, read over a period of 12 months by the members of the Alabama Reading Panel. In an effort to maintain a current research base for recommendations, the Panel’s review of literature will be ongoing.
Reading Panel members began to realize during the early stages of the literature review that common themes were repeated. This report reflects those themes through the bold headings. Following a brief explanation of each theme, direct quotes which support the theme are provided.
The report is divided into three sections: Beginning Reading, Expansion of Reading Power, and Effective Intervention. These sections coincide with three efforts identified by the Reading Panel as necessary to improve significantly reading achievement of Alabama students.
In making this report public, there is the risk that selected themes will be isolated from the entire report and misused in defense of an existing bias. Such action would be entirely contrary to the way the Panel has attempted to work. The writers of this report believe that all themes mentioned in the report are vital to an effective reading program.
Additionally, there is the risk that some readers will wrongly conclude that a “quick fix” to reading problems is the purchase of a commercial package. On the contrary, effective reading instruction must be delivered by highly expert teachers who are familiar with the research and who have the knowledge, skills, tools, and conditions necessary to provide effective instruction with an emphasis on beginning reading, expansion of reading power, and/or effective intervention.
In the face of these risks, however, we believe it is important to disseminate this report. It is our conviction that many educators will know how to use this information to improve reading in their schools and that they need immediate access to the information.
In an effort to be as comprehensive and as accurate as possible, this report has been reviewed by three nationally recognized experts in the field of reading.
BEGINNING READING
Balance
The most pervasive finding is that approaches to teaching beginning reading must be balanced. “Balanced” usually means that the approach combines the language and literature-rich activities associated with whole language and the explicit teaching of the skills needed to decode words.
The implications of the research for teaching children to read should be apparent. The most basic dictate seems to be that instruction that promotes facility in word identification is vitally important to success in reading. Accordingly, instruction that facilitates both phoneme awareness and alphabetic coding is vitally important to success in reading. However, there is nothing in the research that precludes the use of whole-language-type activities in teaching reading, such as the use of context for monitoring and predictive purposes, vocabulary enrichment to imbue printed words with meaning, discussion that would encourage reading for comprehension, integration of reading, writing and spelling to concretize the relationships between and among these representational systems, and so forth. Conversely, the research runs counter to exclusive versions of either whole-language or code-oriented approaches to reading instruction. In other words, the research supports a balanced approach. (Vellutino, 1991, p. 442)
Language-Rich, Literature-Rich Environment
The language-rich, literature rich environment demonstrates to children that we value and enjoy books and reading. Children beginning to learn to read especially benefit from reading and hearing favorite selections again and again. Rich language activities include reading good stories and informational texts to children and then discussing them; having students tell and retell stories; listening to, reciting, or singing nursery rhymes or songs; pretend reading, picture reading, and shared reading; meaningful word meaning activities; and group and individual story writing.
… motivation and reading development are fostered when children are immersed in a book-rich environment; exposed to many demonstrations of how books are used; engaged in interactions with others about books; given the responsibility for making decisions about what, when, and how they read … The results of this study revealed that the children … were motivated to read, spent more time reading independently, engaged more frequently in discussions about books and stories … took more books home to read, and spent more time reading with family members. (Gambrell, 1996, pp. 17-18)
… the most important activity for building the knowledge and skills eventually required for reading is that of reading aloud to children. … it [is] especially important to engage the child’s active attention. (Adams, 1990, p. 86)
It is not just reading to children that makes the difference, it is enjoying the books with them and reflecting upon their form and content. … It is encouraging children to examine the print. It is … inviting discussions of the meanings of words and the relationship of the text’s ideas to the world beyond the book. And it is showing the children that we value and enjoy reading and that we hope they will too. (Adams, 1990, p. 87)
Oral Language Development
Reading comprehension is highly dependent upon the language knowledge of the reader. Many young children come to school in need of a well-conceived program of oral language activities that focus on the words, concepts, and sentence patterns that comprise both the instructional language of the classroom and the literary language of books.
Reading instruction builds especially on oral language. If this foundation is weak, progress in reading will be slow and uncertain. (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985, p. 30)
The … child’s language development is vital to his progress in reading. We are concerned not only with the development of his vocabulary, or his articulation of sounds, but with the range and flexibility of the patterns of sentences which he is able to control.… Children need to be engaged in conversation about the things they know about because the familiar content provides them with opportunities to experiment with ways of expressing themselves. (Clay, 1991, p. 37)
Phonemic Awareness
Research has established that phonemic awareness is a potent predictor of success in learning to read. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of individual sounds. It includes the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds of oral language. Without phonemic awareness, phonics cannot make sense, and the spelling of words can be accomplished only through rote memorization.
Phonemic awareness is more highly related to learning to read than are tests of general intelligence, reading readiness, and listening comprehension. (California Department of Education, 1996, p. 4)
The discovery of the nature and enabling importance of phonemic awareness is said to be the single greatest breakthrough in reading pedagogy in this century. (California Department of Education, 1996, p. 5)
Deficits in phonological processing can be identified in late kindergarten and first grade, and the presence of these deficits is a strong indicator that difficulties in learning to read will follow. (Lyon & Alexander, 1996/1997, p. 14)
In fact, faced with an alphabetic script, the child’s level of phonemic awareness on entering school is widely held to be the strongest single predictor of the success she or he will experience in learning to read. (Adams & Bruck, 1995, p. 15)
Print Awareness and Letter Recognition
Indispensable steps in learning to read are recognizing individual letters, becoming aware of the nature of print, and understanding that print is categorically different from other visual patterns. Children must know that print is prevalent in the environment, is a form of language, holds information, and can be produced by anyone. Moreover, young readers must realize that words consist of strings of letters and that print consists of strings of words ordered in space.
There exists a wealth of evidence that the speed and accuracy with which young readers can recognize individual letters is a critical determinant of their reading proficiency and future growth. (Adams, 1990, p. 112)
… children’s concepts about print are also strong predictors of the ease with which they will learn to read … They should be aware of how text is formatted; that its basic meaningful units are specific, speakable words … They should have a solid sense of its various functions … All such awarenesses are powerfully fostered by reading aloud to children — by engaging them regularly and interactively in the enjoyment and exploration of print. (Adams, 1990, p. 411)
Phonics
To become skillful readers, children must learn how to decode words instantly and automatically. This requires students to learn letter-sound correspondence and to blend those sounds represented by letters into words. Effective phonics instruction helps children to understand and to apply the alphabetic principles and conventions of written language. The goal of phonics instruction is to convey the logic of the English language system and invite its application to decode new words that the children will encounter on their own. Evidence over several decades supports the advantages for approaches to beginning reading instruction that emphasize the code.
My review of the research from the laboratory, the classroom, and the clinic … from 1912 to 1965 indicates that a code-emphasis method — i.e., one … that emphasizes learning of the printed code for the spoken language — produces better results, at least up to the point where sufficient evidence seems to be available, the end of third grade. (Chall, 1967, p.307)
… the research support [in favor of phonics] seems to be even stronger than in 1967. (Chall, 1983, p.43)
Teachers of beginning reading should present well-designed phonics instruction ... Phonics instruction should be kept simple and it should be completed by the end of second grade for most children. (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985, p.118)
Phonics instruction is not about rote drill involving a comprehensive list of spelling-sound correspondence and phonics rules. The most effective phonics instruction is explicit — that is, taking care to clarify key points and principles for students. In addition, it is systematic — that is, gradually builds from basic elements to more subtle and complex patterns. (California Department of Education, 1996, p. 6)
That direct instruction in alphabetic coding facilitates early reading acquisition is one of the most well-established conclusions in all of behavioral science. (Stanovich, 1993-94, pp. 285-86)
Reading and Writing Connection
Research shows that students who write become better readers and vice-versa. In many schools, students begin writing before the formalized reading program starts, and writing becomes a powerful tool in developing skills and knowledge about reading. Daily writing activities at the early stages of learning to read are an essential component of any successful reading program in kindergarten, first grade, and beyond. Learning to print letters helps students to recognize them. Beginning writing activities that have students attempt to translate oral words to written words helps to reinforce the letter/sound system. As such, early writing assists the development of phonemic awareness and facilitates the learning of phonics.
All sides can agree on a variety of educational practices: on the importance of good literature for children, on the importance of early writing experiences for teaching children how language works, and many other practices. (Stanovich & Stanovich, 1995, p. 98)
Research into young children’s phonological development shows that writing does not wait on reading; there is a dynamic relation between the two, indicating that each influences the other in the course of development. (Strickland & Cullinan, Afterword, in Adams, 1990, p. 426)
. . . in classrooms of a decade ago (and even some today), reading and writing were taught as separate entities. Research shows that the two have a reciprocal relationship and that when they are connected instructionally, children’s progress in both is advanced. (Cunningham, 1992, p. 189)
Temporary/Developmental Spelling
“Temporary” or “invented” spelling allows students to approximate the letters and patterns of letters that represent words. It encourages students to write, and it pays off in increased writing volume and more elaborate stories. At the early writing stage, this method becomes an important diagnostic tool for determining how much progress the student has made in learning the sound/symbol system and what further instruction needs to occur.
The evidence that invented spelling activity simultaneously develops phonemic awareness and promotes understanding of the alphabetic principle is extremely promising.... (Adams, 1990, p. 387)
By engaging students in thinking actively and reflectively about the sounds of words and their spellings, exercise in temporary spelling lays a strong cognitive foundation for formal spelling and phonics. It does not, however, eliminate the need for learning how to spell correctly. (California Department of Education, 1996, p. 9)
As children discover the relation between sounds and letters, they reveal to us what they know through their invented spellings, that is, their attempts to represent sounds with letters.... Their invented spellings show us vividly that they are constructing knowledge about sound-symbol correspondences; at the same time, it shows us exactly how much phonics they know. (Strickland & Cullinan, Afterword, in Adams, 1990, p. 429)
Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension initially depends almost exclusively on students’ ability to automatically read words that are already in their speaking vocabulary and that represent familiar concepts. Competent decoding, however, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is not a single process; rather, it is complex and made up of many interrelated component processes. The mental operations involved in reading include recognizing words and associating them with concepts stored in memory; developing meaningful ideas from groups of words (phrases, clauses, sentences); drawing inferences; relating what is already known to what is being read; and more. In other words, reading comprehension must be built.
Moreover, research evidence supports the intuitively obvious view that skill in comprehension is highly correlated with skill in decoding of single words. (Liberman & Liberman, 1990, p. 352)
In brief, there is abundant evidence that language comprehension processes become fully operative in reading only when a certain degree of fluency in word identification has been achieved. (Vellutino, 1991, p. 438)
To construct understandings, the language comprehension system operates not on the meanings of individual words, but on the interrelations or overlap among them. Toward this end, comprehension works simultaneously with whole, cohesive grammatical units (whole phrases and sentences). (Adams & Bruck, 1995, pp. 12-13)
We’ve come to view proficient reading as a process in which readers process integrated graphophonic, syntactic and semantic information as they strive to construct meaning. (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 1987, p. 263)
Perhaps no other phenomenon has influenced instructional research in the past decade as pervasively as our increased understanding of the powerful role of background knowledge in reading comprehension. (Pearson & Fielding, 1991, p. 821)
The most prevalent metaphor [in the research] was the “reader as a builder” — an active-meaning constructor, an aggressive processor of language and information…. (Pearson, 1993, p. 502)
EXPANSION OF READING POWER
Amount of Reading
The amount of reading that students do is a potent predictor of their reading power. Just ordinary reading of any type of material for any purpose increases students’ reading comprehension. Students need to read frequently, broadly, and thoughtfully.
… the single most valuable activity for developing children’s comprehension is reading itself. The amount of reading that children do is shown to predict the growth in reading comprehension across the elementary school years even after controlling for entry-level differences. It predicts the quantity as well as the language, vocabulary, and structure of students’ writing. It also predicts the richness of their oral storytelling. Among older students and adults, it predicts receptive vocabulary, verbal fluency, content area achievement, and all manner of general knowledge even when other measures of school ability, general intelligence, age, education and reading comprehension itself are taken out of the equation. (California Department of Education, 1996, p. 11)
… there is a consistently positive relationship between amount of voluntary reading completed at home or at school and gains on standardized reading achievement tests. (Pearson, 1993, p. 508)
As documented by research, the ninetieth percentile fifth grader reads about 200 times more text per year than the tenth percentile reader does. (California Department of Education, 1996, p. 9)
Direct Reading Comprehension Instruction
Research indicates that teachers are spending inadequate amounts of time for direct comprehension instruction. Teachers use either workbooks or textbook questions to determine a student's understanding of content, but rarely teach them how to comprehend. The literature reports four major strategies to teach comprehension: expanding background knowledge, extensive reading, strategic reading, and discussions about what students have read.
All readers, both novices and experts, use their existing knowledge and a range of cues from text and the situational context in which reading occurs to build, or construct, a model of meaning from the text ... expert readers possess a set of flexible, adaptable strategies that they can use to make sense of text and to monitor their ongoing understanding. (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991, pp. 241-242)
Dr. [David] Pearson describes what good comprehension instruction should include:
- ample time for text reading in order to have regular practice, acquire new knowledge and concepts, and build vocabulary
- teacher-directed instruction in comprehension that includes both modeling and guided practice of such strategies as summarizing, predicting, and using the structural elements of text
- opportunities for discussing what’s read with the teacher and peers to enable students to learn to defend opinions based on their readings, thus deepening their understanding of the texts and their ability to use a whole range of responses from literal to critical and evaluative. (Diamond & Mandel, 1996, p. 7)
Examined in the broadest strokes, this body of work [comprehension research] is strongly supportive of instructional applications of schema theory. First, whether it comes packaged as a set of questions, a text summary, a storyline, or a visual display of key ideas, students of all ages and abilities benefit from conscious attempts by teachers to focus attention either on the structure of the text to be read or the structure of the knowledge domain to which the text is related. Second, students’ disposition to draw inferences improves when they and their teachers make a conscious effort to draw relationships between the text content and background knowledge. Third, when students learn how to monitor their reading to make sure it makes sense to them, their comprehension skill improves. (Pearson, 1993, p. 506)