[eal-bilingual] Re: eal-bilingual Digest, Vol 42, Issue 19

This post raises a number of significant issues, but it is wrong to see 
phonics as a major cause of error. Miscue analysis as a technique has a 
fundamental flaw, in that it focuses only on what children get wrong, and 
not on what they get right.

Schatz and Baldwin, Context Clues Are Unreliable Predictors of Word Meaning, 
Reading Research Quarterly 21, 1986,  shows that context does not help 
fluent readers with words they do not already know. Unfortunately, reading 
in second languages is still discussed in terms of Smith's and Goodman's 
multicue theories, and has not caught up with research that shows that these 
do not reflect what readers actually do.

This is not to suggest that phonics are all that is required to read in 
English, as we have so much irregularity. It is, rather, that reading is 
part of a complex linguistic process that is not to be understood in terms 
of guesswork, but in terms of interpretation of complex information. We can 
only use context when we can read it fluently and quickly, and even then its 
value is very limited in sorting out unfamiliar words, particularly where 
these are in any way abstract.

John Bald 