[senco-forum] Eddie, reading and long

From: Stuart Lucas <lucass at loretto.com>

I think that you and Eddie are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Maggie

--- On Thu, 10/4/08, Stuart Lucas <lucass at loretto.com> wrote:

> From: Stuart Lucas <lucass at loretto.com>
> Subject: [senco-forum] Eddie, reading and long
> To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
> Date: Thursday, 10 April, 2008, 2:06 PM
> Part 2 of 2:
> 
> This led me to the insight that, because reading is
> normally silent, the
> Information Structure is not expressed in intonation.  But
> we have to
> read silently (I call it "reading asoft") in
> order to read aloud, and
> NOT the other way round.  But, either way, we always read
> for meaning,
> and therefore need the textual meaning (as well as the
> ideational and
> interpersonal meanings) including those elements of meaning
> which we
> label Cohesion and Information Structure.  (There's no
> point in the
> writer putting those meanings into his text if readers
> can't understand
> them.)  The whole point of reading, like listening, is to
> get the
> meaning.  Neither speakers nor writers go about their tasks
> to be
> meaningless!  [(19.iii.08) Both are meaningful, and both
> mean
> ideationally-and-interpersonally-and-textually-simultaneously.
>  But
> writers don't express much of their textual meaning
> (because it would
> take for ever and we have no non-technical means of doing
> so).
> (19.iii.08) ]   And listeners and readers equally want the
> meaning from
> the texts they attend to, and don't necessarily make a
> sound while they
> listen OR read!  So all this stuff about phonics  and
> phonological
> awareness is misconceived.  (Don't tell anyone! 
> It's a dedducational
> secret!)
>             But it doesn't matter that "this stuff
> about phonics  and
> phonological awareness is misconceived" so long as the
> children learn to
> read.  EXCEPT - as Eddie says - for that 20% (which
> probably includes a
> very large number of dyslexics) who do NOT learn to read. 
> And this is
> my concern these days: why don't they learn?
>             My answer is because teachers have not been
> properly trained
> to understand that the function of reading is to get
> meaning out of
> writing, not to get sound.  OK: we ask learners to read
> aloud, in order
> to find out if they can get the words out of the text, but
> that is not
> necessary: you can find out if they've got the words if
> you ask them
> questions about what it's about, i.e. its meaning,
> without asking them
> to say the words of the text - and this is often done, as
> in some of the
> SATS tests, and in O-Grade exams.  But it's useful to
> START them off by
> getting them to see what links there are between letters
> and segmental
> phonology, not because they then necessarily get the
> meaning (they don't
> always do that), but because when they hear themselves (or
> the teacher,
> or a neighbour) say a word, they then hear the expression
> of the meaning
> of that word (if they know the word), and so they get the
> meaning.  And
> so they learn that writing is a second form of expression
> of the
> meaning, which is what it is, not a means of signalling the
> sound.  The
> function of letters is NOT to signal sounds - if it were we
> would always
> read aloud, and we don't always do that and haven't
> done so as a matter
> of course since at least the 6th century (when St.
> Augustine, as a
> novice monk, observed for the first time - in his
> experience -  St.
> Ambrose reading silently.  He wrote:  "And lo! his
> finger ran across the
> page and his lips moved, but no sound came forth!"  -
> Confessions).  But
> we write in order to express meaning, parallel to the way
> in which
> segmental phonemes/syllables/feet and tone groups express
> meanings, all
> of which they can handle before they get to school.  What
> only a few can
> handle before they get to school - as I did and my children
> did, and
> yours probably did - is handle the SUPRA-segmentals (which
> express the
> Tonality and Tonicity, but are not realised in writing). 
> So they can't
> get the Information Structure.  I heard a dyslexic boy
> beginning to get
> the hang of this yesterday morning.  Very exciting to watch
> him
> struggling and to hear him succeeding!
>             I don't know if that defines the problem,
> or - if it does-
> whether it does so helpfully or not.  It helps me, and I do
> think it has
> much to be said for it, and I'm game to say it as often
> as wished to
> anyone who wants to hear it!  
> 
>  
> 
> Stuart
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
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