Week 1. Learning Activity 3: Relationship Between Oral Language and Reading Process

I believe there is a significant difference between the development of oral language and the development of the skill to read. I agree with Freeman (p. 23) when he states that most children acquire their first langauge without much formal instruction. My son is seven years old, and I can still remember those years where his language ability just exploded, with very little formal instruction. But I disagree with the linguist's consensus that reading is also acquired. As I stated in my other post on writing, I am  not sure why there has to be these rigid schools of thought concerning reading. The "word recognition" school has its strengths and the "sociopsycholinguistic" view has its strengths. Indeed, I can't believe there are people in the one camp who reject the positions of the other camp.

Freeman states that in the "acquistion" model (I'm not going to spell out "sociopsycholinguistic" more than I have to) teachers read to students from big books, which then gives the students all the information they need to start reading on their own. This view is not supported by the National Reading Panel, which strongly supports the teaching of phonics. The National Reading Panel repeatedly states the effectiveness of phonics instruction: "Systematic and explicit phonics instruction significantly improves children's reading comprehension." "Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is effective for children from various social and economic levels." Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is particularly beneficial for children who are having difficulty learning to read and who are at risk for developing future reading problems." I think only academics could possible deny the common sense that phonics is a very important buiding block to successful reading. While there is a large portion of oral language that is simply acquired, I do not think reading works the same way. I believe there is a reading code that children must learn to decipher--and the best tool for this is phonics.

Again, I find it hard to belive that people actually belong to one camp or the other. And, of course, there is no logical reason why these two camps must be so rigidly seperated. Freeman (p. 26) states that those from the "acquisition" school of thought believe that reading is about constructing meaning. Does this mean that people in the "word recognition" school do not think constructing meaning is important? Again, the National Reading Panel states that "Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is most effective when introduced early." Once children have the phonics skill to decode words, of course they need to develop all those reading strategies that Freeman seems to say are the exclusive domain of the "acquisitionists." Cannot one believe that phonics instruction is essential and also that students must be able to context to help determine meaning, use background knowledge to construct meaning, and make inferences? How are these exclusive?