The reading researcher and the reading teacher need the right theory of speech.
| Number | 1114 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1999 |
| Drawer | 21 |
| Entry Date | 11/22/1999 |
| Authors | Liberman, A. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 2, 95-111. |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1114.pdf |
| Abstract | Speaking for Isabelle, I thank you for what she would have thought a kind and touching recognition of her devotion to the scientific study of reading. As for me, I am grateful for having been made part of this event but also embarrassed because I am related to it only by marriage. Having been wedded to Isabelle by choice, I was bound to reading by necessity. For I could not but be infected by her commitment to understand how children learn to read and why some cannot. Nor could I avoid being persuaded by her and Donald Shankweiler that my interest in speech was related to their interest in reading. After all, they appreciated early on that the connection between speech and reading is a two-way street and that one is well advised to look in both directions before proceeding. Thus, looking first toward speech, they observed in the work of their colleagues at Haskins Laboratories that the alphabetic structure of words is not to be found at the surface of the acoustic signal but only at a deeper, less accessible level. Then, looking in the other direction, toward reading, they foresaw the fateful consequence-namely, that mastery of speech does not normally make a child aware that words do, in fact, have an alphabetic structure. It would seem appropriate to this occasion that I follow the path they blazed. To that end, I promote the notion that only the right theory of speech can provide insight into the process by which a child who speaks is converted to one who also reads and writes. Seeing that process, as it is thus illuminated, should help the teacher to understand the relation between what her would-be reader already does and what more the teacher must now teach her to do. The key to the teacher’s understanding of that relation is found, I think, in five questions: a nucleus and four satellites. To appreciate the nucleus, we must look how speech differs biologically from reading and writing and why it is more user-friendly. The four satellite questions arise from subordinate facts that are not always well or widely understood: Given that phonemic awareness is necessary for proper reading and writing, why is it not important for speech? Why does mastery of speech not yield phonemic awareness for free, and why is the cost of acquiring it so very high for some children? Why might preliterate experience with speech not only fail to produce phonemic awareness but also fix habits that make it harder to acquire? Why, as recent evidence shows, is the route to the lexicon always phonological, not visual, even for the skilled reader? So far as I can tell, those questions are rarely answered because they are rarely asked. The reason, I think, is that they are far removed from the issues that are brought to the surface by the conventional theory of speech that is held explicitly by most speech scientists, and tacitly, it seems, by just about everybody else, including those who do research in reading. My aim, therefore, is twofold: (a) to show that the conventional view is implausible and likely, therefore, to mislead the reading researcher or teacher who follows it; and (b) to offer as a surer guide an alternative theory that is, in my view, as much more plausible as it is less conventional. |
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