By now, most people interested in children’s literacy have heard of evidence-based reading instruction. If asked what this term means, it is very likely that phonics and its use in teaching word reading will be central to the answer. But if teachers focus primarily on phonics to create strong readers, some literacy experts say, they are missing a critical element of teaching literacy: stimulating language development.
Tiffany Hogan, a professor at the MGH Health Professions Institute in Boston and director of the Speech and Language Literacy Lab, and Mary Kate DeSantis, a school-based reading specialist turned clinical research practitioner at the MGH Institute, spoke to Education Week about language development as the often missing link. In teaching reading and writing. They argue that nurturing language development, the process by which children learn to use and understand language, is just as important as teaching phonics and its associated processes. They say there are clear and systematic ways to do this, just as there are in evidence-based reading instruction.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You assert that there are two core skills associated with evidence-based reading instruction, right? Tell us about them.
Hogan: Yes. There are two separate skills that come together for reading comprehension. Right now, we see a lot of focus on reading words. People have argued that the science of reading only covers reading words. But no, that doesn’t happen. It covers all the science about reading and reading comprehension. There is also great, rich science around language understanding, how to improve it in the classroom, and how to measure it as well.
Let’s start by analyzing the components of language development.
HoganOral or spoken language is actually very complex. We usually describe language in three components: the first is the form of the language, or the sounds in the language used to convey meaning. There is also language content, the meaning aspect of language, which includes vocabulary and grammatical structure, the study of how words and sentences are formed. Then there is language use, and the pragmatics of language, or how we use language socially. So when we think about the evolution of language, we think about these three components: form, use, and content.
Explain how language development helps with reading comprehension.
The form of language is directly related to children’s ability to read words, because they associate letters and sounds, and then decode these letters to turn them into sounds, and this is what gives them form. Listening comprehension depends primarily on the content and use of language. So the knowledge of form and usage and content that babies develop from the womb – there are actually some great studies that say they develop it in the womb and throughout life – that lays the foundation for comprehension by supporting both word reading and language comprehension. .
Have teachers been trained to use oral language to teach reading and writing?
DeSantis: Thinking about oral language and ensuring that we create an environment in which oral language develops has never been a priority for me as a teacher. In the classroom, I had children in front of me, and when it came to how I thought about language comprehension, I generally thought about reading comprehension. I was going to focus all my energy and time on that. And very early in my life [teaching] Career, that’s what I did.
Why are language competencies overlooked in early literacy instruction?
As a teacher, if your students are struggling with reading, there are plenty of formal screening tools and assessments for you to get that data. [around reading] And use them to inform instructions. But it’s really rare for teachers to have an oral language screening tool, specifically, at their fingertips. It wasn’t until later in my teaching career, when I started reading the research and evidence – led by Dr. Hogan – that I began to understand that this basic language is the glue.
Right now, schools are very focused on the reading comprehension piece, where the emphasis is on decoding – breaking the code and seeing that growth in scores. Often times, the reason we don’t see that growth or we see it for a little while and then it stops and we see kids start to fall apart in those upper elementary grades is because teachers don’t know how to intentionally focus on language teaching.
What can teachers do to measure and develop oral language skills?
Hogan: We want to see the same attention paid to word reading for oral language. We hear about the science of reading and “reading words,” making sure that we have systematic and explicit instruction and that we monitor children’s progress over time, and that we meet them over time with differentiated instruction. We want to see exactly the same specificity for oral language.
There are many high-quality language interventions, but unfortunately, most of them are not integrated into the classroom materials that teachers see in front of them. They’re created by researchers like me, and many of them are freely available online, which I call prepaid, because they’re paid for with government tax dollars, and they’re not easily marketed to teachers. But in the work we’ve done, we’ve shown that if you stimulate language systematically and explicitly, you can see increases over time that enhance reading comprehension.
What does oral language teaching look like in the classroom?
Hogan: It feels like a systematic selection of age-appropriate vocabulary to use in context in rich books that children don’t have to read, but that teachers can read to them. The focus seems to be on grammatical morphology Tense morphology, derived morphology; Through appropriate play for the child; Through activities and interactions with text; Get some instructions, very clearly in the components of the story. We know that when children are taught the components of stories, they are more likely to understand them better; This is referred to as the grammar of a story – setting, character, problem, and solution. It is very useful to integrate this systematically into the curriculum. Teach students better reasoning skills; The ability to fill in the gaps in stories. Also monitor teaching comprehension – active comprehension: to summarize the main idea, and look for key details. All of these have been shown to be evidence-based in terms of language stimulation as it relates to reading comprehension and language use in activities of daily life.
Provide an example of focusing on language use in the classroom.
DeSantis: When we talk about language, in particular, what really matters is usage. Hearing the language is one thing, but actually using it, enjoying it and playing with it is another thing. For example, if you are reading a story aloud and come across a line that says “The boy screamed,” you could ask the students: What does this word “screamed” mean? What does it not mean? Can you whisper and scream at the same time? Having those “in-the-moment” discussions to monitor students’ understanding, spotting inconsistencies in stories – this is how we monitor our understanding when we read.
We want to make sure that we are checking our students’ understanding of what is being said out loud. Make sure directions are simplified. By this, I do not mean neglect, because exposure to rich and complex language is very important. Maybe you have fewer clauses in a sentence, or maybe you pause after each direction. Think about more repetition and more visual aids – things that trigger language, just through a quick visual display.
For example, if we ask a student to retell a story, if they don’t have the language to do that, you can show them a visual and this will support that language and be clearer. It’s all this built-in scaffolding to support that expressive language.
So, is there a systematic and explicit approach to understanding language?
Hogan: The teachers we work with know that they need to stimulate language in order to understand, but what is lacking is a systematic and explicit approach. So instead of just playing with language, reading books, talking about it, we’re talking about very systematic building skills over time using explicit instructions, scaffolding, all of that. When teachers do these clear breaks in language teaching, we hear from them that it helps them feel more confident teaching language skills across the curriculum or even when they are on a break and a student asks, “What does this mean?” Teachers respond by using context rather than simply stating meaning. So it gives teachers a set of skills to teach the language throughout the day. It is very important that it be as systematic and explicit as phonics teaching.
Comment on the importance of reading words and acquiring language simultaneously.
Hogan: Schools tend to focus only on word reading early on, because they say, “We have to break the code, we have to get them to read words, and then that will lead to language.” That’s true, but what we do know is that language and word reading has to be built across the curriculum so that we don’t neglect language early on, but we don’t want to neglect word reading later on. It is not a relay race, where word reading is handed over to the language. It is a parallel structure.
DeSantis: As an early career teacher, if you had asked me what explicit and systematic language instruction was, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. We have all this light on word reading and phonics right now, which is great, because that’s part of the puzzle, but the other huge piece that has to go hand in hand is figuring out how to explicitly and systematically stimulate language.
The concept of the “science of reading” has been a hot topic in education in recent years, with a focus on evidence-based strategies for teaching children how to read. However, one crucial element often gets overlooked in this conversation: the importance of understanding and addressing the impact of socio-economic and cultural factors on children’s literacy development. As we delve into the science of reading, it is essential to recognize the missing link in the conversation – the complex interplay of social and cultural influences on children’s reading ability. By illuminating the role of these factors, we can gain a more comprehensive understanding of how to effectively teach all children to read.