John Bald/language and literacy

Scottish Languages Review - language competence in primary schools.

The latest edition of Scottish Languages Review  contains an article by Argyro Kanaki of Dundee University entitled Pupils' Language Competence in the Primary School: a Literature Review. Ms Kanaki reviewed 731 articles on the subject, published between 2008 and 2014, and the stunning fact is that not one of them actually considered the competence of the pupils in the language they were studying. Researchers were more interested in issues such as motivation and intercultural understanding, and so the main point of the teaching, to provide an introduction to the language and build a basis for future learning, does not feature at all.

This, of course, is not the fault of Ms Kanaki, but it is the fault of other researchers who have deliberately focused on virtually everything except the title of her survey. This needs to change, and soon.

Professor Belinda Jack, Gresham College.

Professor Belinda Jack presents a series of lectures at Gresham College, where she is professor of rhetoric, at this link. Professor Jack is a French scholar, and illustrates her lecture on reading with a splendid film clip from Marcel Pagnol, in which we see the young child moving from decoding phonics to reading between the words or lines, and with neuroscience, which she treats with due circumspection, while using what it can tell us. For example, it seems that an original phrase stimulates more brain reaction than a cliché. Professor Jack understands the importance of taking nothing for granted - for example, I didn't know the origin of cliché, and, if you don't know either, I'll leave you to enjoy Professor Jack's lecture, and finish with a quotation from Alan Bennett on HM's introduction to personal reading, and her response to a private secretary's suggestion that she rely on his briefing. "Briefing," said HM, " is terse. factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject. Reading opens it up."

Brilliant. And congratulations to Gresham College and the Museum of London for presenting the lecture so clearly, with a transcript and powerpoint.  More to come - next lecture 28th January, and all on You Tube. The thinking person's television.

Why intelligent children have reading difficulties, and how to tackle them.

It's been a recurring theme of this site that the irregularities in English spelling make it harder for people to learn to read. Most of the time, this is seen as a problem for low-attaining children and those who don't have support from home, but it also affects children who have had full parental support.

Our latest example is a a bright seven year old, who had problems with phonics and read   the    as  ten.  Her father said she could not make sense of th, and this is not surprising, as it is an invention of Norman scribes to replace Anglo-saxon letters that reflected the sound more consistently. An explanation that her thinking was more consistent than that behind the spelling system, and a little practice, had her reading the, this, that and then without problems in a couple of minutes. The point about consistency in thinking is a matter of fact - Norman French introduced a different system of logic into English spelling, and this needs to be explained and taught. Explaining it in terms of "unusual phoneme-grapheme correspondence" does not help, as this does not explain why the correspondence is unusual. All it does is dress it up in terminology that makes no sense to young children and is an obstacle to understanding even for adults. Explaining the historical development usually solves the problem.

Some children, as we know from brain research, are slower to make connections between sounds and symbols, leading some people to conclude that phonics don't work for them. This is also an error, as there is no way of reading an alphabetic script without using the information that is contained in letters. The solution is to help the child build up an understanding of sound-letter correspondences by reinforcing each one, as it occurs, with similar examples, usually focusing on the final ( sometimes called rime) part. This is accurately described, following Goswami's research, as "learning by analogy". Phonics is learning by analogy too - it's just that the analogies are more consistent in phonically regular words. But we don't grind. We think, note, study and learn. Then speed recognition work to make it more automatic, combined with reading interesting stories that make us read words in context.

Finally, all children need to work at the level of their intellectual understanding while tackling their problems with basic reading, or they become bored. In the case of this seven year old, the interest was in science, and we discussed the physics of hot air balloons, the difference between airships (dirigibles) and balloons, disasters (catastrophes) and the differences  between hydrogen and helium, both of which words were easy for her to read, as they stick in the memory (a well-known phenomenon, which has contributed to the error of look and say in reading teaching, as some long and complicated words will stick in the mind, whether or not they have been read using letters. The generalisation of this phenomenon to try to deal with large numbers of words that do not have unusual shapes, has been a big contributor to reading failure.)

So, the problem, and the solution. Nothing less than a full understanding of the issues will do, and too few people concerned with the work have it. Result, to quote Mr Micawber -"misery".

Early to bed...

We all know that some children do not get enough sleep, though it's only obvious in extreme cases. The Guardian report of this study from University College, London, includes the following:

The study found that children whose bedtimes were irregular or who went to bed after 9pm were likely to come from more socially disadvantaged backgrounds. They were also more likely to have poor routines such as skipping breakfast, not being read to daily, having a television in their bedroom and spending longer in front of a TV than children with earlier bedtimes.

No surprises, but this reflects lifestyles rather than poverty.

Guardian on "challenging behaviour".

At long last, a Guardian writer in this piece on a Pru admits that the term "challenging behaviour" is a euphemism for poor behaviour, consisting mostly of foul-mouthed abuse, low level violence and destruction. "I've been spat at, bitten, kicked. It's part of the job,"  the head says. "I feel privileged to work with these kids."  This is not privilege - it's licensed abuse, and as unhealthy for the perpetrators as for their victims.

Michael Gove on adoption - the piece of his life.

Michael Gove, here, on the experience of being in care and being adopted, has written, literally, the piece of his life. What he says is true, and the tragedy is that the lives of children and potential parents continue to be blighted by people who impose their own view of society on others in a brutal and ignorant power play. But then, ignorance is what these people deal in, usually in the name of equality.  

When my research for the Who Cares? Trust was published in 1995, it was criticised on the grounds that achievement was not an appropriate concept for children in care. I remain outraged at this ignorant, arrogant, anti-social attitude, which is, alas, still prevalent in the left, who see achievement as a middle-class preoccupation rather than as the goal of life and the basis of civilisation. Unfortunately, they are still in power in too many places, not least, if Michael Gove is right, our anti-social and left-leaning judiciary.

 

Katharine Birbalsingh on expectations, the Modern Bac, and AQA

Ms Birbalsingh on good form, here, on what she calls the "soft bigotry" of white pupils being expected to achieve less than other groups. Her main example is Australian, where she finds teachers ranking white pupils only after they have counted the invariably higher scores of Asians.

There is no good reason for Asians to achieve more than other pupils, except for the fact that they tend to work harder. This is part of the problem of the term "expectations". "We expect the world of these kids," an Essex deputy head once told me. But they didn't actually expect anything at all, because they did not expect the children to make a real effort. Unless the term expectation is backed up by some means of turning it into reality - and the only means I know of is concentration, determination and hard work - they might as well expect to win the lottery.

The modern bac will probably be just the same. New Labour's vocational qualifications were discredited by the wilful and transparent lie that one of them was worth four GCSEs, when in practice it was worth one at the most. Perhaps they could rename it the Secondary Modern Bac.

AQA, our biggest examining board, shows its own intellectual corruption here, by trying to boost low A level grades for pupils attending poor schools. This is the most blatant form of manipulation we have yet seen, as it overtly seeks to alter the marks awarded. My suspicion is that this happens already in discriminatory marking practices that penalise students from grammar and private schools, but the lack of transparency around the boards' procedures make it impossible to pin this down.

However, AQA's proposal is exactly in line with Ms Birbalsingh's point - an E at Passmore's should be worth more than a grade obtained at a school in which pupils are properly taught and have to work hard. We should not have schools in which pupils are not properly taught and required to work hard. I had a conversation with a prospective Passmore's parent on the train home this week, and was pleased to recommend that they look at the Channel 4 documentary on the school. I think he will now send his daughter somewhere else.   

Débâcle. GCSE languages entries.

 CILT has a usefuls table of entries in French, German and Spanish, since 1996. (the full table can be downloaded here).  

French entries have fallen from 347,960 in 1996, to 318,963 in 2005, to 154,221 in 2011. The fall in French entries since 1996 is therefore 56%.  Such is the legacy of New Labour on French.

Spanish entries have risen from 42,553 in 1996, to 62,489 in 2005, to 66,021 in 2011. This is a fall from over 67,000 in Spanish in the previous two years, so the growth in Spanish has stalled.

German entries have fallen from 134,286 in 1996, to 105,259 in 2005, to 60,887 in 2011. The fall of nearly 10,000 entries between 2010 and 2011 is proportionately the largest of these three languages.

These are national statistics, and so include the private sector, which has close to 100% of pupils taking a language. The fall of almost 200,000 pupils a year taking French, and 60,000 a  year taking German, since 2006, is catastrophic, and not seriously ofset by the gain in Spanish. Overall,  entries in the major European languages have fallen from 524,799 to 277,597, a loss of 247,202, or 47%.

The falls in entries for geography and history make this a compelling argument for Ebac. These subjects are all better represented in the private sector. It should be a matter of pride for those of us in the public sector that we do not offer children fewer opportunities than they would have if their parents were better off. Science has begun to pull its socks up. So should languages.

 

 

Dr Alan Beaton and Professor Dorothy Bishop (aka Deevybee)

Dr Alan Beaton responded very quicky and generously to a request for further information following his chapter below.  He has written a book  Dyslexia, Reading and the Brain: A Sourcebook of Cognitive and Biological Research. (Psychology Press,2004) with more detail than the article on research to that date. Dr Beaton is somewhat sceptical about some subsequent research, and recommended a review by Professor Dorothy Bishop, here.  Dorothy Bishop is the author of the excellent Test for the Reception of Grammar (TROG2 is the revised version) an instrument for determining intellectual capacity in people who, for various reasons, have limited vocabulary and speaking skills. Designed originally for use with stroke patients, this test genuinely reaches parts other assessments can't, and is the last shot in my locker when I have to use a test with people who have failed to score on other measures.

Professor Bishop's blog is scintillating - her latest posting as I write is a sharp smack for Susan Greenfield for associating computer use with autism, prompting an anonymous correspondent to try to do the same to Professor Bishop. For my money, her correspondent did not succeed, and I'm fed up with the "autistic spectrum" being used as a dustbin for all sorts of misbehaviour that have nothing to do with autism. Thanks again, Dr Beaton. Way to go, Deevybee!

See also this Guardian piece by Professor Bishop on autism, and   this brilliant review of Isobel's World. And this on a range of related neurological issues - including the incisive and crucial point that

Dyslexia, and the other (neurological) conditions listed above, are all diagnosed on the basis of behavioural rather than neurological criteria. 

As the conditions are neurological in origin, and the criteria for assessment are not, misdiagnosis is both inevitable and endemic. This is the root cause of our strife over dyslexia.

Outrageous ignorance from South Gloucestershire County Council.

Ignocracy, my word for rule of the ignorant, hits new depths with this brutal tyranny from South Gloucestershire. The Mail, which prints the parts of the truth that The Guardian and Mr Speaker find politically unpalatable (The Guardian frequently returns the favour) has this story of the breakup  of a marriage by South Gloucestershire County Council because social workers and the police did not consider that injuries might be caused by brittle bone disease. The story is a little more complex than it appears, with an element of humanity from a judge who would not separate a mother from her child when he was still breastfeeding, and the children were fostered by the wife's mother and not taken away from the family completely.  Still, this is a sad story of ignorance, callousness and authoritarianism on the part of social services, and is as much an indictment of our broken society as last week's riots.    And what is behind it - Tony Blair, this time setting targets for numbers of adoptions that give social workers a perverse incentive to take children from their parents for no good reason. The police should be ashamed of themselves too, for arresting people without any evidence whatever of their having committed a crime.

A typically self-righteous spokesman for the ignocracy in South Gloucestershire said

"We have a legal duty to protect children and young people and we always put the welfare of the child at the heart of how we deliver our services.’

They obviously have no legal obligation to be competent, or to apologise to or compensate their victims. I don't know if the idiot who said this realises the effect such statements have on public confidence in social services and local authorities. Update - on Saturday, the Mail had a statement, from the council, saying that "of course we regret distress caused to the family."   

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026555/Social-workers-wrongly-accuse-family-breaking-babys-limbs.html#ixzz1VOSj9arz