John Bald/language and literacy

Simple Gifts. Brief case notes from two pupils.

"Do you still think you have a reading problem?"   No.

"Do you still think you're dyslexic?" No.

Six weeks and four lessons earlier, the answers would have been different. Sheila, as we will call her, is 14, and attends an English school in Spain. Until our first lesson, her reading had been hesitant and inaccurate, and she didn't enjoy it. She had never been able to learn multiplication tables, despite assistance from a highly-qualified family member. Sheila had been assessed as dyslexic by a British educational psychologist, and the examinations clock had begun to tick.

How Sheila, and her younger schoolmate Rachel, turned this situation round in a short time provides some insights into the particular issues of learning to read in English, as well as the outdated and unreliable techniques used to assess people who don't find it straightforward as "dyslexic".

Sheila was reading the David Walliams novel "Mr Stink," and had reached Chapter 6. Reading it to me, she soon met words in which the letters did not indicate their most frequent sounds - giant, pulled, emblazoned, jewel-encrusted - and which she could not work out using the regular sound to letter correspondence that worked for her in Spanish. I explained to her why we could not always rely on what letters told us to read every word, and that, as has been known for almost twenty years, there is an area of the brain that interprets the information from letters in English, so that we can distinguish "please" from "bread", and "should" from "shoulder".

Put simply, in order to read fluently in English, we need not only to use the information contained in the letters, but to know what they are actually indicating in each word. Children can be helped to learn to blend information from letters in the early stages of reading by giving them highly regular texts, but this is of no value to a fourteen year old who has to handle the full range of the language in her school work.

The operation of letters in English is based on four main functions. Around two-thirds of the time, a letter indicates its most frequent sound - cat, hat, rat, etc. Sometimes, a letter gives us information about another letter, changing its most frequent sound. In "giant", the i has a softening effect on the g - this happens a lot of the time but not always, as in "girl" and "get". Sometimes, because we have only 26 letters and over half a million words, letters work in groups. "Station", for example, has a sound for each letter, then the group "tion". Finally, we have variations in pronunciation for historical reasons, beginning with the Norman conquest, which flooded English with French for around 200 years.

The consolation - that reversing the process makes it relatively easy to learn French - comes later. The immediate task is to explain why things as they are and to engage the area of the brain, described by Professors Blakemore and Firth (The Learning Brain, 2005) as the "word form area" that enables them to interpret the full range of information conveyed by letters, and so read whatever text they have before them. My technique is to treat the text as if it were a new piece of music, perhaps with some unfamiliar flats and sharps, and not to expect perfect reading at sight first time round. Instead, each new pattern is explained by moving to another word with the same pattern, discussing it, adding more examples, and inserting the word that has caused the problem once the pupil is confident with it. Once the pattern behind the error is secure in the child's mind, we return to the text and read it again, as with a piece of music that has been practised. The whole process builds and reinforces the key skill of blending the information contained in the letters to build up words by giving intensive and constructive practice with each individual example.

The government, in the National Curriculum, has come very close to endorsing an extreme form of phonics, in which the whole of language is reduced to "phoneme" (sound) and "grapheme" (letter or group of letters) correspondence, with no explanation of the other factors in reading, including phrasing and the development of spelling outlined by David Crystal in Spell It Out. The one thing that has prevented this is that the glossary of terminology is "non-statutory" - ie, there is no obligation to use it in teaching, provided the material is taught. The terminology, like that of grammar, is included in the Key Stage 2 tests, but can be added as an extra after the material is taught, at which point it is much less likely to do damage.

To return to the two cases. Sheila, after six lessons, had read the whole of Mr Stink, and found it progressively easier. She read to me a science test she had just taken, with perfect understanding an no errors. As a teenager rather than a saint, she had not practised tables, but could say 2,3 and 4x with only one error, which was encouraging as she had previously not got beyond 2x2 without hesitation and error. Sheila could also apply the principles of Slimmed Down Spelling to spell chaos, infatuation and chaotic. Rachel, who had chosen The Vet Fairy, had to work very hard to read even the first few words in her first lesson, but in the second, on Monday, was brimming with confidence and managed a paragraph with full understanding. Her parents' comment - "It was amazing to see the way you work...you've given us hope." 

Simple Gifts: Grammar and Spelling for Children and Young Adults. Part 2, Slimmed Down Spelling.

Part 1 of Simple Gifts shows how the essential features of English grammar can be taught in ways that children and adult learners find easy to understand. This second part, Slimmed Down Spelling, is the outcome of practical work with people learning to spell. I have been working on it since 1996, initially as a development from the approach to reading that appeard in The Literacy File.

Key points:

We use plain English. No technical terms are needed.

We understand and explain that English spelling, because of its history, is an example of fuzzy logic. The letters tell us broadly what we need to know, but not always precisely. The history of English spelling is set out in David Crystal's Spell It Out.  This book should be required reading in all initial and in-service training. 

The result of this fuzzy logic is that information from letters in English needs to be interpreted, for example to see the difference between should and shoulder. An area of the brain, described by Professors Blakemore and Frith in The Learning Brain as the "word form area" is activated in order to do this. It is not needed in highly regular languages such as Italian.

I have found that these two maxims help children and adults to learn to read and spell in a language based on fuzzy logic:

We use what the letters tell us, but we don't believe the letters tell us everything.

and

The language is a thousand years old. If we were a thousand years old, we'd have a few wrinkles.

The second point is based on the influx of French into English following the Norman conquest. I illustrate this by showing this excellent animation of the Bayeux tapestry, discussing the character of William I - children understand bullies - and saying the word table, slowly, in French, so that children can hear the l before the e. Many other words have the same origin, and spelling pattern.

Because of the large number of words in English, and the small number of letters in the alphabet, letters can't always represent one sound each, as in cat, hat etc. Sometimes they work in groups, sometimes words have an extra letter that changes the sound of another (in face, the e indicates a change from the most frequent sound indicated by a, and softens c). Most words in which this happens are also shared with French. Most words with an extra letter have only one. Sometimes the extra letter is a double letter, usually to act as a wall and keep a voice (vowel) sound short. The good news is that we don't have triple letters, other than in joke words such as  Aaaaargh!

The outcome is that spelling can be explained in these four principles of Slimmed Down Spelling: 

1. If we hear a sound when we say a word carefully -  without taking any shortcuts - we need at least one letter for it. We use a letter to represent a sound because we hear it. This covers roughly three-quarters of spelling.
2. Sometimes letters work in groups –eg, station has one sound per letter for the first three letters then the group tion. We use a group when we’ve learned we need it – this way, we don’t guess at what group we might need.
3. Some words have an extra letter, eg made, chaos. We use an extra letter when we’ve learned we need it. Sometimes there is a function for the extra letter – eg plague where the u stops the e from softening the g, as it would in page.
4. Sometimes, because of shortcuts in speech, or changes in the way people speak, the letter we need is not the one we think we need. These letters are awkward, and we only use them when we’ve learned we need them. The easiest example is probably was rather than woz. This is Germanic, and wa is found in a range of shared words with German, including warm and Wasser (Water), both of which, in German,  have the normal short sound of a.  Once again, we use an awkward letter only when we’ve learned we need it.

 Once we’ve learned to spell a word – and we never copy – we find at least one other that is like it. This helps us build up our understanding of patterns, and is especially useful to people who do not find learning to spell straightforward.

 It usually takes children and adults six weeks to three months to learn to apply these principles. They work. But they are designed to teach people to spell and not to promote a political agenda. Slimmed Down Spelling was originally published in The Times Educational Supplement, and there is more detailed discussion of word patterns in my book, Using Phonics to Teach Reading and Spelling.  It works.

 

 

 

Simple Gifts: Grammar and Spelling for Children and Young Adults. Part 1, Grammar.

"What can be said at all, can be said simply."  Wittgenstein.

"'Tis the gift to be simple."   Simple Gifts, Joseph Brackett.

Three key points.

Sentence. We organise written English in sentences so that readers can understand it from its printed form alone,  without the personal touches and feedback that people exchange when they are talking.  A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. 

Verb.     Verbs indicate an action, a feeling or state of mind, or a state of things. Most verbs "do" things, but not all. Some are composed of more than one word - I have done my homework. I am doing my homework. It is essential to take time to practise identifying verbs, particularly the verbs to be - am, are, is, was, were and to have, as they link words or ideas together, but do  not "do" anything.  It is possible to have a sentence without a verb (see the opening paragraphs of Dickens' Bleak House), but it is very unusual.  Verbs are the most important words, and there is little or no hope of progress in understanding and using grammar if the learner does not recognise verbs and know how they are used.

Subject. Very nearly all sentences have a subject and verb. This is a tricky idea, as the subject of a sentence is not, as in everyday life, what it is about, but whoever or whatever is doing what the verb does (or feels, or is). Grasping the idea of subject is, for many, the most difficult single element of grammar, and one that needs to be revisited and practised.

It is important because a change in the subject, or even a repetition of it as we are writing, almost always requires us to insert link words or punctuation so that we do not run two sentences together by mistake. It often helps to point out that the subject usually comes immediately before the verb. Questions such as "whodunit?" or "what is it?" can also help identify it 

Grammar on the Menu

1. Main.  Most of us like eating out, and most meals have a main course. In grammar, a main course (or clause)  has a subject and verb.

The dog    barks.

subject     verb.

We don't usually have two mains when we eat out - one parent told her daughter that "Daddy might, if he thought he could get away with it" - and we don't usually have two mains in a sentence. To avoid this as we write, we use a simple technique - when we repeat or change the subject, we add strong punctuation or a link word.

                       The dog barks                 and               it chases the postman.

                                                 using a link word

                                    The dog barks.  It chases the postman.

                           using strong punctuation, in this case a full stop

Strong punctuation contains a dot - . ? !  :  ;  or a dash  - .   A comma is weak punctuation. It can be used to group, or phrase, words within a sentence, but not to end one. Knowing where to use strong punctuation or a link word is the most important single factor in writing an accurate sentence. It can be helpful to have learners think of a punctuation mark as the word it represents - this gives a better sense of its importance than the mark itself.

2. Main + dessert. Link words let us add something to the main, without creating confusion over what comes first or is more important.

                    The postman ran away      because        the dog was barking.

                    The bus can't get through      if             you park there

                    The postman wasn't scared, although    the dog had barked at him.

Link words have different purposes, as we may wish to say different things, and these can be learned later. The most important point at this stage is to learn when they are needed.

 

3. Starter + main. (and the abominable "fronted adverbial".)   We often insert a word or phrase before the subject of a sentence, in order to set the scene. Here are examples:

Today, I got up early.

Because I'm usually late, I'm going to go to bed early tonight.

If we use a starter word or phrase, we usually insert a comma to mark off the main clause. This is a bit like removing a starter plate before serving the main - we don't actually leave the table and start again. These starters can be single words, or phrases, and there can be more than one of them

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,  Two starter phrases

I heard a maiden singing in the valley below.   Main

(Interlude) Because a starter word adds some information to the verb - usually telling us when something happened - traditional grammar called them adverbs. Because they could be in the form of a phrase rather than a word, professors of linguistics, aping real scientists, decided to shorten "adverb or adverbial phrase" into "adverbial", saving themselves time, and imposing a layer of confusion on the general public. Because an adverb often follows the verb

Arsenal won easily

Mill Reef won at a canter

they decided to call a starter a "fronted adverbial", as it was placed before the verb. Suits you, sir, but this sesquipedalian verbiage does not help a ten year old.  

4. Starter + main + dessert. The starter plus main can be followed by a dessert using the rules above - that is, we insert strong punctuation or a link word after the main.

There are other ways of extending sentences, which can be added to the learner's personal repertoire as the teacher decides they are ready for them. We can, for example, add a aperitif through two starter phrases, or a coffee, if we don't mind paying the restaurant's markup. These, though, are the main principles of sentence construction, and the overriding one is that we can't have two mains in one sentence.

Time Zones. (draft)

When we speak, time is shared between ourselves and person or people we are talking to, and so is obvious. When we write, the other person is not there, and so we must make issues of time explicit. We do this by means of time zones, each of which gives us a range of options that we can use without moving out of it, and so losing track of time.

The main time zones are the present, the past and the future. As we don't know what will happen in the future, we tend not to stay there for long. As stories tell us what has already happened, they tend to be written in the past ("Rosie the hen went for a walk.").  Much public discussion, including politics and news, comes to us as it happens, in the present.

The old French word for time was le tens. English added e, to give us the word tense. This broke the link with time in normal English usage, and linguistics has taken this further by limiting the word to occasions where it uses a different form, as in the above quotation from Rosie's Walk. Other European languages have kept the link with time - Les temps, Die Zeiten, Los tiempos. We need to restore it, as it is the link between grammar and human experience.

We have three main ways of indicating a time zone.

• A word or phrase related to time.  Once upon a time... 
• The form of a verb - Marley was dead, to begin with. (Dickens, A Christmas Carol)
• Context. O'Dowd goes in command. (Thackeray, Vanity Fair.)

Once we are in a time zone, we can use different forms to indicate shades of meaning. These are the forms that have been given the name of tenses, but if they are simply forms, I suggest staying with that for the moment.

Present.  Simple form                      I play the piano.

              Continuous form                I am playing the piano.

 

Past.        Simple form                      I played the piano

               Composed form                 I have had my breakfast.

               Continuous form                I was playing the piano

               Double  form                     I had played the piano

Future.    Composed form                 I will play the piano later today.

Once we are in a time zone, we need to give our reader a signpost, usually a short phrase, if we move out of it. Remembering the zone we are in, and ways of moving out of it, is an important stage in developing control in writing, and takes practice. Roz Wilson's and Alan Peat's work on sentence construction can be very helpful in this. The main additional features of verbs, the passive voice and forms indicating a degree of uncertainty, can be introduced and explained as the need arises, which it certainly will in the course of writing. Traditional terminology here is only partly helpful. "Conditional" is ok, as "on condition that" can sometimes be substituted for "if".  "Subjunctive" is an obscurity, and rarely used in English outside a command form - "Let it be".

The key point, at each stage, is to explain each form in a way that makes sense to the person learning, and then to have them practise.

Part 2 of Simple Gifts, Slimmed Down Spelling, is here.