Reading Acquisition In Primary Education - Phonics And Logographic Flashcards Strategies, Critical Concepts, And Research.

Reading acquisition in primary education - Phonics and Logographic Flashcards strategies, critical concepts, and research.

Recommendation of report:

Reading acquisition is learning how the alphabetic writing system works to identify words and comprehend text(Perfetti Marron, 1995). This report recommends that children in their primary education develop those skills most effectively when given instructions through a flexible combination of phonics and logographic flashcard strategies.

Summary of supporting evidence:

It is widely agreed that phonemic knowledge is central to children`s success in acquiring reading skills in English(Rose, 2006 Hulme et al., 2012 Marinus Castles, 2015). However, theoretical concepts and research have suggested that factors such as a child`s age, previous alphabetic knowledge, articulatory abilities of teacher and learner, and nature of the writing system influence this process, indicating that acquiring reading might be more effective when phonics and logographic strategies are taught in a complementary flow, as that allows accommodation of those aspects. (Castles et al.,2018 Ehri,2014).

One influential approach to how children learn to read is Ehri’s(2005) Four-Phase Theory. According to it, children’s reading develops from the Pre-Alphabetic phase, when their read is guided by visual features clarifying what the text is about(logographic strategy), not aware of letters(graphemes) or units of sounds(phonemes), often guessing words from context. One limitation of this early method is the confusion of similarly spelt or unfamiliar words, mostly provoked by limited phonemic awareness and skills (Ehri,2014).

According to the theory, when children learn some grapho-phonemic relationships(spellings), they advance to the Partial-Alphabetic phase, beginning reading some short regular words but persisting the use of logographic cues to remember words by sight. Further, at the Full-Alphabetic phase, children form complete grapho-phonemic connections using them to decode - blend sounds and remember unfamiliar words (phonics strategy). Also, the theory suggests that children synthesise their knowledge of grapho-phonemic blends into larger units within a word in the Consolidated-Alphabetic phase.

Although this theory stages the reading acquisition, Ehri (2005) emphasise that it is a continuous process, characterised by overlapping phases, emerging through practices and various strategies (Cunningham et al.,2010).

However, many studies have shown that a key precursor to successful reading acquisition is teaching children phonics. For instance, Boyer Ehri`s (2011) trained non-reding pre-schoolers who possess some knowledge of letters in using phonics. One group were taught with letters and pictures of articulatory gestures, whilst another was taught with letters only. A third control group received no treatment. After the training, children perform reading and spelling tests. Both trained groups greatly outperformed the control but the LPA read most correctly. Suggesting the significance of articulation in this process and indeed showing the high value of teaching phonics as those skills moved children from the pre-alphabetic to the partial-alphabetic stages of reading (Ehri, 2014).

Nevertheless, how reading is acquired most efficiently also depends on the nature of the writing system, particularly on its orthography, i.e. grapho-phonemic writing conventions, and the depth of transparency and predictability of these relationships Castles et al. (2018). The English writing system is characterised by deep orthography, meaning words frequently deviate from those conventions, forming inconsistent relationships between symbols and sounds(e.g. "stomach" and" fuchsia") (Tunmer Chapman,2012).To assess the impact of English orthographic depth on children`s early stages of reading, Spencer and Hanley (2004) tested the letter recognition and grapho-phonemic skills of five-year-old children from the Welsh schooling system compared to English. The former has a shallow writing system. Both schooling systems allow comparison as children begin learning at the same age and are taught phonics strategies. Reading-aloud tests conducted across three time points during the first year at school revealed dramatic benefits for the children learning to read in Welsh. Demonstrating the considerable impact of English orthography on early reading acquisition and the likely limitation of phonics strategies alone(Spencer Hanley,2004 Castles et al.,2018).

To enhance the learning of novel words with grapho-phonemic irregularities, teachers frequently employ logographic flashcards (Castles et al.,2018). Rosenthal Ehri(2008) tested the efficacy of this strategy by teaching 2nd and 5th graders the verbal forms and meaning of 6 and 10 new low-frequency words, accordingly to each group. During training, children were taught pronunciation and definition of the words and practised embedding in sentences. For each test, they were asked to pronounce or recall the meaning of words shown as pictures on flashcards. In one condition, spellings appeared on the cards during training. In another condition, children followed the procedure without spelling the words. Results demonstrated that logographic flashcards contribute to children`s efficient orthographic mapping of pronunciation and vocabulary. Further, the 5th-grade children were split into higher and lower reading abilities. The study showed that children exposed to logographic flashcards with written words recalled pronunciation much better than those without, regardless of abilities.

Phonics skills allow children to decode the grapho-phonemic connections of 80% of the monosyllabic words in the English Share, 1995). However, many other words violate those conventions, and children can overcome these difficulties with logographic flashcards (Rosenthal Ehri,2008). Although limiting reading novel words, flashcards appeared more influential to children at the nonalphabetic stage (Ehri, 20052014) and emerged as very effective in moving children to the alphabetic stage when illustrated with grapho-phonemic relationships (Boyer Ehri, 2011). Evidence suggests that the flashcard strategy is not an alternative but aids reading in almost every phase alongside phonics and is likely to contribute to one complete and more effective program for acquiring reading in English (Castles et al.,2018).

Sources for further information:

Shmidman, A., Ehri, L. (2010). Embedded picture mnemonics to learn letters. Scientific studies of reading, 14(2), 159-182. -This quantitive study looks at other applications of flashcards, particularly their effect on word learning and spelling when embedded with mnemonics.

Rosenthal, J., Ehri, L. C. (2011). Pronouncing new words aloud during the silent reading of text enhances fifth graders’ memory for vocabulary words and their spellings. Reading and Writing, 24, 921-950.-This quantitative study looks at other factors affecting reading acquisition and one of them is reading aloud.

Reference list:

Boyer, N., Ehri, L. C. (2011). Contribution of phonemic segmentation instruction with letters and articulation pictures to word reading and spelling in beginners. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15(5), 440-470.

Bruce, R. W. (1933). Conditions of transfer of training. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 16(3), 343.

Castles, A., Rastle, K., Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51.

Cunningham, A. E., Nathan, R. G., Raher, K. S. (2010). 12 Orthographic Processing in Models of Word Recognition. Handbook of Reading Research, Volume IV, 259.

Ehri, L. C. (2005a). Development of sight word reading: Phases and findings. In M.Snowling C. Hulme(Eds.),The Science of Reading , 135-154

Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21.

Miles, K. P., Ehri, L. C. (2019). Orthographic mapping facilitates sight word memory and vocabulary learning. Reading development and difficulties: Bridging the gap between research and practice, 63-82.

Marinus, E., Castles, A. (2015). Precursors to reading: Phonological awareness and letter knowledge. In The Cambridge handbook of child language (pp. 661-680). Cambridge University Press.

Perfetti, C. A., Marron, M. A. (1995). Learning To Read: Literacy Acquisition by Children and Adults.

Rose, J. (2006). Independent review of the teaching of early reading. https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5551/2/report.pdf

Rosenthal, J., Ehri, L. C. (2008). The mnemonic value of orthography for vocabulary learning. Journal of educational psychology, 100(1), 175.

Rosenthal, J., Ehri, L. C. (2011). Pronouncing new words aloud during the silent reading of text enhances fifth graders’ memory for vocabulary words and their spellings. Reading and Writing, 24, 921-950.

Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55, 151– 218

Spencer, L. H., Hanley, J. R. (2004). Learning a transparent orthography at five years old: Reading development of children during their first year of formal reading instruction in Wales. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 1–14.

Tunmer, W. E., Chapman, J. W. (2012). Does set for variability mediate the influence of vocabulary knowledge on the development of word recognition skills? Scientific Studies of