Saturday, April 25, 2020

'25% of children find learning to read difficult' (Sue Lloyd)




The following is from Sue Lloyd’s blog found here.

On average, about a quarter of children find learning to read difficult. There is a tendency to think that these children are not very bright but this could not be further from the truth. I have known many highly intelligent children who have had problems with learning to read and vice versa.

Teachers know very well that in each class there is a group of children who learn to read easily, whatever method of teaching is used; a group who learn steadily and gradually succeed; and a group of children who struggle and frequently fail. I have often asked teachers why they think this happens, when the teaching is basically the same for all the children. Their replies tend to be that the children who struggle:
 
    are not mature enough
    come from a poor environment
    have not had stories read to them
    are not interested in reading
    are poor at speaking and listening
    are limited in their vocabulary
    do not have English as their mother tongue
    have parents who are not willing or able to help them
    have parents who are too pushy

The list goes on and on. All these explanations may have some validity but, to my mind, they are not the main causes of the children’s difficulties.

She then goes on to say that the main problem is that these children undoubtedly have weak memories or an inability to hear the sounds in words or both.

Where in the world did this lady come up with a ridiculous statement such as ‘undoubtedly have weak memories’ from?

I know for a fact that most of these kids who are unable to read are instructional casualties. I have educators such as Reid Lyon, David Boulton, Seigfried Engelmann and many others who have confirmed in writing that a majority of these kids are all instructional casualties.

If these kids have an inability to hear sounds in words how in the world did the University of Florida manage to get all the kids who could not read, to read at grade level and maintain them at grade level after a short period of intervention?

How did all my more than 70 students, who could not read even in grades 2,3 and 4, begin to read within 4 months? More importantly, how did they memorise the 220 Dolch words if their memory was bad?

I had written several emails to Sue Lloyd explaining that the main reason for these kids being unable to read is the fact that about 20% of kids disengage from learning to read due to confusion. They shut down from learning to read when they cannot make sense of the sounds of letters taught to the words being asked to read.

In the first paragraph above Sue Lloyd had written ‘Teachers know very well that in each class there is … a group who learn steadily and gradually succeed; and a group of children who struggle and frequently fail.

We need to think of the group who struggle and frequently fail. They struggle and fail because of the confusion of not being able to make sense of the wrong pronunciation of phonemes taught. 

When I told Sue Lloyd that the reason why many of the kids struggle and disengage from learning to read she said that that is probably possible in countries teaching English as a second language but cannot be true in the UK. 

If that is the case then she has to answer how China, Singapore and Hong Kong beat all the English speaking countries in the last PISA test.

Click here for the result of the last PISA test.









10 comments:

Unknown said...

It strikes me that you, Lugman Michel,have little experience of teaching a whole class of children: otherwise you would know that some children remember facts much more easily than other children do. For reading there are at least 70-80 letter-sound correspondences that need to be taught in the first year. This is difficult for about 25% of the children and they need to be given extra practice. They also need plenty of blending practice. Some children do not naturally hear the sounds in words but they can all be taught. I explained this on my website

I agree with you that reading failure is virtually always linked to poor instruction.I have also explained to you that saying the sounds as purely as possible is important, too. I just do not think it is the main and only problem.

Luqman Michel said...

It would be better if you at least give a pseudonym so that I can address you.
I think you are missing the whole point. I write on why kids shut down from learning to read.
Please educate me on any other matter that causes a kid to shut down or disengage from learning to read.
If you had cared to listen to my 5 YouTube videos you will not write this.
Listen to the videos I have linked in one of my posts and then let us discuss this.
https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2020/04/why-many-kids-shut-down-from-learning.html

suelloydtcrw@gmail said...

I apologies for not having used my name. It was not intentional. I thought it would automatically be there when it offered a button for choosing to be anonymous, which I didn't want.

I had looked at your videos - I try to understand when people have other ideas to myself.

I have never known of anyone who says that letter names should never be taught. Most of us think that when children are taught a letter name and a letter sound at the same time they can muddle them up (see Overview Part 3 on my website for further explanation). Usually we teach letter names after the children have become used to blending words (using the letter sounds only) and that it is usually towards the end of the first term that we introduce letter names.

I agree with your early blending stage b-at-t bat, s-a-t sat etc. I do wonder how you teach the vowel digraphs and the progression you use from one lesson to another

I find your understanding of the alphabetic code to be so different to mine and others that I know of, especially as you use the letter names of consonants e.g the 'tea, teach and teeth example you used in one of the videos. In my experience most people blend these words as follows" '/t/ /ea/,' '/t/ /ea/ /ch/', and
'/t/ /ee/ /th/' .... the letters and both have an /ee/ sound.

I think your students disengage from reading when they do not understand how the English alphabetic code works and they struggle to decode the words. These children can read in Malay so I presume they are decoding Malayan words. Their trouble seems to be that they do not realise how the complicated English alphabetic code works or even if there is a code to written English. I think you must be teaching them enough with the /b-a-t/ 'bat' blending for them to twig to the main bits of the English code. By saying the sounds in a pure way makes it easier for them, too. What you are not seeing are children who cannot read in any language, and that can provide different problems.

You mention the PISA test. I know that a huge number of children in Singapore, Hong Kong and Ireland are taught with Jolly Phonics, which is a synthetic phonics programme. It is a very powerful system of teaching, especially when the children are all taught the 70-80 main letter-sound correspondences, are provided with plenty of blending practice (using those correspondences) and initially read decodable books.

By the way I didn't say the following: 'When I told Sue Lloyd that the reason why many of the kids struggle and disengage from learning to read she said that that is probably possible in countries teaching English as a second language but cannot be true in the UK.'
I said that I had seen teachers using poor pronunciation (that is with the /ugh/ on the end of some consonants) and their children did not have problems with decoding. I explained that I had not had the experience of teaching a class of children who were not English speakers and that I could imagine the poor pronunciation of the sounds might make it more difficult for them. With blending English words, there are many words that do not give the exact pronunciation and English speaking children 'tweak' them because they are familiar with the words in their spoken language and they have context to help them.

suelloydtcrw@gmail.com said...

Sorry - a bit has been chopped off!

In the 5th point I wrote ' the letters and both have an /ee/ sound.

The following link from my website might make the English alphabetic code clearer. I hope so.

http://tcrw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TCRW-Alphabetic-Code-1.pdf

Luqman Michel said...


Hello Sue Lloyd,
Thank you for taking your valuable time to write a detailed comment. At the onset let me tell you that I have no problem with the way you teach phonics. I had spent much time listening to your website and have recommended it to my friends. In fact, it is in one of my blogs. I am not competing with anyone at all. All I am interested is in ending the reading wars and I believe it can be ended by teaching the pronunciation of phonemes correctly. It can be done as shown by you on your website and as shown by the African American lady in a video I had posted.

You said, “I had looked at your videos - I try to understand when people have other ideas to myself.”

Thank you, ma’am. Too many people shoot from the hip without having read my post or linked videos. I have spent a considerable time maintaining my blog and preparing the videos hoping it will benefit parents with so-called dyslexic kids who are in fact kids who have disengaged from learning to read due to confusion.

You said, “I have never known of anyone who says that letter names should never be taught. Most of us think that when children are taught a letter name and a letter sound at the same time they can muddle them up (see Overview Part 3 on my website for further explanation). Usually we teach letter names after the children have become used to blending words (using the letter sounds only) and that it is usually towards the end of the first term that we introduce letter names.”

Unfortunately, I have deleted my notes on websites where writers have said that there is no need to teach letter sounds as it will confuse the kids. One of them was a Ph.D. When I find them I will email them to you, not that it is important.
Whether we teach letter names first or sounds first is a matter of choice but in this country, they teach letter names first as introduced by the British before I was born.

You said, “I agree with your early blending stage b-at-t bat, s-a-t sat etc. I do wonder how you teach the vowel digraphs and the progression you use from one lesson to another. “

I teach them later on in the lessons I have prepared specifically for these kids. After the 30 lessons, I start asking them to read simple storybooks and explain to them how to read new words from syllables they have learned. For e.g. I teach the sound ‘oo’ in two lessons. One lesson with the short sound- book, cook, look, good and another with the long sound – cool, fool, tool etc.

When a child starts reading storybooks and comes to a new word say, spool, I ask him to use his right index finger to place on the letter ‘l’ and his left index finger to block the letters sp. I then ask him to pronounce the ‘oo’ > lift the right finger and read ‘ool’ which he will read with no problem at all > uncover the letter ‘p’ and he will read the word ‘pool’ and then take off the finger from the letter ‘s and will have no problem reading ‘spool’. I then explain that the letters ‘sp’ produces one sound.

I have had parents telling me that they have seen their children doing this at home and are able to read many new words this way. Of course, in time they are able to do it without using their fingers.

This is a way I thought of and it may not be conventional but who cares as long as they help kids in learning to read.

Luqman Michel said...

Hello, again Sue,
You said, “I find your understanding of the alphabetic code to be so different to mine and others that I know of, especially as you use the letter names of consonants e.g the 'tea, teach and teeth example you used in one of the videos. In my experience most people blend these words as follows" '/t/ /ea/,' '/t/ /ea/ /ch/', and '/t/ /ee/ /th/' .... the letters and both have an /ee/ sound.”

I am not a trained teacher and I am only interested in getting my students to learn to read. These students I have taught are all kids who had stopped learning to read due to confusion. They are all brilliant kids. Ma’am, that is why I am passionate about what I am doing. I am not funded by any organization and I quit my job to understand why these smart kids were able to read in Malay and Romanised Mandarin and not in English.

As I have repeatedly said in my blog, I teach simple phonics and Dolch words and get them to read within 30 lessons of one hour per lesson three times per week. Again I am not promoting anything as I have stopped teaching and started sharing what I have learned with schools here.

I start teaching phonics from day one with family words ‘at’. I teach 5 Dolch words for them to learn by rote memorisation (not visual memory) and at the end of the first lesson, they read 11 sentences and go home with their self-esteem boosted.

Upon teaching my first lesson I started seeing quizzical looks from each student I taught. After some time it dawned on me as to why they wore that quizzical look on their faces. I realized that it was because I had sounded out each of the letters in the list of family words – bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat and sat – where the a is sounded out as in apple. The moment I read the words ‘A cat’ they looked puzzled. Then I realized that it was because of the different pronunciation of the phoneme of the letter ‘A’ which was different from that in the word ‘cat’. From then on I started teaching kids that all letters in English represent more than one sound, unlike Malay where each letter represents only one sound. This makes complete sense to them as they all know how to read in Malay.

Please don’t tell me that these kids were confused because of their knowledge of Malay as this is exactly the same problem faced by kids all over the world. There are kids (your 25%) who need to be told these things explicitly.

Luqman Michel said...

You said “I think your students disengage from reading when they do not understand how the English alphabetic code works and they struggle to decode the words. These children can read in Malay so I presume they are decoding Malayan words. Their trouble seems to be that they do not realise how the complicated English alphabetic code works or even if there is a code to written English. I think you must be teaching them enough with the /b-a-t/ 'bat' blending for them to twig to the main bits of the English code. By saying the sounds in a pure way makes it easier for them, too. What you are not seeing are children who cannot read in any language, and that can provide different problems.”

This is where you are not joining the dots. About 20% of kids around the world shut down from learning to read, including the English speaking countries. Think of the 25 % you spoke about. There are videos of kids who were interviewed by the ‘Children of the Code’ team where the kids themselves say that they were confused with the sounds. Many children in Australia leave school as illiterate. You have to ask why. These are kids who speak only English. How can they blend ‘buhahtuh’ to sound out bat? Thank goodness that most of the kids learn analytically.

I have taught a child who was shut down in India via WhatsApp. I have videos of kids in Australia reading all the letter sounds wrongly and yet able to read nonsense words I gave them to read. We have to ask how they performed these feats. I believe it is my auditing exposure that makes me ask questions and find answers to my own questions.

A friend in Australia is hooked on the way I teach and is now teaching kids using my lessons and finding it easy to teach the kids.

I think we should stop giving this excuse that the English alphabetic code is complicated when it comes to children disengaging to learn to read.

We know that there are many problems in teaching kids English – silent letters, homonyms, heteronyms, sounds of letters in words where that letter does not even exist as in the word ‘one’ (w sound when w is absent) and we can go on. The important thing is that these do not cause a kid to shut down from learning to read. Once they have passed the point of being able to read using phonics they will learn the rest as they go on. I don’t teach them rules such as when the letter ‘C’ carries the ‘S’ sound and ‘K’ sound as they will figure this out as they progress in their reading.

Grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, etc. can be taught as long as the kid has not shut down from learning to read.

I don’t teach them all the different combinations of sounds. I teach the basic and once they understand phonemes and how they are blended they pick up from there.

Luqman Michel said...

You said, “By the way I didn't say the following: 'When I told Sue Lloyd that the reason why many of the kids struggle and disengage from learning to read she said that that is probably possible in countries teaching English as a second language but cannot be true in the UK.
I said that I had seen teachers using poor pronunciation (that is with the /ugh/ on the end of some consonants) and their children did not have problems with decoding. I explained that I had not had the experience of teaching a class of children who were not English speakers and that I could imagine the poor pronunciation of the sounds might make it more difficult for them. With blending English words, there are many words that do not give the exact pronunciation and English speaking children 'tweak' them because they are familiar with the words in their spoken language and they have context to help them.”

I am sorry if I had misquoted you. I have very high respect for you and your teaching methods. I may have misunderstood the following which is what you had said.

“I do not know if that is the same for non-English speaking children, who do not know the meaning of the words they are trying to read.”

All the kids who have come to me for tuition are kids from rich families who speak good English. I would call all of them as English speakers. Of course they also speak in Malay and the Chinese speak the Chinese language as well.

My post today and tomorrow will answer some of the other questions you may have. If you have time, you should click on the links to better understand my posts.

Please ask any other questions you may have so that I may learn from your vast knowledge of having taught kids to read.
Stay safe.



Luqman Michel said...

I read through my response and find that I may not have adequately responded. After my students had learned most of the sounds represented by letters I used to see puzzled looks on their faces when I pronounced words such as be, bee, deep, giraffe, etc. I could not understand why they were puzzled until I realised that I have been teaching letter sounds for the letter ‘b’ as in bug, ‘d’ as in dug, g as in grow. But these were not the sounds in words such as bee, deep, giraffe, etc. It was then that I started telling all new students that most words are read using letter sounds whilst some use the letter names. That solved the problem of the quizzical look.
These children need to be explicitly told these things because they are logical thinking kids who shut down when things are illogical. I understand your method of teaching t/ee/th etc. but I just take the simple approach. As far as I am concerned if the kids can learn to read I am more than happy.
Stop and please consider what I am saying: After having taught kids the sound represented by T as /t/ how do I explain to them the word tea or teeth. I tell them that in these two words we use the letter names and the kids understand what I have said and they do not look puzzled.
They are extremely smart kids who just have to know the reason why they are sounded different from what was taught earlier.

Luqman Michel said...

You said “I said that I had seen teachers using poor pronunciation (that is with the /ugh/ on the end of some consonants) and their children did not have problems with decoding”.

I agree ma’am and I have addressed this in my blog posts several times. About 80% of kids learn to read regardless of the way they are taught. As you have said on your website, there are many kids who struggle and are finally able to read. This is another category of kids that we need to tackle. How long did they struggle before figuring out analytically how to read? If they were taught the correct pronunciation of phonemes they will not have struggled.

I have posted 4 videos of kids now studying in Australia who pronounce consonants with extraneous sounds. Yet, they were able to read nonsense words as listed in Dr. D. Kilpatrick’s book. I guess they must have learned to read analytically.

My guess would be: Having been taught buhahtuh as bat and cuhahtuh as cat and puhahtuh as pat; when they are then taught the word catch I believe through analysis they can figure out the words batch and patch.
Meanwhile, the teacher would have started teaching other important matters where the children would have been left behind. As you have pointed out, if China and Singapore are teaching systematic synthetic phonics then there is no way the kids would have shut down and that may possibly be why their reading standard is higher than the UK and the US.

Discuss this with your mates at Reading Reform Foundation (RRF) and let us continue with our Q&A.
Happy Days!