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Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading - Softcover

Mcguinness, Diane

 
9780684853567: Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0684853566 ISBN 13: 9780684853567
Verlag: Free Press, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

In America today, 43 percent of our children fall below grade level in reading. In her meticulously researched and groundbreaking work, Diane McGuinness faults outmoded reading systems for this crisis -- and provides the answers we need to give our children the reading skills they need. Drawing on twenty-five years of cutting-edge research, Dr. McGuinness presents bold new "phoneme awareness" programs that overcome the tremendous shortcomings of other systems by focusing on the crucial need to understand and hear reliably the sounds of a language before learning to read. Maintaining that any child can be taught to read fluently if given proper instruction, she dramatically reveals how dyslexia and behavior problems such as ADD stem not from neurological disorders but from flawed methods of reading instruction. With invaluable information on remedial reading programs that can correct various ineffective reading strategies, this book is a must for concerned parents, teachers, and others who want to make a difference.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Diane McGuinness, Ph.D., is a cognitive-development psychologist and Professor at the University of South Florida. The author of When Children Don't Learn, she lives in Sanibel, Florida.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

In America today, 43 percent of our children test below grade level in reading. Among adults, 42 million are functionally illiterate. The numbers are staggering, but in our schools, the problem is only getting worse. The old methods don't work, and this book will tell you why. Psychologist Diane McGuinness draws on twenty-five years of solid reading research that shows exactly how the current system fails and how to fix it. She explains that the ability to read depends on the ability to hear the sounds of our language correctly, and on a working knowledge of something called the spelling code, which is the key to how English spelling works: what letters and letter combinations go with which sounds. This connection of sounds and the symbols that represent them is crucial to learning how to read, and McGuinness explains it with rigor, clarity, and expertise. Moreover, she shows how this method is scientifically proven and has transformed so-called dyslexics and troubled readers into expert readers and spellers, often in astoundingly short periods of time. Diane McGuinness has given us the blueprint for a reading revolution - one that offers real hope to the millions of children and adults who are failing needlessly in school and in life.

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Chapter 1: READING REPORT CARD
The Jamesons were a model middle-class family. Jim and Pat had college degrees. Jim earned good money as an engineer, and Pat had a part-time consulting job setting up computer systems for small businesses. They were devoted parents to their three children, umpiring for little league, running car pools to diving lessons, dancing lessons, and soccer practice. They valued learning and read bedtime stories every night. They often consulted dictionaries and encyclopedias whenever one of the children introduced an unfamiliar topic. Dinner conversations were lively, and filled with accounts of the children's daily activities.
Their youngest son, Donny, started kindergarten after two years at a well-run preschool. Donny could recite the alphabet, write most of his letters, his first and last names, and could count to 2,000 if anyone would let him. In kindergarten, Donny got more practice reciting the alphabet, copying out letters, and memorizing "sight words." He could read several short words. During first grade he taught himself to read simple books and enjoyed writing stories about airplanes, guns, and robots. He got an A on his report card for Language Arts. His teacher said he was the "best reader in the class" Mom and Dad were pleased, the teacher was pleased, and Donny was pleased. As he told his Grandma: "I can read faster than anyone in the school."
In second grade the words got longer. Donny had trouble remembering all of them. He began to ask his friend, "What does this word say?" He would try to memorize it for the next time he saw it in a story. As the year went by, he had to ask his friend more and more often. Meanwhile, his stories got more interesting, and his handwriting a little neater. This year he wrote a lot about submarines. He could spell "submarine" correctly. The word was on the cover of five books he had at home and he practiced copying it over and over again. Here is one of his stories:
The Submarine Rtet
Kpn John tol hz cru fl sdm a ked. Takr dun. The submarine sek to the osn flor. It was qit. Tha cud ker the df crjz fling ner bi. But tha yr saf.
[The Submarine Retreat. Captain John told his crew full steam ahead. Take her down. The submarine sank to the ocean floor. It was quiet. They could hear the depth charges falling near by. But they were safe.]
This particular story, replete with spelling mistakes, was up on the wall on parents' night. Jim and Pat were alarmed. In fact, they had already discussed asking the teacher about Donny's written work. The teacher told them not to worry. She pointed out that Donny was a model student. He worked very hard. She asked them to notice the excellent vocabulary in the story (she was adept at reading her students' spelling). She asked them to notice that Donny was the only child who put a capital letter at the beginning of every sentence. She said that this was "transitional spelling." The children would be taught to spell with "conventional spelling" in third grade.
In the middle of second grade the children were given a nationally normed reading test. Donny scored just below "grade level," about average for his age. His teacher was pleased, because most of the children in her class were "at grade level," just where they should be. She was proud of her record in getting most children "at grade level" over the six years she had taught second grade.
In third grade the words got longer still. The books had more pages. Donny couldn't remember lots of these words, even when he asked several times. He had to guess so many of the words when he was reading that he couldn't make sense of the story. It helped a lot if there were pictures. Pat spent more time listening to Donny read and correcting his mistakes as they went along. Despite this extra tutoring, Donny's reading did not improve. When he wrote stories, they looked pretty much the same as "The Submarine Retreat." Paradoxically, Donny was the best speller in the class. His teacher told the Jamesons that his spelling was perfect. He got 100 percent week after week on the class spelling words. She said not to worry, because the "conventional spelling" he was learning would eventually transfer to his creative writing. "It just takes time." The teacher saw nothing odd about the fact that Donny's spelling was "perfect," yet he could scarcely spell a word in his creative writing.
At the end of third grade, Pat went to see the school counselor about Donny's poor skills. By now, she had discovered that Donny could memorize the week's spelling words long enough to pass the test, but forgot them completely only days later. The counselor said that Donny was "not severe," that there were scores of children worse than him, and there was a ten-month waiting list for testing. Instead, Pat and Jim got Donny tested by a school psychologist in private practice. It cost them $600.00. Donny was a year and a half behind in reading, two years behind in spelling, and had an IQ of 124. The school psychologist said he needed private tutoring. She said it could take up to two years, but that she didn't do private tutoring herself and couldn't recommend anyone.
They found a tutor in the Yellow Pages. The cost was $40.00 an hour, and Pat took on more consulting work to pay for the extra expense. Meanwhile, Pat and Jim didn't tell anyone about Donny's problem except the immediate family. They were embarrassed and upset. How had they failed their child? Why was it that Donny had these problems when the other two children were fine? Did he have some kind of brain damage? What would happen if the reading specialist couldn't teach Donny to read and spell? Mealtimes changed from joyful, happy occasions, to a tension-filled experience, as Donny was asked to tell everyone exactly what he had done in school, exactly how many pages he had read, and exactly what his spelling words were for that week. Pat accused Jim of not taking enough time with Donny, so Jim spent every evening listening to Donny read. Jim wasn't always patient ("I've told you that word a hundred times"), and the session often ended in tears. Pat and Jim read books on the subjects of "dyslexia" and "learning disabilities." Nothing they read held out much hope. While all this was going on, the other children were pushed into the background and became silently angry and resentful.
What is the ending to this story? It depends on whether Pat and Jim found the right reading clinic. If they did, they would be given an accurate diagnosis of Donny's problem. The clues are all contained in the story. Donny's problem was quite simple. He didn't understand the alphabet code because he had never been taught it. Instead, he was using letter names instead of "letter sounds" to create his own code ('captain' = "kay-pee-en" kpn), or trying to memorize whole words by sight. This made it impossible for him to decode text (read) and encode text (write and spell). There was nothing wrong with him. He had excellent auditory skills as shown by his use of letter names to spell sounds in words. He had a superb visual memory. Not many children can memorize a list of spelling words they can't read entirely by sight. He had a terrific vocabulary. These are the ingredients that should have produced an expert reader. A good reading specialist could teach Donny to read and spell in about twelve hours or less, and family life would quickly return to normal. Donny would shoot ahead to near the top of the class, which is where he should be with an IQ of 124.
Unfortunately, an unhappy ending is considerably more likely. Instead of an expert reading specialist, Pat and Jim found a reading "tutor." This person was kind and patient, but knew as much about how to remediate reading problems as Pat and Jim, especially after all the books they had read on the subject. The tutor merely listened to Donny read and corrected his...

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Verlag
Free Press
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684853566
ISBN 13 
9780684853567
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales
sales@vanditmar.nl

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Utrecht
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