Frank Smith says, simply: ‘Children cannot be taught to read.’ (1985 p. 5). At first sight this seems a depressing and pessimistic surrender, but is written at the start of a positive account of how children, if we let them and provide just a little of the right pedagogy, learn to read easily and painlessly. Smith says, and I believe him, that reading is not difficult to learn. By page 94 of the same book he is writing: ‘we learn to read by reading.’
‘The teacher’s problem is never the lack of advice.’ (ibid. p. 3.) There is a plethora of practical, now-do-this advice. I want to add very little. My desire is to make a better join between the hall carpet of practice and the kitchen tiles of theory; to have a look around in the kitchen while yet remaining out in the hall. We are simply trying to match carpet as closely as possible to tiles.
Which is also called shared, apprenticeship or scaffolded reading. It is supported ‘real reading’; a way to get students reading at reasonable speed, accurately and in some volume. Learning to read is like learning to ride a bike, to walk, to swim or to talk - you do it by doing it. There are methods and there are better methods but there is no short cut - we learn to read by reading. Students have to read, and they have to read as much as possible. The question is how to enable students to approach reading with confidence, to do more, to do it fast enough and to read for meaning.
In the earlier stages of learning to read, paired reading is brilliant method - both technically and affectively. (Campbell 1990, Coles 1992, Martin 1989, Topping 1992, Waterland 1985, Yule 1999.) It works particularly well with the student who hasn’t reached independent reading at the technical level or who is still so intimidated by reading that he won’t do it independently (and see Martin 1989 p. 53). These students typically spend time fighting single words (‘barking at print’) and so lose meaning, confidence and peace of mind altogether, or they simply read too slowly to reach meaning. (Below about 120 words a minute meaning begins to slip away.) Adults may, initially, find paired reading a little humiliating but must be encouraged to lie back on support and enjoy. This is astonishingly hard for some - as if it is evidence of general worthlessness, or ‘cheating’. It’s exactly like learning to ride a bike, though. We all need support when learning to ride a bike. It is not always easy to accept support, however; I remember, when learning to ride my new bike, how much I resented my father holding that saddle, but also how quickly I learned and how soon he let go of it.
Student and co-reader should agree a text to be read. Something within range, but enjoyable and meaningful to the student. Make sure he knows what the text is about (is it a short story, a news item or the manual for a MIG welder?). In the very earliest stages it may be useful to read it aloud once to the student before co-reading begins. Get comfortable, where both can easily see a copy of the text. Start reading, aloud together, and bang on. The student should really be reading, the co-reader supporting, so ideally the tutor is a microsecond behind the student. The student reads in the knowledge that help is only that microsecond away. If a word is not read, or is read incorrectly, the tutor immediately provides it and on goes the reading, as long as meaning is still being successfully extracted. If the sense is being lost, retrace steps, perhaps to the beginning of the sentence, perhaps the paragraph. The pace should be reasonably fast and the reading clear and with all those meaning-making emphases, rhythms and modulations. If the student is doing well, and is full of confidence, the co-reader may be asked to shut up, or simply decide to fall silent, and the student continues alone. If real faltering happens the co-reader can always come back to support reading. If serious faltering repeatedly happens, stop. The material is too advanced, or the student too tired, or something. Do not flog this technique. If the emotional temperature rises, stop. Do something else. Never leave a student to bark at print. Never compound failure.
It is surprising what text is simple and what is not. Newspapers use a mutually agreed code language with quite difficult vocabulary at times. Specially written material can be dire. (One researcher found a children’s ‘easy reader’, incredibly, made as much sense read back to front as any other way.) As Martin says, of remedial reading material, the ‘... language had been so pared down and simplified ... that only the words remained.’ (1989 p. 56).