In addition, it seems to us that failure to consider factors
articulated in the developmental model has focused an inordinate
amount of research and development on the decoding phase of
learning to read, at the expense of attention to the oracy, languaging,
and conceptualizing (cognitive) competencies required for comprehending
language by reading. We will comment further on this
problem in the next section. For the present, we conclude that, for
the above reasons, the prolonged analysis of the "common sense"
notion that children first are endowed with basic adaptive processes,
then they acquire oracy competency in language, and then reading is
added to this hierarchy, performs a useful service in showing how
many common practices do not reflect "common sense". Why this is
so is due, we believe, to the lack of attention to the implications of
the very general developmental sequence described in this report. We
will discuss more general and specific implications for research and
development later in this chapter.
SOME ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND LlMITATIONS
OF THE MODELING EFFORT
In this work we are attempting to develop a model of the
development of reading ability which serves at least some of the
purposes Gephart (p. 8 of this report) says a model should serve:
- A model should explain what a complex phenomenon
consists of. In the present case we have argued that reading consists
of conceptual and language content and processes, as well as certain
decoding-to-speech processes in the learning-to-read stage, and information-processing
skills involved in looking, such as the parallel
processing of information from the focus and margin of visual
attention. The major significance of this analysis is that the process
called reading is seen to represent simply an alternative method of
processing information from a language display, and that the major
factors which may limit an individual level of achievement in comprehending
graphic language are to be found in limitations in languaging
and conceptualizing. Thus, for instance, we may expect that major
problems experienced by high school graduates who are reading at
the sixth-grade level or so are more likely to be due to limitations in
language and conceptual competencies, rather than to reading
decoding skills, although the latter may also be less than optimally developed.
Obviously our description of reading as a languaging
process is a very molar level of description. We have not presented a
detailed account of the "reading process"-what the stages of
information-processing are when the eye falls upon the printed page. Nor
have we detailed what language consists of as a foundation for
reading. Explicit formulations of the conceptual base and the
processes involved in conceptualizing and languaging have been
ignored. Thus the model is limited to the "surface" level of
description of a developmental sequence.
- A model should describe how such a phenomenon
works. The phenomenon we have been concerned with is a developmental
sequence. To adequately describe how it works, one would
have to state the necessary and sufficient conditions by which BAP
and environmental factors interact to produce language, and how oral
language competency becomes written language competency. While
we have not attempted this complete description of how the
phenomenon works, we have tried to indicate how various information-processing
activities-conceptualizing, languaging, looking, and
listening-act to provide the basis for the acquisition of reading.
Furthermore, we expressed our belief (and supported this belief with
literature review regarding four hypotheses) that reading "works" by
utilizing the same languaging and conceptualizing processes involved
in auding, plus the processes involved in decoding print-to-speech and
in accurately guiding the eye from one point of fixation to the next.
Thus our explanation of how the developmental mcdel "works" to
produce reading has been in terms of the emerging interrelations
among a variety of general information-processing activities.
- A model should provide the basis for predictions about
changes which will occur in one element of the phenomenon when
changes are made in another element. In the present case, we have
emphasized relationships among language and auding and reading, and
have indicated how changes in reading comprehension should change
when language competency is changed via auding training (Hypothesis 4,
Chapter V). We have also indicated that such training should
not be expected to improve the acquisition of reading decoding skills,
and hence the effectiveness of oral language training in pre-school and
primary grades should not be assessed in terms of proficiency in
learning to read (decode).
On the negative side, we have not dealt with the
problem of individual differences in transfer of language competency
acquired via oracy training to reading comprehension. It is not known
to what extent such transfer does not occur automatically, nor to
what extent such training may facilitate the learning of the language
or comprehension skill by reading, if it does not transfer automatically.
Conditions for facilitating transfer are not dealt with, nor
have we considered what types of oracy training might be most
appropriate for transfer to reading when that skill is acquired. We
have likewise found little to say about the effects of training in
listening or looking on auding and reading. Nor have we dealt with
the cognitive processes which underlie looking and listening, such as
the person's implicit (or explicit) plans for pursuing a given looking
or listening task-plans for scanning and remembering information,
plans for problem solving,and so forth.1