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Stephen Krashen
The recent National Reading Panel report (National Reading Panel, 2000) contained a number of claims about reading and reading instruction.1 In this paper, I review four of them: 1. The claim that phonemic awareness training significantly improves childrenís reading and spelling abilities. 2. The claim that systematic phonics instruction is more effective than less systematic phonics instruction. 3. The claim that ìskillsî- based approaches are superior to whole language approaches. 4. The claim that there is
no clear evidence that encouraging children to read more improves reading
achievement.
I argue below that there
is sufficient evidence to conclude that all four of these claims are false.
False
Claim 1: Phonemic awareness training significantly improves children's
reading and spelling abilities.2
Phonemic awareness is the
ability to divide a word into its component sounds. A number of studies
have been done in which children are given direct teaching or ìtrainingî
in phonemic awareness, and the claim has been made that such training is
ìclearly effective,î that it helps children ìlearn
to read and spellî and benefits reading comprehension as well as
word reading (National Reading Panel, 2000, 2-40).
I
recently performed a review of the research on phonemic awareness (PA)
training studies (Krashen, 2001a). In this review, I attempted to find
studies that met two conditions: (1) they were really studies of "pure"
PA, not of PA combined with phonics (sometimes referred to as PA instruction
taught with letters). By definition, PA is an aural ability. Many studies,
however, combine PA training with phonics. (2) students were tested on
reading comprehension, not just on tests of PA or on tests in which they
read lists of words in isolation without meaningful context.
There were very few studies.
After reviewing the research myself, asking colleagues on various listservs,
and reviewing the voluminous report of the National Reading Panel, I was
able to find only six published studies of pure PA training using tests
of reading comprehension. These six studies contained a total of 11 comparisons
of PA-trained children and non-trained children. Of the six studies, only
three dealt with English-speaking children. Only one of these three was
done in the United States. The three other studies were of Spanish-speaking
children, Hebrew-speaking children and Norwegian-speaking children, languages
that happen to be phonetically much more regular than English.
The overall results were
unimpressive. The average effect size 3 for all eleven comparisons
was +.35 in favor of phonemic awareness. An effect size of .35 is generally
considered to be between a small (d = .2) and medium (d = .5) effect (Wolf,
1986). There were, however, a number of individual finding that should
shake confidence in the value of PA training:
In one study (Weiner, 1994), the effect size was positive for one of two comparisons (.40) but negative for the other (-.41). In three comparisons, effect sizes were very low, .13 or less (two from Defior and Tudela, 1994, one comparison from Hatcher, Helm and Ellis, 1994). In four studies (six comparisons), the number of children who underwent PA training was very small: Bradley and Bryant, 1983, 13 children; Defior and Tudela, 1994, nine children, Wiener, 1994, five children, Kozminsky and Kozminsky, 1995, 15 children. Only one study reported substantial
effect sizes as well as statistically significant results in favor of those
trained in phonemic awareness, a study done in Israel with Hebrew-speaking
children, involving only 15 children who underwent PA training.
My summary is presented in
table 1, from Krashen (2001a).
Table 1. Effects of "Pure"
PA Studies
ìFirst testî given immediately after training, except for Kozminsky and Kozminsky (1 year delay) and Lie (1 semester delay). Interval: interval between end of training and administration of delayed test. manipulation: cutting, coloring, etc. positional: training on initial, final, medial sounds sequential: training on sounds as they appear in sequential order ìunseenî: investigators did not inspect comparison group treatment n = sample size of experimental group/control group from: Krashen (2001a)
In other words, I found no
studies using English that were clearly and strongly supportive of PA training.
I found only one study that was clearly and strongly supportive of PA training,
and it was done with Hebrew with very few subjects.
One cannot conclude on the
basis of this evidence, as many have, that PA training is essential, or
even very important. Evidence supporting the PA hysteria that appears to
have gripped the schools should be made of much sterner stuff.
The
NRP Responds
The National Reading Panel
devoted about sixty pages to reviewing the research on PA, and members
of the panel published another version of their report in the Reading Research
Quarterly (Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Shcuster, Yaghoub-Zadeh, and Shanahan,
2001). They did not mention my 2001 paper, but this is understandable,
because when their paper was written my article was probably not available
to them. They did, however, attempt to represent my position, stating that
I held that PA training helps in decoding nonsense words, but has no effect
on tests of reading comprehension. The only citation given of my work was
an e mail message posted on a listserv. I wrote the Reading Research Quarterly,
asking if I could publish a letter with a fuller explanation of my position.
The Quarterly agreed to do this, but added that the NRP researchers would
have a chance to reply.
In my letter (Krashen, 2002a),
I briefly reviewed some of the points presented above, focusing on the
fact that I found only 11 comparisons, with some reporting very low effect
sizes, many involving languages other than English, some with very few
subjects, and only one presenting statistically significant results for
both conditions of the study.
The NRP ës response
appeared in the same issue (Ehri, Shanahan, and Nunes, 2002). A careful
reading of their response shows no real disagreement with my conclusions.
They claimed that I relied only on statistical significance and ignored the use of meta-analysis. Clearly, Ehri et. al. had not yet read Krashen (2001a) in which I performed a meta-analysis. In fact, their overall results were identical to mine, with an average effect size of .35. My point was that this overall average, itself not very impressive, hides some embarrassing details. Ehri et. al. reported that for the studies involving only English-speaking subjects, the average effect size was +.28, which they note falls short of statistical significance. They conclude that this "supports Krashen's claim" but add that "more comparisons would yield a firmer conclusion" (p. 129). Of course I agree. Ehri et. al. claim that when
PA is combined with phonics, the results are stronger. But when tests of
reading comprehension are used, this is not the case. They report that
for seven comparisons of the effect of PA plus phonics training on reading
comprehension, the overall effect size was .28. This figure is statistically
significant, but it is quite small. In fact, it is nearly identical to
the effect size reported for the impact of intensive phonics on tests of
reading comprehension (Ehri et. al., 2001), d = .27, and even this relationship
drops to .12 for children beyond grade 1 (Garan, 2001a).
Most important, the NRP scholars
did not contest the claim that so few studies have been done even testing
the impact of PA training on reading comprehension. Once again: There are
only eleven comparisons, and only five comparisons deal with English-speaking
children.
Comparing
PA Results with Recreational Reading Results
The NRP found that students
in in-school recreational reading programs did better on tests of reading
comprehension than comparison children in four comparisons, and there was
no difference in 10. They concluded from this that the evidence
does not support in-school
reading "in a clear and convincing manner" (National Reading Panel, 2000,
3-3). 4 Although this conclusion was not based on a meta-analysis
with effect size calculations, it is obvious that the
PA results are nearly identical: PA trained children read significantly
better in four comparisons and there was no difference in seven. Nevertheless,
NRP was convinced that PA training is "highly effective" (National Reading
Panel, 2000, 2-3).
Additional Evidence: Low
PA Can Read OK
Not only does the PA training
evidence fail to provide strong support, there are other reasons to suspect
that PA is not a crucial element in learning to read: Children without
PA or with very low PA often learn to read quite well. Bradley and Bryant
(1985) reported that of a group of 316 children, 25 performed especially
poorly on a test of PA (one standard deviation below their expected score,
based on a test of verbal skills) at ages four and five. Of these, only
seven turned out to be poor readers (scoring one standard deviation below
their expected reading score, based on IQ) three years later. Thus, 72%
of those with low PA were not delayed in learning to read. Stuart-Hamilton
(1986) found that 20 five year old children who demonstrated zero phonemic
awareness performed adequately on a word identification task, and were
judged by their teachers to be making near-normal progress in learning
to read.
Also, some adults who are
excellent readers do very poorly on tests of PA. Campbell and Butterworth
(1985)'s subject R.E. was a university student who ìreads as least
as well as her fellow undergraduatesî (p. 436); she graduated London
University with second-class honors in psychology and performed above average
on standardized tests of reading. She had great difficulty in reading nonsense
words, and while she knew the names of all the letters, she had difficulty
making the sounds corresponding to the letters. She also performed poorly
on tests of phonemic awareness and phonemic segmentation. Campbell and
Butterworth conclude that ìSince R.E.ís word reading and
spelling are good, strong claims based on the necessity of a relationship
between phonemic segmentation and manipulation skills, on the one hand,
and the development of skilled reading and writing, on the other, must
be weakenedî (p. 460). Additional studies of this kind are reviewed
in Krashen (2001b).
PA Can Develop Without
Training
There are good reasons to
suspect that PA can develop quite nicely without training: Comparison groups
in nearly all PA training studies show gains in PA (Ehri et. al., 2001,
p. 276), and several longitudinal studies reveal growth in PA without training
(e.g. Fox and Routh, 1975).
PA: The Result of Reading
PA beyond the initial levels
appears to be the result of reading, not the cause. This conclusion is
consistent with studies showing low levels of PA among adult illiterates
(Morais, Bertelson, Cary and Algeria, 1986, Lukatela, Carello, Shankweiler,
and Liberman, 1995), and the observation that all but the most rudimentary
aspects of phonemic awareness emerge at about the age children learn to
read (Wagner and Torgesen, 1987).
The usual argument supporting
the idea that PA is the cause of reading, or a prerequisite, are studies
showing that ìearlyî PA is a predictor of ìlaterî
reading, that is, PA measured at one point in time correlates positively
with reading ability measured at a later time. If, however, one controls
for ìearlyî reading ability, this relationship disappears.
5
Evidence suggesting that
reading experience alone, and not phonics instruction, may be the cause
comes from Foorman et. al. (1993) who reported no difference in growth
in PA during grade one between classes with more or less direct teaching
of letter-sound correspondences, and Murray, Stahl, and Ivey (1996), in
which gains in PA were seen from storybook reading alone. Neuman (1999)
increased the number of books available to preschoolers and provided ten
hours of training of staff with a focus on ways of encouraging interaction
with books, especially reading aloud. The treatment lasted eight months.
Neuman reported a clear improvement in the print environment at the end
of treatment in the classrooms that received the ìbooks aloudî
treatment. On a delayed posttest, six months later, participant children
did significantly better than comparison children on tests of phonemic
awareness (d = .57 and .54 for tests of rhyming and alliteration, my calcuations).
It is highly likely that the children had some direct instruction in letters
and their sounds, but they certainly did not have the kind of ìphonemic
awareness trainingî some people are calling for. This result is consistent
with the hypothesis that phonemic awareness is the result of reading and
experiences with print.
I have informal evidence
to add to this: I have asked audiences to perform the classic PA task of
stripping the initial consonant from a word like "pit." Of course, everybody
gets this right with no problem. Then I ask them to do the same with "split."
After some hesitation, most people get it right. I then ask them how they
did it. Universally, people report that they spelled the word in their
mind's eye, removed the /p/ sound, and pronounced the remainder. This confirms
that the ability to do complex PA activities is dependent on the ability
to read. (See Tumner and Nesdale, 1982 for evidence of similar behavior
in first graders, and Ehri and Wilce, 1980, in fourth graders.)
The Unbearable Coolness
of Phonemic Awareness
Why is there so much enthusiasm
for PA training? Besides the obvious advantages to those who create PA
programs, I suspect that a major reason is the fact that PA appears to
fit so well into a bottom-up skill-building model of reading, one in which
readers must first learn sound-spelling correspondences (phonics) in order
to learn to read. If this is true, it makes intuitive sense that learning
to isolate sounds is a prerequisite to phonics.
There is, however, another
possibility, that we learn to read by reading, by making sense of what
is on the page. We learn to read without nonsense, to paraphrase Frank
Smith, not by first learning to read nonsense. While some knowledge of
phonics can occasionally help make texts more comprehensible (see below),
according to the ìComprehension Hypothesisî most of our knowledge
of phonics, and our ability to perform complex PA tasks, emerges as a result
of reading. Unfortunately, for many people, the skill-building hypothesis
is not a hypothesis at all, it is an axiom. It is obviously true and is
beyond question. PA training fits into the skill-building view very nicely,
and is thus irresistible, despite the weak evidence in training studies
and the additional evidence showing that PA is clearly not a prerequisite
for learning to read.
False Claim #2: Systematic
phonics instruction is more effective than less systematic phonics instruction
The National Reading Panel
claimed to find ìsolid support for the conclusion that systematic
phonics instruction makes a bigger contribution to childrenís growth
in reading than alternative programs providing unsystematic or no phonics
instructionî (National Reading Panel, 2000, p. 2-92).
The NRP's conclusions on
the impact of phonics actually show that systematic phonics instruction
has a very limited advantage. The NRP reported an overall effect size of
d = .46 in favor of programs that provided systematic, intensive phonics,
as compared to programs providing less or no phonics. As seen in table
2, the effect was dependent on the kind of measure used, with systematic
phonics showing a greater effect on reading single regularly spelled words
outloud, and a smaller effect on tests involving reading texts (for details,
see Garan, 2001a, 2001b, 2002).
Table 2: Impact on intensive phonics different kinds of tests test effect size regular words: .67 pseudowords .60 oral reading of text: .25 comprehending text: .27 (from: National Reading Panel,
2000, table 3, appendix E)
The .27 effect size for reading
comprehension deserves more comment. The panel found an effect size of
d = .51 between intensive phonics instruction and performance on tests
of reading comprehension for younger children (K-1), and no significant
relationship for older children (grades 2-6; d = .12). Garan (2001a, 2001b,
2002) argues that the stronger relationship between intensive phonics instruction
and reading comprehension for younger children may be due to the fact that
reading comprehension tests for young children contain very short passages
with many phonetically regular words. The relationship is greatly diminished
when passages become more complex and more words with irregular sound-spelling
correspondences are included, as is the case with reading comprehension
measures used with older children.6
The
NRP also found that the effect of systematic phonics instruction faded
with time. For studies that included both immediate posttests and delayed
posttests, the effect size dropped from .51 to .27 (six comparisons; all
measures combined). The time interval between the immediate and delayed
tests ranged from four months to one year.
Before considering what these
results imply for theory, it should be pointed out that they are not new
(nor does the NRP claim they are). The systematic phonics advantage was
also reported by Chall (1967), and others have reported that the superiority
of intensive phonics fades with time, with the advantage disappearing by
third grade (Chall, 1967; Dykstra, 1974).
There is, thus, a temporary
advantage for systematic phonics, one that appears to be quite modest when
tests involve reading real texts. The usual interpretation of this result
is that this superiority provides support for the ìSkill-Building
Hypothesis,î the view that language is learned by first mastering
the parts, and then, through drill and exercise, working up to larger units.
But the results of these studies are also consistent with the Comprehension
Hypothesis, the view that language is acquired by understanding messages
(Krashen, 1985); in the case of reading, this means the comprehension of
texts (Smith, 1994; Goodman, 1982).
Smith (1994) explains that
some conscious knowledge of phonics rules can help make texts more comprehensible.
He provides the following example. A child is reading the sentence ìThe
man is riding on the h ---.î and cannot, at first, read the final
word. But if the child knows what sound /h/ makes, this information, along
with context, will help reduce the possibilities and thus help the child
identify the word. The combination of some conscious knowledge of phonics,
along with context, will not help every time, but it helps enough to make
learning some phonics worthwhile. Thus, children who know more phonics
will be somewhat better off than those who know less.
But the effect is limited,
because there are severe limits as to how much phonics can be consciously
learned. Many phonics rules are extremely complex and have numerous exceptions
(Adams, 1990; Smith, 1994). Most of our knowledge of phonics, Smith argues,
is the result of reading and not the cause. In terms of language acquisition
theory, most of our knowledge of phonics is subconsciously acquired as
the result of comprehensible input (reading). 7
In addition, the effect of
phonics is exaggerated in tests of reading comprehension. To see why this
is so, consider what takes place when fluent readers encounter words that
they do not recognize. Smith (1994) points out that fluent readers generally
skip words that they do not know and try to confirm predictions about meaning
without them. If skipping fails, that is, the text is incomprehensible
without the skipped word, the fluent reader will attempt to guess the word
from context. If the guess is correct, the passage will make sense. If
the guess is not correct, the passage will not make sense, and the reader
will try again. When guessing fails, the reader can look the word up or
ask someone what it means. The last resort, Smith points out, is to ìsound
outî the word and to try to identify it from its pronunciation.
Now let us consider what
happens when a young child does not recognize a word on a typical grade
1 or grade 2 reading comprehension test. Beginning readers are often taught
to carefully examine every word, that is, not to skip. The context is usually
so impoverished (a few sentences or even less) that guessing will not be
very productive. The child canít ask anyone, because itís
a test. ìSounding out,î the last alternative in the real world,
becomes the first alternative. Thus, a child who knows more phonics will
have a bit of an edge on these tests, which is exactly what the research
shows when reading comprehension is tested.
The NRP report does not show
that intensive phonics is clearly superior to less intensive phonics. It
shows only that there is a slight early advantage for those with more phonics,
an advantage that fades with time. Moreover, this advantage is exaggerated
by the kinds of tests used. The results are entirely consistent with the
Comprehension Hypothesis.
False Claim #3: ìSkillsî
based approaches are superior to whole language approaches.
Claim #3 is not correct.
When one considers tests of reading comprehension, and the amount of real
reading done by children, whole language emerges as the winner in these
studies.
The National Reading Panel
(2000) concluded that systematic phonics approaches were superior to whole
language approaches, claiming that the average effect size in favor of
phonics was .32 (based on twelve comparisons). In their analysis, however,
effect sizes were not analyzed separately for each kind of measure used.
Some were measures of reading single words in isolation, some involved
real texts. Also, the issue is not whether a treatment is labeled "whole
language" or "skills" but how much reading the children actually do. In
Evans and Carr (1985), for example, the so-called "traditional" group actually
did significantly more silent reading than the ìwhole languageî
group. The whole language group did more oral reading of stories the children
had written themselves or dictated to the teacher, an activity that entails
less new meaning and, most likely, more focus on form.
In Krashen (2002c), I re-analyzed this data with two alterations (1) Considering only tests of reading comprehension. (2) Considering not whether
a treatment is labeled ìwhole languageî or ìphonicsî
but whether the children in the treatment were actually doing more real
reading than the children in the other treatment.
In addition, I included some
studies that the NRP had missed.
My results were dramatically
different. I found a small advantage favoring whole language on tests of
reading comprehension (d = .17).
It should be noted that the
studies reviewed by the NRP were not done with what I consider to be the
crucial variable in mind: The amount of genuinely interesting, real reading
that children did. Thus, my conclusions are post-hoc and are only suggestive.
What is clear, however, is that the National Reading Panelís interpretation
of the results is not the only possible one.
It is also interesting that
studies done with older readers show the same thing: Students who participate
in sustained silent reading and self-selected reading programs outperform
comparison students (Krashen, 1993). (The NRP has disagreed with this conclusion
as well, arguing that evidence is insufficient to arrive at a conclusion.
Their analysis, however, omitted several important studies. For discussion,
see Krashen, 2001a, and below).
False
Claim #4: There is no clear evidence that encouraging children to read
more improves reading achievement (National Reading Panel)
This startling conclusion
was based on only 10 studies and 14 comparisons of sustained silent reading
(SSR) with control groups. In SSR, some classtime is set aside for free
voluntary reading with little or no ìaccountability.î Of these
10 studies, three had positive results, with the students who were engaged
in free voluntary reading outperforming control groups. Another study showed
positive results for one condition but not for other conditions, and the
other studies showed no difference or no gains. Table 3 summarizes these
outcomes.
positive = students in sustained silent reading programs outperform comparisons Results include ten studies,
14 comparisons
It is not clear whether additional
studies were omitted because they did not meet the NRP's criteria or because
the NRP scholars did not look very hard. (Some, but only a few, were clearly
left out because they did not appear in a refereed journal.)
In Krashen (2001c) I presented
additional studies of SSR and similar in-school recreational reading programs.
8 Table 2 presents the "expanded" set of studies, using tests
of reading comprehension. Many of the studies summarized in table 2 meet
the four criteria of the NRP and were apparently missed, but there were
some ìviolationsî of their criteria: A few were done with
students slightly older than the age limit imposed by the NRP; in all of
these cases, the subjects were undergraduate college students. Subjects
in some of the studies were students of English as a second or foreign
language. In several studies, students read in Spanish, not English; in
these cases, the students were native speakers of Spanish. Finally, some
studies were not published in refereed journals. See Krashen (2001c) for
references. Table 4 includes studies included by the NRP as well as those
that the NRP did not include.
In
the studies in table 4, SSR students did as well or better than comparison
students in 50 out of 53 comparisons. For longer term studies (those longer
than one year), SSR students were superior in eight out of ten studies,
and there was no difference in the other two. Note that the NRP did not
include any studies lasting longer than one year.
Moreover, there are plausible
reasons why the results were not even more positive, eg. documented lack
of fidelity of treatment in some studies and students who already read
at high levels.
Even applying the NRPís
stricter criteria, SSR does very well, with readers doing as well or better
than comparisons in 35 out of 36 comparisons. This suggests that the ìviolationsî
do not affect the central issue of whether encouraging recreational reading
impacts literacy development. Even if one only allows studies that strictly
meet the NRPís criteria, the result still favors recreational reading.
Misinterpreted Studies
In addition to excluding
relevant studies, the NRP misinterpreted some of the studies that it did
include, and included some that it should not have included. In one study
(Carver and Liebert, 1995), students were limited to only 135 titles (ìthe
regular library stacks were off limits during the study,î p. 33),
were provided with incentives, had to take tests on what they read, and
had to read in two hour blocks. Successful sustained silent reading programs
allow access to any books readers want to read, do not use extrinsic motivators,
do not make students accountable for what they read, provide a wide variety
of books, and typically meet for a short time each day over a long period.
In several other cases, the NRP report was simply inaccurate, both in terms
of descriptions of the programs and results (for the gruesome details,
see Krashen, 2001c).
Additional Evidence
It should also be pointed
out that the case for reading does not rest entirely on studies of sustained
silent reading. In ìread and testî studies subjects show clear
gains in vocabulary and spelling after a brief exposure to comprehensible
text. (For a review, see Krashen, 1993). It is hard to attribute these
gains to anything but reading.
There are, in addition, compelling
case histories that cannot be easily explained on the basis of the competing
Skill-Building Hypothesis, cases such as Richard Wright, who credits reading
with providing him with high levels of literacy development: ìI
wanted to write and I did not even know the English language. I bought
English grammars and found them dull. I felt that I was getting a better
sense of the language from novels than from grammars" (Wright, 1966, p.
275).
Or consider the case of Ben
Carson (Carson, 1990), a neurosurgeon who says that his motherís
insistence that he read two books a week (of his own choosing) when he
was in the fifth grade was a turning point in his life. Carson credits
reading with improving his reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling,
and it helped him move from the bottom of his class in grade five to the
top in grade seven. Yes, I know; there was no control group, no tests were
given, and the results were not in a refereed journal. But it is hard to
imagine any other source for this obvious improvement, and cases like these
are not uncommon.
What does "no difference"
mean?
The NRP concluded that ìthe
handful of experimental studiesî on voluntary reading ìraise
serious questionsî about its efficacy. There are more than a handful
of studies. Moreover, the addition of more studies to the analysis provides
substantial evidence in support of the effectiveness of recreational reading.
Even a finding of ìno
differenceî between free readers and students in traditional programs
suggests that free reading is just as good as traditional instruction,
which confirms that free reading does indeed result in literacy growth,
an important theoretical and practical point. Because free reading is so
much more pleasant than regular instruction (for both students and teachers),
and because it provides students with valuable information and insights,
a finding of no difference provides strong evidence in favor of free reading
in classrooms. Recall also that the results of the NRP's own analysis are
nearly identical to the results of their analysis (and mine) of phonemic
awareness training; yet the NRP recommends PA training, but does not recommend
devoting time in school to recreational reading.
Conclusions
The NRPís conclusions
have virtually become ìthe law of the land.î State and local
reading plans mirror the NRPís conclusions, and federal funding
requires allegiance to them. In fact, as noted earlier, they have become
axiomatic, considered by some to be proven facts rather than hypotheses.
Obviously, if the above arguments are correct, if the NRPís claims
really are false, the implications are staggering. At a minimum, the concerns
presented here should demote the status of the NRPís conclusions
from axiom back to the level of hypothesis.
Notes
1. This paper was originally presented at the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) conference, November, 2002. 2. An earlier version of this section appeared in Krashen (2002b). 3. Effect sizes were calculated by subtracting the mean of the comparison group from the mean of the experimental group, then dividing the result by the pooled standard deviation. All effect sizes were weighted for sample size (Wolf, 1986). In no case were pretest scores of experimental and comparison groups obviously different. 4. I disagree with this conclusion (Krashen, 2001c, and below). 5. Lundberg, Olafsson and Wall (1980, cited in Wagner and Torgesen, 1987) reported a median correlation of .45 between measures of PA at kindergarten (age seven in Sweden) and reading achievement measured one year later. Wagner and Torgesen (1987) calculated partial correlations between PA and first grade reading on this data, with reading level at kindergarten held constant; some of the kindergarten children had already learned to read to some extent. The resulting correlation was only .06, consistent with the hypothesis that reading proficiency at kindergarten may have been the true predictor of both first grade reading and PA at kindergarten. Ellis (1990) also reported no relationship between PA measured at age 5 with reading at age 6, when reading at age 5 was included as a predictor. Similarly, PA at age 6 was not a predictor of reading at age 7 when reading at age 6 was included as a predictor. Several other studies report very low or reduced relationships between early PA and later reading when measures of early reading ability are taken into consideration (Wagner, Torgesen, Rashotte, Heckt, Barker, Burgess, Donahue and Garon, 1997; de Jong and van der Leij, 2002). The usual tests used to detect early reading, which often involve reading words in isolation, may, in addition, be too stringent to detect much of early literacy development (Barron, 1998, p. 158). More sensitive measures may result in more evidence that the relationship between early PA and later reading is spurious. 6. Shanahan (2001), in a response to Garan (2001b), notes that reading comprehension tests given to young children must be short and contain phonetically regular words, otherwise they would be too hard. Shanahanís statement tells us why the tests are the way they are; it does not, however, diminish the force of Garanís observation. It remains the case that intensive phonics instruction has little impact on tests of reading comprehension when passages and the words used become more complex. 7. Shanahan (2001) defends giving phonics instruction a major role, despite its limitations, because ìmore than 90 percent of English words are phonetically regularî (p. 70). Shanahan does not provide a source for this statistic, but even if it were true, in order to accomplish this, one needs a staggering collection of rules that include many that are highly complex. Berdiansky, Cronnell, and Koehler (1969, cited in Smith, 1994) concluded that 166 different rules were necessary to account only for the 6000 one- and two- syllable words in the comprehension vocabularies of six to nine year old children (children also knew another 3000 more complex words of three or more syllables that were not considered in the analysis). Moreover, even these 166 rules did not cover all the sound-spelling correspondences; 45 more correspondences were classified as exceptions. Adams (1990) provides a summary of research on the complexity (and unreliability) of many phonics rules. Adams also cites studies showing that those phonics rules that are the most reliable are generally those that apply to infrequent words, while those rules that apply to frequent words are typically the less reliable rules. 8. Shanahan (2000) claimed
that most omitted studies of sustained silent reading using native speakers
of English were unpublished dissertations. None of the studies included
in Krashen (2001c) are unpublished dissertations. All were published in
refereed journals, except for two studies published in the National Reading
Handbook Yearbook, one from a book published by the International Reading
Association, one study from the Claremont Conference Handbook (Cyrog),
and one school district report.
References:
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