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Ending the reading wars : Reading acquisition from novice to expert
Castles, Anne Rastle, Kathleen Nation, Kate
Castles, Anne
Rastle, Kathleen
Nation, Kate
Abstract
There is intense public interest in questions surrounding how children learn to read and how they can best be taught. Research in psychological science has provided answers to many of these questions but, somewhat surprisingly, this research has been slow to make inroads into educational policy and practice. Instead, the field has been plagued by decades of “reading wars.” Even now, there remains a wide gap between the state of research knowledge about learning to read and the state of public understanding. The aim of this article is to fill this gap. We present a comprehensive tutorial review of the science of learning to read, spanning from children’s earliest alphabetic skills through to the fluent word recognition and skilled text comprehension characteristic of expert readers. We explain why phonics instruction is so central to learning in a writing system such as English. But we also move beyond phonics, reviewing research on what else children need to learn to become expert readers and considering how this might be translated into effective classroom practice. We call for an end to the reading wars and recommend an agenda for instruction and research in reading acquisition that is balanced, developmentally informed, and based on a deep understanding of how language and writing systems work.
Keywords
reading, language, reading acquisition, phonics, text comprehension
Date
2018
Type
Journal article
Journal
Psychological Science in the Public Interest
Book
Volume
19
Issue
1
Page Range
5-51
Article Number
ACU Department
Faculty of Education and Arts
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled