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Reading Process
Brief Edition of Reading Process and Practice
THIRD EDITION

Constance Weaver
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio

HEINEMANN
Portsmouth, NH
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Heinemann
361 Hanover Street
Portsmouth, NH 03801-3912
www.heinemann.com

Offices and agents throughout the world

c 2009, 2002, 1994, 1988 by Constance Weaver. Portions originally c 1980 by Winthrop
Publishers, Inc., under the title Psycholinguistics and Reading.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission
in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review,
with the exception of the reproducible pages, which are identified by the Reading Process
copyright line and can be photocopied for classroom use only.

“Dedicated to Teachers” is a trademark of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.

The author and publisher wish to thank those who have generously given permission to
reprint borrowed material:

Excerpt from “Understanding the Hypothesis, It’s the Teacher that Makes the Difference” by Jerome C. Harste, in Reading
Horizons (1977), College of Education, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Excerpt from Psychology of Language by David S. Palermo. Copyright c 1978. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education
Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Excerpt from A Camel in the Sea by Lee Garrett Goetz. Copyright c 1966 by McGraw-Hill Book Company. Reprinted by
permission.
Appendix from “Validating the Construct of Theoretical Orientation in Reading Instruction” by Diane DeFord, in Reading
Research Quarterly, Spring 1985. Reprinted by permission of Diane DeFord and the International Reading Association.
Excerpt from “Looking at Reading Instruction: Sociolinguistic and Ethnographic Approaches” by David Bloome and Judith
Green in Contexts of Reading, edited by Carolyn N. Hedley and Anthony N. Baratta. Copyright c 1985. Published by Ablex.
Excerpt from “Cultural Schemata and Reading Comprehension” by Ralph E. Reynolds, Marsha A. Taylor, Margaret S. Steffensen,
Larry L. Shirey, and Richard C. Anderson in Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3. Reprinted by permission of Ralph E.
Reynolds and the International Reading Association.
Excerpt from Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc. Copyright c 1953 by
Gourmet Inc.; renewed 1981 by Ray Bradbury.
Excerpt from “The Law and Reading Instruction” by Robert J. Harper and Gary Kilarr in Language Arts 54
(November/December1977). Copyright c 1977 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted by permission.
Excerpt from “Literacy in the Classroom” by John R. Bormuth in Help for the Reading Teacher: New Directions in Research,
edited by William D. Page. Copyright c 1975 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted by permission.
Excerpt from “Poison” in Someone Like You by Roald Dahl. Copyright c 1950 by Roald Dahl. Reprinted by permission of
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Excerpt from The Glorious Conspiracy by Joanne Williamson. Copyright c 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted by permission
of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Excerpt from “Jimmy Hayes and Muriel” by O. Henry, in The Complete Works of O. Henry. Copyright c 1937 by Garden City
Publishing Company Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Excerpt from A Magic Box and Opening Doors from the Macmillan Reading Program by Albert J. Harris and Mae Knight Clark.
Copyright c 1965 by Macmillan Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission.
Excerpt from Morris Has a Cold by Bernard Wiseman. Copyright c 1978 by Bernard Wiseman. Reprinted by permission of
Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
Credits continue on p. 279

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weaver, Constance.
Reading process : brief edition of reading process and practice /
Constance Weaver.---3rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-325-02843-9
ISBN-10: 0-325-02843-5
1. Reading. 2. Psycholinguistics. 3. Language awareness in children.
I. Title.
LB1050.22.W44 2009
372.4---dc22 2009024783

Editor: Lisa Luedeke

Production: Patricia Adams
Typesetting: Aptara
Cover design: Lisa Fowler and Jenny Jensen Greenleaf
Manufacturing: Valerie Cooper

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

13 12 11 10 09 VP 1 2 3 4 5
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Contents

Preface xi

Introduction xiii
Introducing the National Reading Panel Report xiv
The Failure of the Reading First Initiative xvi
Reading as a Sociopsycholinguistic Process xviii
Teaching Phonics and Phonemic Awareness xix
Problems with Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Fluency in Reading First xxi
Dissecting DIBELS / The Unwarranted Demand for Fluency in DIBELS /
Reading as a Cognitive, Constructive, and “Chaotic” Process

1 Definitions of Reading: They Make a Difference 1

The Importance of a Definition 1
Characterizing Reading and Reading Instruction 4
Activity 1 / Activity 2 / Activity 3
For Further Exploration 10

2 Schemas and Transactions in the Reading Process 14

Comprehending and Learning to Read 14
The Meaning of Words and Sentences: A First Look 15
Schemas: What Are They? 17
Schemas in Reading 19
Schemas and Transactions 21
Pragmatics: Situational, Social, and Cultural Factors in Reading 24
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vi Content

Transactions Within the Language of the Text: Grammatical Signals 27

Surface Versus Deep Structure 29
Contrasting Models of Reading and Learning to Read 32
Comprehending Language in Reading / A Skills View of Reading and Learning to
Read / A Transactional, Sociopsycholinguistic View of Reading and Learning to Read
For Further Exploration 38

3 Contexts and Strategies in the Reading Process 41

The Varieties of Context: An Overview 41
Context Beyond the Sentence and the Text 44
Using Context to Determine Meaning and Acquire
Vocabulary / Using Context to Identify Words
Context Within the Sentence 49
Language Cues and Reading Strategies 52
Context in Reading: Review and Preview 54
For Further Exploration 57

4 What Miscues Tell Us About Reading and Readers: Reciprocal Insights 61

Reading Proficiency and the Use of Context 62
Miscues on Basic Sight Words / Constructing Meaning and Reconstructing
Text / Good Versus Less Proficient Readers’ Use of Context
Why Not Word Identification? 71
Words as Symbols / Constructing Meaning Without All the Words /
Constructing Meaning and Forgetting the Words
Implications for Understanding Dialect Miscues 74
Revaluing Readers 77
Review and Beyond 80
For Further Exploration 81

5 Word Perception in the Reading Process 88

The Eyes and the Brain 89
Parts of Words at Work 91
Activity 1 / Activity 2 / Activity 3 / Parts of Words in Review
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Content vii

How We Perceive Words 94

Activity 1 / Activity 2 / Syllables: A Perceptually Salient Unit
More on Reading by Analogy 99
The Role of Phonics Rules in the Reading Process 101
Word Parts and Word Perception in Review 104
Eye Movement and Eye Fixation Studies and the Perception of Words 105
Popular Claims by Oft-Cited Researchers / Eye Fixation Research
Proficient Reading: “Flow” Rather than “Fluency” 110
Toward a More Complete Model of the Reading Process 111
For Further Exploration 116

6 Understanding What Miscues Can Tell Us About Readers’ Strategies 120

What We Can Learn by Analyzing Miscues 121
Miscue Markings 122
Substitution / Insertion / Omission / Partial / Reversal / Correction /
Unsuccessful Attempt at Correction / Abandoning a Correct Response /
Repetition / Pause / Sounding Out / Mumble
Miscues That Reflect Good Strategies 125
Miscues That Reflect Good Prediction / Miscues Involving Pronouns and
Function Words / Miscues That Reflect Readers’ Language Patterns /
Immature Speech Pattern / Ethnic, Social, or Regional Dialect /
ESL-Related and EFL-Related Miscues / Miscues That Result from
Monitoring Comprehension / Restructurings / Regressions to Correct /
Repetitions and Pauses
Miscues That Suggest Inefficient Reading 133
Overcorrection of Miscues
Miscues That Suggest Ineffective Reading 135
The Use of Graphic Cues in Relation to Other Cues 136
Effective Use of Graphic Cues Along with Other Cues / Underuse of Graphic Cues /
Overuse of Graphic Cues and Underuse of Other Cues
Related but Different Approaches to Miscue Analysis 138
Miscue Analysis in the Goodman Tradition / Crucial Differences Between Miscue
Analysis and Running Records
For Further Exploration 144
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viii Content

7 Analyzing Miscues and Looking for Patterns 155

Miscues and the Use of Context 156
Marking and Coding Miscues on the Selection Copy 161
Coding the Miscues
Analyzing, Coding, and Interpreting the Data from Tony’s Miscues 163
Analyzing and Coding Tony’s Miscues / Interpretation of Tony’s Miscue Patterns /
Another Way of Coding Tony’s Miscues
Marking Miscues for Coding 168
How to Mark Miscues on the Selection Copy
General Principles and Procedures for Coding Miscues 170
Question 1: Did the miscue reflect the speaker’s ordinary speech patterns? /
Question 2: Did the miscue go with the grammar and meaning of what came before? /
Question 3: Did the miscue go with the grammar and meaning of what followed? /
Question 4: Did the miscue leave the essential meaning of the sentence intact? /
Question 5: Was the miscue corrected? /
Question 6: Was the miscue graphically similar? /
Question 7: Was the sentence, as the reader finally left it, semantically acceptable
within the whole original selection that was read?
Alternative Miscue Analysis Procedures and Forms 175
Analyzing Jay’s Miscues 179
Interpretation of Jay’s Miscue Patterns
For Further Exploration 183

8 Developing a Reader Profile: From Assessment to Instruction 184

The Reading Interview and the First Session 185
The Reading Interview / Preparing for and Conducting the First Session /
Recording the Data from the Interview
Preparing for and Conducting the Second Session 191
Preparing for the Reading / Preparing for the Retelling and Extended Discussion /
Preparing to Ask Questions About a Story / Conducting the Oral Reading and
Retelling/Discussion / Recording the Retelling Data / Recording the Miscues on the
Selection Copy / Coding the Miscues and Analyzing Patterns
Developing a Reader Profile: Tangling with the Messiness of Reality 200
The Reading Interview / The Retelling and Discussion / Miscues, Miscue Patterns,
and Reading Strategies / An Instructional Plan
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Content ix

Additional Forms for Recording Data 208

Other Aspects of a Reading Portfolio and Profile 211
For Further Exploration 211

9 Revaluing Readers, Retrospective Miscue Analysis, and Other Strategies

for Helping Readers 212
Phonics, Words, and Reading 213
Efficient Reading and Fluency 214
Revaluing Readers 215
Erica: From Analysis to Assistance 216
Analyzing Erica’s Miscues / Helping Erica Revalue Herself as a Reader
Retrospective Miscue Analysis 221
Teachers Choosing the Miscues for Discussion / Readers Selecting Their Own Miscues
for Discussion / Retrospective Miscue Analysis with Pairs or Groups
The “Think-Aloud” Strategy 226
Helping Readers Develop Needed Concepts, Vocabulary, and Strategies 227
Extra Help Through Shared Reading and Constructive Reading Strategies 228
For Further Exploration 230
Appendix to Chapter 9: Matching Instruction to Readers’ Varied Needs 231

Notes 239
References 243
Index 271

Website at www.heinemann.com
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Preface

There are several reasons for this brief edition of my 2003 Reading Process and Practice, which
was well-received in the profession. Practically speaking, the aim is to reduce the length and
thereby the cost. But there are other reasons as well:

To offer with an updated copyright the third edition chapters that explore the nature of the
reading process; demonstrate how readers’ strategies can be assessed through a reading
interview, miscue analysis, and retelling; indicate how not-so-proficient readers often differ
from proficient readers in their reading strategies; consider the need to revalue many
readers; and suggest ways of helping struggling readers whose miscues and retelling suggest
differing patterns of needs.
To offer a succinct and up-to-date discussion of the federal government’s Reading First
initiative launched in the early 2000s; the National Reading Panel (NRP) report that the
government claims is the research basis for the initiative; the widespread use of DIBELS
(Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) for assessing readers and shaping
instruction; and the results after three years of implementing Reading First.
To provide an edition limited to what might be addressed in a single university class on
reading, or reading and reading assessment.

The new Introduction offers---at its beginning, middle, and end---a characterization of reading
as a sociopsycholinguistic process and includes references to recent research on the reading
process. However, the Introduction focuses particularly on the NRP report, its inadequate
operational definition of reading, and some of its results; on DIBELS, its narrowing of even the
NRP’s definition and instructional emphases, and its harmful consequences; and on the
government’s Reading First initiative, its lack of support from the NRP report, which it claims as
its research foundation, and the failure to achieve its goal of improving students “reading
achievement” (scores on standardized tests). The information in this Introduction is crucial for
teachers in grades K–3, or K–6 if DIBELS is used in the intermediate grades. However, those who
have never before studied the reading process may find the Introduction more appropriate after
they have read Chapters 1–6.
As the more accessible books on reading as a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic process
become less well known due to the passage of time, it is also important for the profession to have
such information as that in Chapters 1–6 reintroduced and newly available for teacher educators,
language arts consultants, and especially teachers and teachers-to-be. The subsequent chapters
on assessing reading and revaluing and assisting readers are a natural extension of the chapters
on the reading process. An appendix to Chapter 9 offers a guide, “Matching Instruction to
Readers’ Varied Needs,” originally published in the longer text’s Chapter 10. One particular
feature that continues with this shorter edition is the Web page that includes three case studies
dealing with students having different patterns and needs, at different instructional needs: first
grade, fourth grade, and junior high (www.heinemann.com/weaver). For these, I am particularly
indebted to Lisa Schade Eckert. The Web page also includes reproducible forms for miscue
analysis.
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xii Preface

I am indebted to all those who contributed to the original 2003 Reading Process and Practice,
especially Lois Bridges, then my editor as well as friend, whose support knew no bounds. For this
brief edition, I especially thank my current editor Lisa Luedeke, likewise a friend and trusted
guide, and the rest of the Heinemann team. And most of all, I again thank Rolland Batdorff, who
continues to be the wind beneath my wings.

Connie Weaver
June 2009
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INTRODUCTION
Contrasting Perspectives on Reading and
What Good Readers Do

What is reading, anyway? What is the essence of the reading process itself?
The chapters in this book are designed to help you develop your own research-based
definition of reading, but here is one of my attempts to characterize the essentials of the process
of reading—the basics, if you will, even though we know no two readers read exactly the same,
nor does a single reader, even on different occasions, even with the same text:

Reading is a process very much determined by what the reader’s brain and emotions and beliefs bring
to the reading: the knowledge/information (or misinformation, absence of information), strategies for
processing text, moods, fears and joys—all of it.
The strategies one uses vary according to one’s purpose, including whether one is reading for oneself
only (still the purposes vary) or for somebody else, such as reading to answer comprehension questions,
reading to perform for listeners (including the teacher and classmates), and much more. Of course these
social factors may generate confidence, fear, anger, defiance, and/or other emotions—it just depends.
In sum, reading is both a psycholinguistic process (involving the mind actively processing the text)
and a sociolinguistic one (with multiple social factors that can affect how one reads, how much one
gleans from the reading, and more). Even word identification itself can be affected by these factors,
because reading is as much or more a brain-to-text process as a text-to-brain process.
This characterization of the reading process is developed throughout this book, not only with
references to research but through examples and do-it-yourself activities. Research into the nature of
readers’ miscues and eye movement research—often combined now as Eye Movement and Miscue
Analysis—provide crucial evidence for this view.

What is a “miscue”?
As applied to reading, a miscue is whatever the reader says aloud, or thinks silently, instead of what is
written linearly on the page. It is an observed response that differs from the expected response cued by the
text. Miscues are “windows on the reading process” (Goodman, 1973).
Since the mid-sixties when Kenneth Goodman first drew upon readers’ miscues in formulating a theory
of the reading process (1965, 1967, and later references), an analysis of readers’ miscues has proved so
fruitful that it has formed the basis for over a hundred research studies.

This introduction puts into context and critiques the federal government’s implicit definition of
reading from the early 2000s, as embodied in the Reading First legislation (part of No Child Left
Behind); the alleged research base as described in the National Reading Panel (NRP) report; and
its subsequently narrowed manifestation in a set of assessment measures, DIBELS (Dynamic
Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), being used to assess children and to shape—and severely
limit—reading instruction across the nation. Within this critique and contrasting with it is a brief
section, with contrasting models, on reading as a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic process—
brief because that is the focus of the entire book.
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xiv Introduction

Whether you read this introduction first or after reading the chapters of the book—which could
enhance your understanding of the evidence and arguments here—this critique of Reading First
and discussion of its unintended and unfortunate consequences, along with its disappointing
results, can serve as an introduction to what’s been occurring in our nation’s schools. While
citing the government-sponsored research report on Reading First’s ultimate lack of success, this
introduction also offers research-based explanations for its failure.

INTRODUCING THE NATIONAL READING PANEL REPORT

Of course there are varying answers to the question “What is reading?” But one sanctioned
by the federal government is the definition inherent in the research review undertaken by the
government-commissioned NRP (2000b). By deciding to investigate separately the effects of
teaching five separate skills, the panel operationally defined reading as mastering a set of skills:
phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The panel did not
investigate the effects of whole programs, comparing one approach with others in real
classrooms. Nor did the panel even investigate research on differing views of what is involved
in the reading process or the research on emergent literacy—the processes of learning to read and
write (Braunger & Lewis [2006] is a useful starting point).

Phonics and Phonemic Awareness: Brief Definitions

What is phonics, anyway, and what is phonemic awareness? Phonics can be defined as relationships between
letters and sounds, whether simple letter-sound correspondences or letter-sound patterns involving more
than one letter and more than one sound, like the str- pattern and the -ing pattern in string, and the sounds
they represent.
Basically, phonemic awareness means awareness of the separable sounds in words, such as the three
sounds (phonemes) in pet: /p-e-t/. In car, there are also three phonemes—-that is, three separable sounds
though most of us normally hear only two sounds, the /k/ sound and /ar/ together as a unit. The word string
has five separable sounds, not six: /s-t-r-i-␩/. In current research, the term phonemic awareness is often
used to mean not just awareness of the separable sounds in a word but the ability to manipulate the sounds.
An example is being able to hear the word pet spoken by an experimenter, mentally remove the first sound,
and say ‘‘-et’’ in response.

Nevertheless, the NRP report became the basis for the federal government’s Reading First
initiative, enshrined in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. It was official. Reading First
operationally defined reading as using a set of separate skills to process text and promoted the
concept that reading instruction should consist of teaching those skills separately. Chapter 2 here
(pp. 33–36) discusses the skills model of reading, representing it visually in Figure 2.5 (p. 34).
Somewhat similar to this, the skills model of reading instruction demanded by Reading First
might be visualized as shown in Figure I. 1.

fluency

phonics

phonemic awareness vocabulary comprehension

Figure I. 1 Model of reading instruction implicit in Reading First

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Introduction xv

Fluency Reading vocabulary Comprehension

Phonics

Phonemic awareness

Figure I. 2 Definition of reading implicit in National Reading Panel Report (2000c)

In practice, much more attention is typically given to instruction in phonemic awareness and
phonics and the development of fluency (rapid reading of the exact words on the page) than to
vocabulary development or the use of strategies for comprehension. This is suggested in Figure
Intro. 1 with shorter lines representing later-starting instruction in vocabulary and comprehension.
Though the NRP did not officially define reading, the panel’s operational definition could fairly be
represented as using a series of skills from part-to-whole, as seen in Figure I. 2.
Many of the researchers on the NRP hold such a concept of reading itself; indeed, they were
handpicked by a government representative precisely because they subscribed to the view that
reading occurs from part to whole and linearly, from left to right and down the page in English.
(However, there was a dissenting voice—see the minority report by Joanne Yatvin [2000]; and see
also Yatvin [2002].)

The NRP’s Operational Definition of Reading

At the beginning of the NRP report, the panelists admitted that “reading was defined to include behaviors
such as the following: reading real words in isolation or in context, reading pseudowords that can be
pronounced but have no meaning, reading text aloud or silently, and comprehending text that is read silently
or orally” (NRP, 2000c, p. 5).

Not only did the NRP researchers investigate just separate reading skills, but they limited their
investigation to just empirical research that had a limited research design with a control group
and an “experimental” group, usually pitting traditional instruction in this-or-that separate skill
with some different, more concentrated and intensive instruction, over a short period of time.
Then the Reading First legislation claimed that such research was the only kind that the
government would consider “scientific,” ignoring the many other kinds of empirical (on site,
data-based) research, including experimental research comparing whole approaches—because
even though it’s experimental, it’s too complex. Never mind that such research typically includes
quantitative (numerical) data as well as qualitative (observation, interviews, reading samples,
etc.). No, the federal government would only consider the more limited experimental research on
teaching reading skills separately.
If that were what necessarily produces the best readers, perhaps few would object—but it isn’t
(see, for example, Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading [Weaver, 1998c]). This
empirical and experimental research suggests that “whole language” classrooms are especially
good environments for children to develop whole literacy—reading, writing, and visual literacy,
too. Of course, this small body of research is not definitive, either, but it suggests the importance
of further empirical research on reading and literacy instruction comparing total classroom
approaches and environments.
It’s relevant to consider the inadequacy of the NRP research base to justify the still narrower
government-anointed skills approach to reading in the first place, as embodied in DIBELS. And
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xvi Introduction

it’s absolutely crucial to consider the results—or rather, the nonresults—of the Reading First
program after the three years for which such an evaluation was mandated by the No Child Left
Behind law.

THE FAILURE OF THE READING FIRST INITIATIVE

The Reading First initiative was flawed from the beginning, as its approach to reading
instruction did not even honestly reflect the limited skills research examined by the NRP. Its
report provides flimsy evidence at best for the teaching of these five skills in isolation, and
nonevidence at worst.
Here, from Yatvin, Weaver, and Garan (2003) are some crucial points about the NRP data and
the teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics:

“The National Reading Panel did not find that phonemic awareness and/or phonics must be
taught first, before children begin to read and write. There is, in fact, no evidence—in the
NRP report or elsewhere—that children must develop phonemic awareness or phonics
[knowledge] before they begin to read print” (p. 29; italics in original).
“The NRP did not find that phonemic awareness and/or phonics should be taught in
isolation (p. 30). It found that phonemic awareness was best taught along with phonics, not
prior to it” (NRP, 2000b, pp. 2–6; see also NRP 2000c, p. 8).
“The NRP did not find that the benefits for teaching phonemic awareness and phonics are
lasting. . . . With regard to teaching phonics systematically, the slight advantage for scores on
comprehension disappeared after first grade, when the comprehension passages on
standardized tests became longer than one sentence” (Yatvin, Weaver, & Garan, p. 30).
“The NRP did not find evidence to conclude that teaching phonics in isolation is better than
teaching it systematically in context” (Yatvin, Weaver, & Garan, pp. 29–30).

Indeed, the detailed NRP report’s section on phonics notes (NRP, 2000b, pp. 2–128): “It is
important to emphasize that systematic phonics instruction should be integrated with other
reading instruction to create a balanced reading program.”
Yet the alleged “summary” of the actual report makes inaccurate claims about the report’s
conclusions. And a Department of Education–sponsored booklet, Put Reading First (2002), falsely
claims that children must become aware of how the sounds in words work before they learn to
read print.
This claim from the widely disseminated Put Reading First is absolutely not true. The NRP
report does not support such a claim, and neither does any other research. With help, children
can, for example, learn familiar and repetitive phrases and texts, start to read more and more of
the individual words, and start learning major letter-sound correlations from some of the words.
Guidance is essential, but direct teaching of separate skills is not.
Now for the zinger: the results of the final report for the Reading First Impact Study, an
investigation undertaken for the government in compliance with the evaluation requirement for
Reading First. Clearly, children can learn to read when exposed to such a program, and we do
know that students in poorer districts and schools who had very little reading instruction before
Reading First did benefit from the greater instructional time. Still, the results overall showed no
advantage for those taught reading skills as separate strands. Here are key results from the
Executive summary of the final Impact Study (National Center for Education Evaluation and
Regional Assistance, 2009). Using for the primary assessment (grades 1 through 3) the Reading
Comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test–10, these researchers also administered
to grade 1 a test of decoding (which typically means using knowledge of letter-sound patterns to
sound out or otherwise identify words).
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Introduction xvii

Reading First produced positive and statistically significant impacts on

“amount of instructional time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction
promoted by the program (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and
comprehension) in grades one and two”;
“multiple practices that are promoted by the program,” including professional development
in the government approach to reading instruction, “support from full-time reading coaches,
amount of reading instruction, and supports available for struggling readers”;
decoding among first-grade students in one school year;

BUT—“There was no consistent pattern of effects over time in the impact estimates for reading
instruction in grade one or in reading comprehension in any grade.”

So even with more instructional time teaching those five skills, even with teacher training and
support from literacy coaches, even with additional supports available for struggling readers, the
program did not succeed in increasing students’ ability to comprehend.
Since the major aim of Reading First was to improve students’ “reading achievement” (read
this as “scores on standardized tests”), this is a massive failure, after a total of $6 billion dollars
of tax money was spent to fund it between its launch and 2008. Furthermore, there have been
flagrant and atrocious conflicts of interest and corruption in deciding who would determine what
commercial programs could be used and what Reading First proposals had to commit to, in order
to be accepted—and more (Office of Inspector General—United States Department of Education,
2006, 2007; also see Manzo 2005a & 2005b).

Deconstructing the Agenda and the Consequences

Allington, R. (Ed.). (2002). Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum: How Ideology Trumped Evidence.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Altwerger, B. (2005). Reading for Profit: How the Bottom Line Leaves Kids Behind. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Coles, G. (2003). Reading the Naked Truth: Literacy, Legislation, and Lies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Garan, E. M. (2004). In Defense of Our Children: When Politics, Profit, and Education Collide. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Shelton, N. R., B. Altwerger, & N. Jordan. (2009). “Does DIBELS Put Reading First?” Literacy Research and
Instruction 48: 137–148.
Smith, F. (2003). Unspeakable Acts, Unnatural Practices: Flaws and Fallacies in “Scientific” Reading
Instruction. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Of course those who understood reading as more complex than processing from part to whole did
not anticipate that the government’s limited program would show improvement in comprehension
other than on standardized tests at grade 1. The NRP report itself did not give reason to expect
that, either.

Surely it is time to refocus on the nature of the reading process and the processes of learning to
read, as the solid and most crucial basis for making instructional decisions.
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xviii Introduction

READING AS A SOCIOPSYCHOLINGUISTIC PROCESS

The reading process is definitely not one of applying skills like those of the Reading First initiative
separately and sequentially. It is a process of orchestrating various skills into effective strategies
for processing text: strategies like predicting (thinking ahead) and confirming or correcting. It is
not a strictly linear process, either, even when a reader reads a text out loud linearly, one word
and one sentence after another, word perfectly. No, it is a nonlinear process, as eye fixations amply
demonstrate (Chapter 5), and—when effective—it is strategy-driven, yet in fine detail unpredictable
from moment to moment, for any reader reading any text at any given time.
For convenience, Figure I. 3 shows a visual model of reading as a psycholinguistic and
sociolinguistic process. This model makes reference to the influence of the various social and
situational contexts that may influence one’s reading of a text; one’s purposes for reading at any
given time; as well as one’s prior knowledge, beliefs, and emotions that are brought to the

social and linguistic co

ious nt
Var ext
s
fo
Purposes r reading

nd knowledge, belie
grou fs,
b a ck mo
od
r’s s,
de e
ea m
R

ot
io
sn
The reading
event
R
E T
A E
D X
E T
R
Strategies
and skills
employed

Figure I. 3 Reading as a sociopsycholinguistic process

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Introduction xix

reading event. It indicates that reading is a strategy-driven process, with skills orchestrated
together strategically in the drive to construct meaning from text. And it hints at the notion that
reading is an event, a process of comprehending that necessarily precedes comprehension (recall
and all that). In such a transactional view of the process:

reading and comprehending are clearly not the result of reading linearly
the text is not in total control

The whole is more than the mere sum of individual parts. This view of reading is particularly
supported by miscue analysis, which yields insights into the reading process through oral
reading, and eye movement research, which yields insights from silent as well as oral reading. In
actual practice, both procedures typically involve an interview with the reader, a follow-up
retelling session, and an analysis of the reader’s miscues. All of this data offers powerful evidence
of how a reader goes about reading and what patterns tend to characterize effective and
ineffective readers.
It is beyond the scope of this shorter version of Reading Process and Practice to emphasize
ways of fostering reading and literacy that are a natural outgrowth of such an understanding of
reading. However, the following section and Figure I. 4, taken from the 2003 edition, suggest how
phonemic awareness and phonics are typically taught in a comprehensive literacy approach.

TEACHING PHONICS AND PHONEMIC AWARENESS

How are phonics and phonemic awareness taught in comprehensive literacy classrooms? Phonics
skills are not taught first. Figure I. 4 suggests a common progression from whole texts to words
and word parts, with phonics and phonemic awareness taught in the course of reading and
writing interesting texts. During a shared reading experience, for example, phonics and
phonemic awareness are taught when the teacher and children have read and reread a familiar
predictable text together, until the children have virtually memorized it.

imple texts with

s); s nat
rie ur
sto al
s, la
m
whole texts
ng
e
po

ua
s,

ge
ng

(pe
rned language (so

words
rhap
s composed by

letter-
sound
patterns
te
pat

the
ith

c
sw

hi
ld
xt

en
te )

Figure I. 4 Phonemic awareness and phonics in a comprehensive literacy approach (modified from
Reading Process and Practice [2003], p. 343; some other activities might be included
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xx Introduction

First, however, the teacher will have guided the children in using and understanding such
reading strategies as drawing inferences and predicting from the title and cover and from the
pictures throughout the text. Thus, strategies are taught or reinforced before skills. If needed, the
teacher will already have focused on certain concepts of print with that text, so the children will
easily read from left to right and return down left. The teacher is also likely to have called the
children’s attention to particular words in the text—eventually, perhaps, by inviting individual
children to use a pointer to show where a particular word is located in the text, or to frame the
word with two fingers or two narrow sticky notes. Perhaps the predictable text rhymes, and after
the first readings of the text, the teacher has covered up the second word of the rhyming pairs
with sticky notes, inviting the children to predict the rhyme words. In short, the teacher and
children will read and work with a text over several days, and—with emergent readers—might
then attend to phonics.

Why Teach Just Phonemic Awareness and Phonics,

When We Can Teach All of the Following Together?
Reading for meaning
Strategies for understanding and reading texts
Recognition of some interesting words and some high-utility words
Phonics: letter-sound patterns, onsets and rimes
Decoding new print words by using context and the parts of known words (such as onsets and rimes)
Phonemic awareness
For an extended example, See Chapter 14 of Reading Process and Practice online at www.heinemann.com

This model is meant to suggest that

Phonemic awareness is not taught separately from phonics, and phonics patterns are mostly
extracted from the words of the simple texts that children are reading and writing—with
scaffolding and other guidance, of course. Such patterns consist mostly of initial consonants
and blends, and final “rimes”—the rhyming part of rhyming words, rather than single or
double vowel letters by themselves. Word lists with the same phonic element might be
constructed by starting with a word in the text. In general, though, phonics patterns begin
with the text and are related back to the text.
The simple texts include those with patterned language, such as songs, poems, and some
stories, but also include other natural-sounding texts, including ones the children have
composed together, with the teacher writing them down.

Fluency is understood to be a product of learning to read, yet even the most proficient readers
are not necessarily or always fluent, as studies of readers’ miscues and eye movements make
crystal clear. During silent reading especially, proficient readers—those who are both effective
and efficient at constructing meaning—pause to think and connect ideas to what they already
know or believe, reread to correct meaning-disruptive miscues or to clarify, and engage in
other nonfluent behaviors. Some proficient readers can read aloud word perfectly, or nearly
so, but often they do not then comprehend what they’re reading; they are just performing for
others.
Drawing upon eye movement studies, Flurkey (2006, 2008) describes proficient reading as
“flow” rather than “fluency.” Proficient readers’ attention to this or that during reading ebbs and
flows in the drive to construct meaning.
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Introduction xxi

PROBLEMS WITH PHONEMIC AWARENESS, PHONICS, AND FLUENCY IN READING FIRST

Throughout this book, you will find reasons to question the wisdom of a heavy emphasis on
phonics, or letter-sound relationships, in reading instruction. A phonics approach to reading, or
intensive phonics taught in isolation and prior to reading simple texts, does not honor the
complexity of the human mind—yes, even the young child’s mind—or the complexity of the
reading process. Strauss, Goodman, and Paulson (2009), for example, discuss an emerging
perspective in neuroscience that both parallels and supports a more complex view of the reading
process, with the brain directing the eyes where to look rather than being simply the recipient of
sensory input from a text.
That understanding is by no means universal, though, and meanwhile the inability to do
phonemic awareness tasks well and difficulty with phonics tasks have become gatekeepers,
holding students back from learning to read. “Fluency first” has also become a gatekeeper, for
students may be held back from reading interesting texts until they can become fluent—that is,
read with accuracy and speed short texts having simple words but commonly a stilted, unnatural
flow and little or no predictability.
What follows is a discussion first of DIBELS, a set of procedures that some states were coerced
into including among their assessment measures as a requirement for having their Reading First
proposals approved. This is followed by more on the inappropriateness of demanding that readers
become fluent before they are considered competent, much less proficient.

Dissecting DIBELS
What is DIBELS? An educational disaster. Middle-of-the-road reading researcher David Pearson
writes, “DIBELS is the worst thing to happen to the teaching of reading since the development
of flash cards” (2006, back cover). What is it literally? The acronym stands for the Dynamic
Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, a set of procedures and measures for assessing the
acquisition of early literacy skills from kindergarten through sixth grade. They are designed to
be short (one minute) fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of early
literacy and early reading skills (https://dibels.uoregon.edu/dibelsinfo.php). The DIBELS tests
themselves can be downloaded from https://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures.
DIBELS totally misrepresents the basic purpose of reading, to comprehend; what readers need
to do when reading, in order to comprehend; and what emergent readers need to do in learning
to read for meaning. And yet the DIBELS website indicates that it is currently processing
“reading” scores for large numbers of children.
Because these one-minute tests are required as measures of reading for children in some or
all of the early grades in DIBELS schools, reading is operationally defined as scores on one-minute
tests of speed and accuracy in

initial sounds fluency (kindergarten only)

phoneme segmentation fluency, nonsense word fluency, and oral reading fluency (grade 1)
oral reading fluency (grades 2 and 3; now also available for grades 4–6)

There is an “ORF Retell Fluency” measure that accompanies the oral reading fluency, and a
recommended “word use fluency.” The scoring of these tasks trivializes both tasks.
The underlying assumptions, from a DIBELS-related website labeled “Accuracy and Fluency”
(http://reading.uoregon.edu/flu/flu_what.php), led Flurkey (2006) to explain succinctly that
“Rapid, automatic, accurate word recognition is thought to be a necessary skill so that readers
can then use their attention to comprehend” (p. 42). But the researchers that DIBELS draws upon
are, quite simply, incorrect—as this book shows—in thinking that accuracy and speed must come
before readers should even try to comprehend texts. In fact, neither complete accuracy nor speed
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xxii Introduction

are necessary for comprehending, as Flurkey demonstrates, and as his (and others’) research amply
demonstrates—see the large body of miscue studies and the growing body of eye movement
research.
But if DIBELS is such a disaster, why is that? To repeat: It operationally and unproductively
defines reading as scores on one-minute tests of speed and accuracy. Indeed, speed is valued over
accuracy, for these young children just learning to read.
Pearson (2006) makes a crucial point: in statistical “psychometric” research, good tests are
considered to be ones that show variability among children, with scores ranging from low to
middle to high: the famous and infamous “bell curve.” Pearson notes that for many of the skills,
most students would reach a “performance ceiling” either in the first grade or the second—which
means that almost all the scores would cluster at the high end of the scale. So in order for the
tests to differentiate children and thus meet expectations for this kind of test, something other
than accuracy had to be measured. This turned out to be speed. Yes, that’s right: Reading is now
defined as the speed of performing simple tasks that do not in any way reflect real reading (pp.
xii–xiv).
So what factors are our young children tested on, in the name of reading? The charts from
Kenneth Goodman’s “A Critical Review of DIBELS” (2006a) explain somewhat more clearly than
the assessment manual itself.

The Unwarranted Demand for Fluency in DIBELS

As indicated, the creators of DIBELS believe that fluency in word recognition is necessary for
comprehension. Therefore, DIBELS tests what the creators believe to be prerequisite skills:
phonemic awareness, phonics, then fluency. In fact, though, all the measures are fluency
measures, and speed is actually valued above accuracy.
In Rereading Fluency: Process, Practice, and Policy (2007), authors Altwerger, Jordan, and
Shelton examine the assumptions behind the drive for fluency embodied in DIBELS and the
Reading First initiative. They draw upon miscue and eye movement research, as well as test data
on DIBELS.
In the foreword to Altwerger, Jordan, and Shelton’s important book on literacy, Richard
Allington (2007) mentions other lines of research demonstrating that fluency is not the hallmark
of good readers (pp. vii–viii):

Both slowing down and rereading increase comprehension when the reader is having
difficulty (Walczyk & Griffith-Ross, 2007; Pressley, 2006; Buly & Valencia, 2002). Also,
“children can often read with great speed and accuracy and yet recall few of the ideas in the
text they read” (Pressley, 2006, p. 209).

Of course this is true for adults as well: fluency does not increase comprehension.

State-approved “commercial core reading” programs combined with DIBELS do not

necessarily produce satisfactory results. In a large-scale analysis within thirty-seven school
districts. McGill-Franzen and others (2006) found disappointing—but not surprising—results.
On the average, a third of the third-grade students did not achieve the minimum benchmark
on the state reading assessment.

It should be noted that none of the limited number of reading programs approved by the
federal government for Reading First instruction had been subjected to classroom research as
to their effectiveness. Says Allington (2007): “So much for the ‘science’ of fluency assessment
and core reading program requirements” (p. viii, but quotation marks mine). The developers of
DIBELS have ignored all such research on the lack of correlation between fluency and
comprehension.
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Introduction xxiii

The testing descends to the absolutely absurd with the measures of oral reading fluency and
the optional test, “Retelling Fluency”:

For “Oral Reading Fluency,” required for most children from mid-first grade through third
grade, only words correctly identified count toward a score. Because this is a one-minute
test, students who try to sound out a word or make sense of what they are reading are
penalized. Children get the best score if they skip any word they can’t immediately identify
and continue reading just the words they can instantly identify.
For the “Retelling Fluency” test that accompanies “Oral Reading Fluency,” which is supposed
to assess comprehension, what counts in scoring is the number of words the child says
before pausing for five consecutive seconds or “gets off track” (however that might be
interpreted). It doesn’t matter whether the retelling is a good one, because meaning doesn’t
count (unless the reteller “gets off track,” which could be very subjectively interpreted by the
teacher). So fast talkers are rewarded, while slower, more deliberate thinkers will get lower
scores—perhaps much lower.
For the test of “Word Use Fluency,” recommended for kindergarten through grade 3 (and
seemingly designed to assess vocabulary), what counts is how many words the child uses in
using the word (Allington, p. 32)!

Again, the insistence on speed does give a greater range of scores to make the test look good to
psychometricians, but at what cost to children?
Goodman (2006a) explains that DIBELS penalizes many of our best readers:

Those who are more cautious, more perfectionist, more thoughtful, more curious, more talkative, or just
slow are likely to suffer in a timed test. (p. 14)
Children who already are coming to understand that reading is supposed to make sense are likely to
be underscored. (p. 15)

With the widespread use of DIBELS not only to assess students but to limit reading instruction
and additional child support to simply working on different measures of fluency (translate
“accuracy and speed”), is it any wonder that the Reading First initiative has not had noticeable
effects on students’ ability to comprehend texts?
Pearson calls DIBELS the worst thing to happen to the teaching of reading in decades.
Goodman calls it pedagogy of the absurd. And, for thousands of our children, it amounts to child
abuse, convincing them that they can never become readers.
As individuals, communities, and a nation, we cannot afford for our children’s reading
education to be mired in practices promoted by those with narrow concepts of reading and reading
research, erroneous concepts of how proficient readers read for meaning and how emergent
readers learn to read more naturally, and ineffective practices for the teaching of reading.

Reading as a Cognitive, Constructive, and “Chaotic” Process

Though the program for reading instruction approved and implemented in “Reading First”
classrooms during the early 2000s implicitly defines reading as identifying words rapidly and
accurately, there is hardly any peer-reviewed research supporting the notion that this assists
reading for meaning, and there is a mounting body of research demonstrating that reading
instruction promoted by DIBELS assessment does not do what it claims it does. “There are
questions regarding whether such an assessment can reliably predict children’s ability to read and
comprehend non-test reading material—authentic texts” (Shelton, Altwerger, & Jordan, 2009, p.
138, and the numerous references they cite).
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xxiv Introduction

Time and again, researchers—including the researchers dominating the NRP—have not found
that rapid, accurate word identification—called “fluency”—improves reading scores beyond first
grade. This was found also in the government’s own assessment of the success of Reading First.
Furthermore, there is a mounting body of evidence that doing well on the DIBELS one-minute
tests of reading fluency does not reward or recognize those who normally read for meaning, and
indeed penalizes them for stopping to think about what they are reading; while on the other
hand, these assessment measures do not uncover the needs of children who read rapidly and
accurately but comprehend little as they read.
Underlying these problems is the unproductive, indeed faulty, concept of how readers read.
Most theories of how readers process text or comprehend it, including—or especially—the
government-approved one, have little if any basis in reality: that is, they are not based upon the
best empirical evidence we have of how good readers read. By “good readers,” I mean those we
call proficient: readers who are both effective in constructing meaning from text and efficient in
doing so. And, a crucial point: even beginning readers can be good readers.
An examination and analysis of the patterns of readers’ miscues not only gives rise to but
reflects a theoretical understanding of the reading process; theory is derived from and modified
according to real-world observations of how readers read. Such research has expanded in the
2000s to include eye movement and eye fixation research, typically combined with miscue
analysis to offer a more complete and accurate picture of reading itself. We cannot get inside
readers’ heads, but from such hard evidence, we can infer that reading is indeed a cognitive
process during which the brain makes instantaneous and multiple decisions in the attempt to
construct meaning. We say “construct” meaning because no reader, however proficient, “gets”
exactly the same meaning that was in the author’s head when he or she was composing the text.
Reading is a constructive, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic process.
As the following pages demonstrate, the process of reading for meaning has bottom-line
commonalities. Among these, perhaps oddly, is that at any given moment, one cannot reliably
predict what a reader will do next. Eric Paulson (2005) has drawn an analogy between eye
movements and the weather, both of which can be described in terms of chaos theory in physics,
he argues, but neither of which is exactly predictable. And he writes: “When looked at through
the lens of chaos theory, reading is clearly not a process of plodding along the text at some
regular, predetermined rate but is instead a process that ebbs and flows” (p. 355).
We set our purposes (or not), begin to read, perhaps question what we are reading, maybe
return and reread, sometimes read ahead, go back again, maybe skim or skip some, occasionally
decide not to finish reading whatever it is, maybe go ahead and read at least the headings (of an
informational selection) and the conclusion, or the final chapter or page (if a novel or short story)—
all the while using strategies that are universal among proficient readers, but uniquely applied.
Metaphorically, during any reading event, reading ebbs and flows, like waves. We might think
of waves crashing upon the beach as meaning achieved (and perhaps examined critically), the end
product of reading a stretch of text. But with such achievement, the reader is simultaneously and
near simultaneously processing other parts or aspects of text and the ideas in ways that are
unpredictable at the micro level. This is akin to what we often see on a beach: different waves,
and different aspects of the reading process, forming, swelling, cresting, crashing, and ebbing.
While one part of the reading process and event crashes and ebbs—with something processed into
short- or even long-term memory, perhaps—other facets of the process are just beginning again,
increasing, coming to a head, collapsing into memory (or not), and receding from the reader’s
immediate attention. Yes, while I often speak of the reading process, as if this cognitive and
constructive process were totally uniform, during any given reading event, whoever the reader and
whatever the text and reading circumstances, the moment-to-moment reading process is unique.

Let the reading begin!