Child can't read silently

This is probably obvious, but has he tried imagining that he is reading it to himself (and, perhaps, pausing to explain things along the way)?
Subvocalizing is something many of my students do (though it reminds me of hearing someone being told back in grade school *not* to move her lips as she read) — reading it “aloud” but without actually saying anything.
Another strategy is to use a pencil to help track and to scoop out phrases as you read.

Can you explain what you mean by scooping? Your idea about subvocalizing seems really good (and, surprisingly, not obvious to me). Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Interesting. It suggests that he is reinforced by the sound of his voice and the reading and that he loses it when is does not have the auditory reinforcement.

I think Sue’s suggestion of subvocalizing is a good one. There are people who whisper to themselves as they read and you can clearly see their lips moving - it’s something in between reading outloud and reading silently. When we’re reading something very hard or when there are distractions, many of us ‘subvocalize’ or move our lips and quietly read outloud. Watch people when they’re reading directions about how to put something together. Many people lapse into reading outloud when reading complicated directions as reading silently, they just can’t grasp it.

I’d also suggest this. Get him a book and a copy of the book on tape. Make it an fairly easy book to read. Have him read silently - or try to - while the book is being read to him by the tape. Or you could do that even without a tape. You read a book outloud to him while he reads silently along with you in his own copy of the book.

He needs to build a bridge between his outloud reading skills and his silent reading skills. Good luck with this - it’s interesting but I think you’ll find he can build that bridge.

[img]http://www.resourceroom.net/gif/scooping.jpg[/img]

I doubt that will work — you can find a picture of scooping at this page
http://www.resourceroom.net/Sharestrats/2002automaticity.asp

on the image that says “Meg told Jim that her kite was stuck in a tree.”

There are an awful lot of other good strategies for fluency and comprehension in this little article ;)

Thanks for your response. I tried connecting to the link you supplied, but it didn’t work. I’ll try again tomorrow. Marie

Works for me… what did you get? (It’s my site so it matters if people can’t get there ;))

I was able to get on your site today. It must have been my server. That was a good article. Thanks.

Try this…

www.whisperphones.com

My experience both as a dyslexic adult and dealing with dyslexic students is that sub vocalizing is a part of reading. “Reading silently” is rarely done with this set of students. Research with brain imaging has actually shown that these readers use the auditory association areas for reading while good silent readers rely more on the visual association areas for reading. It would appear that much of this has to do with the ability to separate language from the auditory association areas. With such readers there is no meaning without either vocalizing or doing sub vocalizing. I attempted for years to train myself to read differently. However, such efforts were futile. Scientific research now explains the difference between such readers.

I also highly recommend that readers rely on the auditory association areas, i.e. subvocalizers use audio books for reading. This is especially helpful in getting through large amounts of material more quickly.

Jim — Michigan
[email protected]

Dictated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Jim and others, I think this is an iomportant issue: how recent was that info, Jim?

I read an article, I believe in Scientific American, quite recently — within the last couple of years — and the point was made that the older research was simply too low-tech. In fact *all* readers subvocalize; some just use much less muscular motion than others. Beginning readers actually speak out loud, intermediate level move their lips silently, some good readers just move their lips or tongue slightly, and totally “silent” readers are still in fact activating muscles in the larynx.

I personally read “silently” most of the time, but I find that when I am tutoring I read along with the student moving my lips — why I don’t know, seems to help me slow down and be patient. I find that when I am reading a difficult text in a foreign language it helps me keep my mind on it to vocalize. So, if a very good reader does this, it can’t be such a great sin.

I too remember the “don’t move your lips and read silently” dictum of the Fifties. Nobody ever told you *how* to do it, just that you had to or else you were stupid and silly-looking. Did look-say and silent reading produce a generation of perfect readers? Far from it, so forget that piece of dogma.

I have mentioned one issue a couple of times before, but it’s been several months so once again: the reading programs of the forties and fifties, the whole look-say thing, and the extreme stress on silent reading, were based on “research” conducted in the twenties and thirties. (1) The technology of the time was shall we say a little limited. They thought they were doing really well when they flashed an incandescent light for a few hundredths of a second; we now know that the reaction time of the human eye is more than ten times that fast, in the thousandths of seconds, so the data is pretty meaningless. They decided that people were not vocalizing because a casual observer can’t see any lip motion, which is absolutely false as described above. (2) The psychologists of the time were mostly very strong Freudians and philosophical bias often distorts their reporting violently. I keep a book by Gesell and Ilg around as a bad example; among other things they suggest paper training your child as you would a puppy, feeding boys more and very early solid food (now considered a health risk) just because they are boys, keeping all boys completely out of school until they are at least seven as a standard policy, and all sorts of other things that nowadays are seen as crazy. Yet this was the expert book recommended for parental guidance at the time. (3) The “research” standards of the time were terrible. Control groups were rare. Many instances of faked data have come up, including notably Cyril Burt who studied IQ and giftedness — tainting many later writings on IQ, which refer back to him.
I ask people: Would you drive a 1930’s car on today’s roads? Would you be satisfied with the knowledge of a 1930’s doctor (pre-antibiotics)? Well, then why will you trust your child’s education to a program based on 1930’s research?
Which is not to say that everything about it is bad! Please try to separate out things logically. That old car did a good job at 20mph on country roads and can be fun for antique rallies, that doctor could set a broken leg or operate for appendicitis and saved an awful lot of lives, and those old books have good vocabulary-controlled stories that are excellent developmental practice; you just don’t have to take the whole theory along with it. Silent reading is not all it is cracked up to be.

Hello Victoria:

The research I was referring to I saw on CNN News. However, here are a few references for differences in cortical association areas of the brain in reading.
Research articles
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/18/17/6939
Visual association areas and dyslexia
http://www.sacklerinstitute.org/cornell/summerinstitute/McCandliss.pdf
Lower brain activity associated with dyslexia
http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/4930A.htm

In my own experience and in interviewing a number of different types of readers I distinguish “silent reading” not as lip movements, but by what is “heard” in the mind. Poorer readers are surprised to learn that there are people who can read without “hearing” the words/voice in their head. I have found that poorer readers always “hear the words”.

In interviews with very good/proficient silent readers, I generally have found those reading at or over 300 wpm no longer are hearing the words/voice in their heads. They are “seeing” the ideas. In fact, with hightly proficient readers they indicate that they become oblivious to the print and concentrate on ideas. When reading fiction, for example, they often report simply seen the movie in their minds while becoming oblivious to the book in their hands. Pretty amazing stuff.

These differences would appear to be related to both innate (neurological) ability/skill and also practice, practice, practice. I, among other people who are not proficient readers, i.e. in speed, retained the auditory sound and our heads, as well as, always being aware of the book of words before us.

What I stress is the acceptance of individual differences in reading. There are going to be simply outstanding readers and not so outstanding readers. Just like there are also great musicians or baseball players. The goal is for everyone to enjoy music and playing in intramural sports. So you don’t have to be a fast silent reader to actually learn to love to be a reader. This is why I also stress giving audio books to slow readers. Reading is more than visual perception. Reading is the enjoyment of receiving ideas and hearing stories. I also stress having students read material that is in their ability level, high interest low vocabulary books. Above all reading should be fun. After a number of years my daughter who struggled with reading now enjoys reading for fun. She is not fast but she likes what she chooses to read. Reading enjoyment is often a match between reading level, good story, and self-selection of materials. Often self-selection of material can lead to more difficult books simply because they have a good story.

I reviewed this response with my friend who has his Ph.D. in Reading. He agrees with my experience in the field.

Jim — Michigan
www.geocities.com/jnuttallphd

Dictated with DragonNaturally Speaking

I would say the “accepting differences” idea needs to be introduced as non-linear. This is more with math than reading, but applies to reading as well; it’s not just that some people are outstanding and some aren’t. Some people do it in significantly different ways than others. I remember figuring out that, indeed, some of my students really did read in a fundamentally, cognitively different way than I did. (Then there was the student who could play Minesweeper with visual logic as opposed to number logic.) SOmetimes there are value judgements as soon as you say “some are not outstanding” — though part of accepting differences is stopping that absurd train of thought that somehow ranks people based on speed of processing, as far as their value to the world and the people in it — but sometimes recognizing different cognitive approaches means we can enable learners to reach much higher expectations.
(And boy, do I wish sports could be more accessible, too! I was lucky and now I’m healthy…)

Hello Sue:

You make a good point about the use of language. In fact, what I am attempting to do is to point out that there’s more than one way to do a process like reading. Often, people think there’s only one way to do it. A my friend, who is a reading consultant, says there are some people who are “virtuoso” readers. There is little research dedicated to such individuals.

There’s so much pressure on using reading as the path/tool to learning that the joy is often missed. Perhaps you can comment on your success in this area. I would be most interested in what you share from your teaching experience.

Jim — Michigan

Jiim — I absolutely must refer you to a wonderful and subtly funny article titled “How good are the world’s best readers”? (I may be a little off here — the question may be how fast). It is available through an ERIC search; you would have to pay about $10. for a reprint, but it is definitely worth it. Or a ubiversity library may have the journal. This article was printed some time in the 1980’s.

This article simply blows the “speed-reading” claims out of the water. In fact, all sixteen of the “virtuoso” readers studied used much the same approaches and achieved much the same speeds, no matter what field they were in and how they had learned.
Also, no matter what they claimed about speed or photographic memory of whole pages or “absorbing” material without detail reading, sorry, the tests in this study disproved these claims quite thoroughly.

One very important fact noted was that *all* of the excellent readers studied used various speeds and various approaches to different reading material. Novels were skimmed lightly at speed, informational material was read in more depth and detail, and high-level demanding reading was done quite slowly; I am not sure from memory whether or not vocalization was mentioned in the article, but I do know that many good reders including myself do vocalize on exceptionally difficult reading.

When excellent readers were “reading” at high speed, either just for pleasure or to test time, ALL of them went into a skimming mode — picking up on main ideas and topic sentences, and skipping over huge chunks of the material. Nothing whatever wrong with skimming as a tool when you want it, but the whole idea of just absorbing a book without actually looking at the words — nope, sorry, would be nice but it just does *not* happen. Please read the article for details.

Anecdotes from good readers that you happen to meet are just not trustworthy. Very few people are good self-observers, and many tend to flatter themselves a lot.

A PhD in reading – well, where and when and what subtopic area?
On the net and in general society, one meets a lot of fake doctorates.
Then even if the doctorate exists, education faculties are notorious for herding like sheep behind the fashions of the times. Many PhD’s were trained in the dogma of sight memorization as the only way to go and of phonics as horrible bad medicine; in fact the science has very clearly disproved this (see the National Reading Panel report) but you will still hear people spouting this belief system.
Then of course many PhD’s are in administration or testing or children’s literature some area that has nothing whatever to do with the issue at hand.
So those of us who deal with this question for a long time do not just accept a PhD as a great authority on high; we question whether this person is actually up on the scientific research and practical methodologies used. A lot simply are not informed, alas.

As far as different approaches to reading — well, this is a definite maybe.
I work in both math and reading/language, and I use for myself as well as my students a very wide variety of tools in all of them. In math especially I have a hard time with many of my students because they want the one and only one right way and there just isn’t a tablet written in stone, and this frustrates them.
On the other swing of the pendulum, I meet a lot of students who have their own personal way of doing things, math or reading or writing or foreign language, and their own personal way is either flat-out wrong or so terribly, hopelessly inefficient that they will never finish page 1. There are dozens of effective ways to solve many problems; there are thousands of ineffective ways, and there are thousands of students (and poor teachers) who fall over and over into the same traps of methods that look easy but are dead ends. Think twice and look ahead — short-term “success” followed by long-term failure is not a profit in life.

Hello Victoria:

Can you recommend several different books that I could pick up and read to learn much more about the field reading. Recently, I completed three graduate courses on reading but much of it focused on a literature emersion approached to reading. I would be much more interested in finding out some of the science and practicality behind the development of reading.

I have low vision and read slowly. To get through college I had everything read to me. Let me share one of the stories of my experience with one of my exceptional readers. He could easily read to me at least if not more than 300 wpm. I’m not joking. Normally in the college textbook like history I could read about five pages and hour to myself. Most readers could read about 15 pages an hour. But this exceptional reader could easily cover 25 pages and more an hour while reading aloud to me. One day, he was reading a chapter on Russian history about 30 pages. He finished at in about an hour. I asked them if he got anything out of reading to me at such a high rate of speed. He mentioned, “Oh, I wasn’t paying any attention to the words, as I read to you. In fact, during the entire time I was thinking about a canoe trip. I was planning all my stops with friends for this summer.” On another occasion he wanted to pay attention to the reading. He read to me Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea in two hours! He said he thoroughly enjoyed the book on that occasion.

Jim — Michigan

“virtuoso” readers could also simply be the hyperlexic types, who are hard-wired for reading and verbal tasks and just do it a lot more efficiently than most people. (Aren’t you in the club, too? :-)) However, language is complex, period — even those who teach themselves to read when they’re two benefit a lot from some structure and guidance. I remember somebody telling me to “read to yourself as if you’re reading aloud and the story will be better” and it significantly changed my approach, and I am sure caused a huge increase in comprehension.
There is some research about that — and all that tedious stuff that says that since good readers do everything quickly we should tell poor readers to go faster… yea, logical, right? (Sorta like when PG County realized that people who took Geometry & Alg. II tended to do better in college than those who didn’t, so they required it from everybody so they’d do better in college…)
We had a minor snoopy dance event yesterday, when the ENglish prof graded her entering student’s first day writing sample. We weren’t quite sure how oen student had managed to get into that level — let’s just say, all we’d ever seen in the writing area was pretty incomprehensible, illegible, ungrammatical and basically at about a fourth grade level (except with worse spelling and grammar). He’s been plugging away … and this no-warning-just-write-it sample had those funny things called complete sentences and words spelled right and reasonably cohesive thoughts.
Seems with older learners — at least this one — some of that “immerse in the language” stuff works.

(BTW, the “aren’t you in the club” was directed at Victoria… didn’t type fast enough for it to be the next post ;))

Your exceptional reader is a clear example of the difference between word-calling and comprehending.
If you could comprehend at the rate he was reading, you rank in the exceptional reader category, too (though you should be factoring in familiarity with the subject, and whether it’s an easy-to-follow story or arcane Russian History or physics)

Sue is trying to out post me yet again. I don’t think she will ever make it. :-P

Anyway, I am responding to the comment re: hyperlexic readers. I think I fit in there. However, true hyperlexic readers aren’t necessarily so good in some respects. Yes, I taught myself to read at 3 or so. However, my comprehension, esp for fiction, was never so good. I didn’t understand this in high school or college only later, but I guess it was “good enough” as they say. Some hyperlexics aren’t really so good in decoding either. Doesn’t fit with me, but I know of some with not such good decoding. IF they have heard/seen the word once they recall it but not beyond that.
Once you get up there in reading, there are quite a few words you will just about NEVER hear.

—des

Whaddya mean, no research…
This Just In (January 12, 2004)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/01/040108080212.htm

Surfin’ Sally STrikes Again :)

To Jim and Sue — Yesterday I typed up a nice detailed reply to various issues you raised. Then the *&^%$# system timed me out and I lost everything. When the spirit moves again I will type it up as a bunch of shorter replies and bomb this topic with posts.

Ah, the timeout curse!!!
Somehow it’s fitting ;)

Just a comment:

I believe many readers read without “auditory” element- I am certainly one of them. The extreme is my friend who says that she cannot remember in which language she had read something- she only remembers pictures and ideas (she reads regurarly in three languages).

I also just “scan” through text to get an idea- not words for sure- many of them I cannot even pronaunce (only when forced to do that). I learned about rules of phonics in English when I already got my degree in this country.

Ewa

Now, the trick would be to do a little hypnoses (or time travel) to go back in time and figure out whether she *learned* to read through the sounds; I suspect for some people this is true, but not others.

Images versus sounds, or skimming — does memory prove anything? I think not.

I know that I learned to read through sounds, only. The school doing look-say really fouled up my brother, who wanted some logic. My mother ended up teaching him and I followed along with it. Mother taught *only* oral phonics, and that is all I learned. By the time I actually hit school I could read anything, with no other type of instruction.

Then I learned French at age seven and was lucky enough to have a system that taught both oral and written (neither stands well all alone in a class setting). We learned how French phonetics work and I could read anything in French, although vocabulary is a constant job, always trailing too far behind my English.

German and Spanish in adulthood after age 35 - reading also came with the alphabet and a few pronunciation rules, although my vocabulary is dreadfully limited.

Russian was most interesting. I learned the Cyrillic alphabet and could pick my way through words but it was letter-by-letter and word-by-word slogging. Then suddenly about six weeks into the class a light flashed in my brain and I was reading; the speed-sounding kicked in. (Those of you dragging kids through the slogging stage, take heart! It is slower for your first language, but it does kick in.) I’ve lost it again after ten years, but it would come back with a couple of weeks of work.

I can skim very well in the two languages I’m fluent in, somewhat in Spanish, and not really in Grerman and Russian where I just don’t have vocabulary.

Now, in *all* of these languages I am a visualizer. I remember things by a key image. Memorizing verbally is possible but takes a huge amount of conscious effort, while the image is right there for anything I had my attention on.

Recently I’ve been watching quite a bit of French TV as well — and believe me, Stargate and Simpsons and Raymond and Friends dubbed in French are bizarre.

I’m having daily conversations in either French or English or switching back and forth, a funny game of “who’s the most fluent?”. I’m also teaching in both languages, teaching English to French kids and French to English kids. :?

The funny thing about this is that when I remember *either* a book *or* a TV program *or* a conversation, I generally don’t remember what language it was in! The brain seems to translate for itself. This has nothing to do with reading per se because it is the same for books, TV, and conversations. I’ve slipped up a couple of times and recommended a show or book to someone in the wrong language — the brain just doesn’t care, remembers the topic but not the form.

It’s a truism in the topic of brain and learning research that the self-reporting of the untrained observer is very inaccurate, often misleading. Memory tends to fit itself into patterns, don’t confuse it with the facts. So if you remember images from books but not the sounds of the words, welcome to the club — but that doesn’t say anything at all about whether you actually use sounds to read or not.