Influences on Language and Literacy Development

I was finishing up my other two summer semester classes, so I didn't have time to read my book for this class for about a week. I finally had a chance to pick up my book this morning and continue reading it. Chapter Four is entitled, Influences on Language and Literacy Development and the Teaching of Reading. This chapter was very interesting and discussed that a child learns to read in the same ways he/she learns to speak and comprehend oral language.

To begin with, the chapter discusses dialects. It was interesting to read that there is a negative impact of differentiated instruction which is based on social class and dialect in school. I thought about this for a moment and it made perfect sense. An example from the book discussed this man who moved from Kentucky to attend graduate school in Wisconsin. Some of his fellow students in Wisconsin automatically thought that he was less intelligent because of the way he talked.

The chapter went on farther to discuss where the standards of dialect come from. There is no one true correct dialect, although there are many assumptions based around those that are considered to be subpar. We may laugh at pronunciation of someone who's from Boston, or someone of African American decent and claim that their dialect is not correct.

This chapter also helped affirm what was discussed in the last chapter on phonics based teaching. Students who are constantly corrected on their mistakes begin to only focus on not making a mistake while they read. They are no longer thinking about the meaning of the text. An interesting example from the book is one that I can certainly relate to. This example asked the reader to remember a time when they had to read out loud from complicated text in front of the class. (For me this was reading Shakespeare out loud last semester). The book then asked if I understood the meaning of the text that I read out loud. The answer for me was, no. I had been focusing so hard on not making a mistake that I didn't even understand the meaning behind what I was reading. When my turn passed from reading out loud I even had to re-read it because I had no idea what I just verbally conveyed to the class. Apparently, it is a fact of information-processing that people can not focus on meaning and correctness at the same time.

It was interesting to read about "ability grouping" in this chapter as well. I remember being in elementary school and being put into groups based on if we were reading the "bluebird books" or the "sunshine books". Ability grouping is often determined based on standardized testing. Once students are placed into these lower groups it is hard for them to get out of them. Research shows that teachers interrupt students in lower groups for their miscues two to five times as often as they do for kids in high ability groups. This affirms for the student in the lower group that they are a "bad reader".

In an attempt to change the pattern of student-teacher interaction to accommodate different cultural expectations the book gives many great suggestions including: integrating multicultural literature, discussing inventions by women and minorities, and affirming differences rather than ignoring them. Dornan, Rosen, and Wilson also suggest having reading/writing workshops, as well as allowing children to self-select their books when possible.

This chapter showed that literacy is all too often defined in terms of phonics mastery and oral fluency, yet in reality it should be meaning centered.