Thank you Michael, for reminding us that oracy is the FIRST and important skill from which reading springs.  

This discussion has two interesting threads-- one, that reading is somehow critical to thinking skills, and two, the related discussion of those who have difficulty dealing with reading from print.  Several thoughts come to mind in response to these discussions.  

As for the idea that reading is critical to thinking skills, Michael is right in reminding us that oral traditions do not lack in thinking skill, though without doubt working with ideas through the medium of print provides a different way to deal with thinking about ideas.  In an article I read recently about the purposes of literacy, it was noted that a primary purpose of having a writing system is that it allows us to write down things we want to remember, thereby freeing up the brain's energy for more learning and language.   What also comes to mind, however, is that how different cultures and traditions use writing and reading varies tremendously.   While western thinking-- and therefore reading text and writing disciplines-- is very linear and logical, other cultures follow different patterns.  In some Asian cultures, the writer's purpose is to cause the reader to ponder and therefore it is bad form for the writer to explicitly state the point in writing.   In some South American traditions, and indeed, according to one of my professors, who is from Portugal, in her tradition, it is important20to write down virtually all one knows about a topic with no obvious organization-- or perhaps a sort of spiraling organization.   These differences in text organization and writing traditions are regularly discussed in ESL, where the impact is felt when we have students from different cultures who approach text and writing quite differently from the way western-trained learners do.  

Take for example the very American habit of expressing opinions and supporting topic sentences or theses with evidence.  When some of my very educated ESL students at a well-known university were blamed by the ESL writing teachers for having no ideas and no opinions on anything and being unable to think about topics, I had a conversation with these students.   When asked when and how they gave opinions in their classrooms, they literally laughed outloud at the very notion, saying that if students gave opinions in their classes in their countries (these were students from around the globe), they would be expelled from class for defying or challenging the teacher.  Asked if they were ever asked to GIVE an opinion, they in turn asked WHY they would ever be requested to do so when the professor obviously knew all there was to know on a subject.   Needless to say, this attitude towards thinking and expressing opinions caused a great deal of trouble for these students in an American setting, as mentioned.  Often their unfamiliarity with the habit of saying things for oneself resuited in what we call 
plagiarism-- largely because the students would say that the author had already said it so well, how could they say it better??  Many times students from some cultures are often said to plagiarize because they respect the author so much they do not want to change his or her words.  

I have long been interested in how culture interacts with learning in ESL adults and that aspect is just one.  A more common issue for learners with basic education-- or sometimes higher education- is that they come from education systems where the sole method of displaying 'learning" is recitation of memorized material.   There is virtually no demand to process, analyze,  or otherwise interact with text other than to re-create it verbatim.  I taught in a system like that and literally did not believe it until I had been called on the carpet by the school administrators for not having my students do their "dictee" correctly. This practice is not limited to 3rd world countries or K-12 schools, either.  Last summer, I was talking about this issue in a workshop and one teacher/participant voluteered that she had been a student in a French university the previous year.  She said her final exam for her course at the unversity was to simply write verbatim her  "Notes de lecture"-- notes all students were expected to take at each lecture.  Nothing was asked about the actual meaning or use of the content!!

I now work in a school of over 1,000 adult ELLs from many cultures and this 
is a very commonly encountered difficulty.  Yes, according to OUR standards, most of these students certainly lack critical thinking skills, and, just as they did when I worked in a college ESL setting,  when the teachers present material and lessons in which those skills are needed, conflicts arise as to what outcome is expected.  

No amount of reading per se will result in a student acquiring critical thinking skills if he or she merely expects that reading and remembering the words is what is reading is.   Critical reading/thinking skills MUST be taught and CAN be acquired, not just by ESL students, but by anyone for whom those skills were, for some reason, not developed in early years of education.  One population in which they must be developed slowly and carefully is in non-literate learners who are becoming literate as adults.   I have found in many  years of both teaching these learners and studying those who do that often these learners expect that knowing the letters and sounds and being able to read words somehow results in reading comprehension.  It is a big cognitive leap for many to begin to use print to obtain information and to trigger thinking about a topic, no matter how mundane.   Royer ( 2004), who surveys literacy programs for the UN, notes  that in general, adult non-literates reach about 4th grade literacy, then plateau.  A part of that plateau is that they have not developed the critical thinking skills needed to go beyond the p
ure mechanics of reading.  

Below are several readings on culture and reading/thinking-- Fox, who did a study at U Mass Amherst on the pervasiveness of culturally-learned learning habits, found that college ESL students persisted in using methods of writing and doing assignments learned in their culture despite having explicit instructions from their American professors, just as I found out anecdotally from my students that they were totally unfamiliar with and uncomfortable with the notion of expressing opinions.    
And Koda, who has done exhaustive research on second language reading, has irrefutable evidence that ALL reading functions of second/multii-language readers are accessed first in first language.  This means how text is approached--where meaning lies physically in sentences, for example-- as well as where critical information (if it is expected to be there) is expected to be, depends on where and how a given learner learned to read and was educated.   For ESL instructors, this means we need to be aware of those possibilities and provide frequent, accessible, and incremental instruction in how students should access materials created in the US for US students.    

Sorry if this is sort of covering several topics at once-- I am glad many have responded to the reading issue and LD.  One has only to look at the list of awardees of the Lab School of Washington's award for persons with LD who have Achieved at a High Levels to see that poor reading is not inversely correlated 
with strong thinking skills-- we could look at that paradigm the other way, too, and wonder why it is that some people who read well cannot seem to employ critical thinking skills....or, as in the case of one of my relatives, why critical thinking skills were consciously put aside.....!

Robin Lovrien Schwarz 

•    Fox, H. (1994). Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing. Urbana, IL, National Council of Teachers of English.
•    "Cross-cultural Awareness and the English-as-a Second-Language Classroom." (1984).  Irving, K. J. Theory into Practice XXIII(2).
•    Gutierrez, K. D. and B. Rogoff (2003). "Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits repertoires of practice." Educational Research 32(5).
Koda, K. (2004). Insights into second language reading. A cross-linguistic approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. 
 Royer, J. M., Abadzi, H., & Kinda, J. (2004). The impact of phonological-awareness and rapid-reading training on the reading skills of adolescent and adult neoliterates. International Review of Education/Internationale Zeitschrift Fur Erziehungswissenschaft/Revue Internationale De l'Education, 50(1), 53-71. 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Tate <mtate at sbctc.edu>
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Sent: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 6:12 pm
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3363] Re: quantifying student interest in material






















Steve, 



 



Actually, all the reading re
search I have ever seen says that
oral communication (for which our species is hard-wired) is the crucial
foundation for reading as well as for critical thinking, problem-solving, and
decision-making.  Whereas many theorists call reading “an unnatural
act” for humans, because we are born pre-programmed to learn a spoken
language, most of our cleverness and sociability is rooted in our oral language
experiences.  



 



Clearly, the depth and richness of cultures that spring from
people with no written language is proof that reading is not required to
develop intellectual, emotional and spiritual sophistication.



 



I started my professional life as a poet and literature teacher,
so I know the joys of reading.  But, I think it was my first year in
graduate school that I learned there was a long oral tradition that everyone
used to know and participate in.  We gained a lot from Gutenburg’s
invention in the 1450s, but some things were lost, too, when the intelligentsia
threw up a fence around  the written word.  550 years or so later,
balance has returned, a product of the succeeding technology, the computer.



 






From:
englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On
Behalf Of Steve Kaufmann

Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 10:11 AM

To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List

Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3351] Re: quantifying student interest in
material






 



Michael,



I simply 
do not agree. Reading is key to the ability to communicate, and that
is why literacy is the most reliable indicator of professional success. That is
a fact. Your predictions about "digiracy" may be an appealing vision
for you and a few others but are not reflected in present day reality.






On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Michael Tate <mtate at sbctc.edu> wrote:









CeCe and Steve, 



Reading was the critical skill
in the 20thCentury, but since the advent of computers that can
speak, read and listen, digiracy rather than literacy is the key skill for the
21st.  This technological advance, and others, allows us to
create education programs, classrooms and tutorials where students can interact
and respond to lessons in a variety of modes, not just  through reading
and writing.  We all need to step up and implement Universal Design. We
also need to eliminate college entrance criteria that are obsolete, like
insisting upon fluent reading skills.



 



Steve,



Some people with dyslexia
 will NEVER be able to learn to read so that it is a useful skill. 
Instead of having the student perseverate on trying to learn to read, the
instructor needs to re-focus them on learning to use a compensatory device or
software.  



 



Michael Tate



 






From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov]
On Behalf Of cece valentine

Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 6:13 AM








To: The Adult20English Language Learners Discussion List






Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3341] Re: quantifying student
interest in material












 




 


  

  

  
Glad U didnt teach in a college years ago.  Reading skils are not
  critical thinking skills.  Many dyslexics have critical thinking skills
  but the mechanics of reading are a chore.

  

  

  
 

  

  

  
Land grant colleges were open to anyone who could get there.  Many
  adults learned to read after they got to the college.  Their critical
  thinking skills and divergent patterns of thought kept them going until;
  maybe years later, they were prepared to teach or be lawyers or doctors.

  

  --- On Tue, 1/13/09, Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com>
  wrote:

  

  

  


  From: Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com>

  Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3340] Re: quantifying student interest in material

  To: "The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List" <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>

  Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2009, 12:14 AM

  

  
If a college student has trouble reading
  he/she should not be there.

  

  I do not believe that you can teach critical thinking skills. A person who
  reads widely and has been exposed to many different facts and points of view
  has a better chance of developing the ability to think clearly and express
  thoughts in a balanced and persuasive manner. Readi
ng is key.

  

  

  
 

  


  

  

  

  

  

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