Intervention for Dyslexia - The British Dyslexia Association

5.1.4 Reading Recovery and the teaching of early reading
In similar fashion to Goodman’s (1986) model in which reading is based on the
simultaneous integration of syntactic, semantic and graphophonic ‘cues’, Clay proposed
that, in order to read texts, readers have to integrate information from separate sources,
which she identified as semantic, syntactic, graphophonic and visual (Clay and Cazden,
1990). This approach formed the basis of the ‘searchlights’ model of reading originally
adopted by the (then) National Literacy Strategy. However, in the revisions to its
successor, the Primary National Strategy, that resulted from the Rose review of the
teaching of early reading (Rose, 2006) the ‘searchlights’ model was superseded by the
‘simple’ view of reading, which is better supported by current research evidence. In the
‘simple’ view of reading a theoretical and pedagogical distinction is drawn between word
recognition and reading comprehension. In word recognition the reader’s phonological
knowledge (i.e. their ability to use graphophonic cues) plays a crucial role, whereas the
reader’s semantic and syntactic knowledge is more important for reading
comprehension. The ‘simple’ view of reading is the theoretical framework that has been
adopted by the National Strategies to underpin Wave 1 ‘Quality First’ teaching, in
accordance with the recommendation of the Rose review that “The knowledge, skills and
understanding that constitute high quality phonic work should be taught as the prime
approach in learning to decode (to read) and encode (to write/spell) print.” (Rose, 2006,
p.70).
5.1.5 Pressures to increase phonics in Reading Recovery
The original and still predominant philosophy underpinning Reading Recovery is akin to
‘whole language’, the theory that reading (and writing) skills arise naturally out of
frequent encounters with interesting and absorbing reading materials. According to this
view in its pure form, children do not need to be taught explicitly about the alphabetic
code or the relationships between letters and sounds, provided they are immersed in a
print-rich environment in which the emphasis is on meaning.
This view has been increasingly contested, e.g. by Pressley (1998), who stated that
‘…the scientific evidence is simply overwhelming that letter-sound cues are more
important in recognizing words than either semantic or syntactic cues’ (p.16). Although
many children do learn to read by a whole-language method, this is not the technique
that the great majority of children actually use in learning to read (see Tunmer &
Chapman, 2002). Jeynes and Littell (2000) carried out a meta-analysis of 14 studies of
whole-language instruction versus other methods, and did not find evidence that wholelanguage
instruction was beneficial. The National Reading Panel (2000; see also Ehri et
al., 2001) in the USA concluded on the basis of meta-analyses of different studies that
systematic phonics instruction enabled children to make better progress in reading and
spelling than unsystematic or no phonics instruction. Taking a somewhat stricter line on
which studies to include (only the 12 RCTs from the entire English-speaking world in
which children rather than whole classes had been allocated to conditions), Torgerson et
al. (2006) in Britain concluded that systematic phonics instruction within a broad and
rich literacy curriculum enabled children to make better progress in reading accuracy,
that is, word identification, (emphases added) than unsystematic or no phonics
instruction. (They also concluded, however, that there was not enough evidence to
decide whether systematic phonics benefited reading comprehension or spelling, or to
decide the relative merits of analytic versus synthetic phonics.)
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