Questions
and Answers
Excerpts
from dialogues with linguists, reading teachers, orthographic
reformers and mind-scientists.
On PCUES:
On Getting PCUES accepted and
tried:
On PCUES:
Are
Pcues an attempt to sinicize western written languages?
Not at all. I am not trying to replace our system with an ideo/picto-graphic
system. The richly combinatoric creative dexterity of the western
mind is very likely rooted in the way our alphabet works (see
McLuhan and Logan's: Alphabet Effect)
Our proposed cues have no 'content' meaning whatsoever. They are
not symbols for anything - they are cues that help developing
readers have less confusion about the sound(s) that go with the
letters they are reading. By
reducing this confusion, given the accumulated ambiguity inherent
in the correspondence of our alphabet and spelling systems, we can
reduce the mental overhead which is a primary retarding dissipant
to each mind that struggles to read and to our national learning
to read progress as a whole.
Reading bogs down in decoding which bogs down in ambiguity. Reduce
that ambiguity and decoding efficiency rises, it better
reciprocates with phonemic awareness development and flows more
optimally toward the threshold of automaticity necessary for
comprehension processes to engage well. Our other attempts to help
readers all come from the assumption that we must accept the
ambiguity inherent in the code. Phonics is a noble effort to
compensate rather than address this underlying issue. Our approach
begins with the intent to directly address and reduce this
ambiguity.
Mind your Ps and Qs -
Phonemic Cues for better mind-reading - P-Cues:
Should the logo be PQ's?
I am not attached to any logo or label. I want that to
emerge from the advisory board dialogue. As you can see I use the
"P" to mean (at
different times) 'phonic', 'phonemic', 'pronunciation' and
‘parallel’. Phonic because they cue sounds, phonemic because
they cue sub-sound boundaries, pronunciation because its not
knowledge of relations that the cues prompt, its how to pronounce
the sounds and parallel because they create a parallel process
path for decoding to draw upon.
Are Pcues phonic cues?
Yes
and they are also more than that.
My proposal is open ended, I don’t know what the balance
is between visual cues that reduce letter-sound correspondence
ambiguity and the overhead of learning and instituting them.
This is precisely what we need to learn. Though I think the
ground floor is cues for sound attributes (loud-soft, long-short,
high-low, duration, tempo etc.) I am really proposing that we
become cartographers of the ambiguities involved in learning and
using the written language and then based on such an understanding
apply that to the inertia and find the right sequence of fulcrums.
I want to start with reducing the gross ambiguities with
the simplest possible cues – then we can look at what other
economical/ecological cues can be used to further reduce the
ambiguity overhead. I do not know where the boundary lies between
severity and frequencies of ambiguities and the overhead of
learning and instituting cues.
How
does understanding pronunciation guided spelling translate into an
improved ability to read and write traditional English?
Not
pronunciation guided spelling – pronunciation guided reading as
a parallel path to spelling based decoding. If you see that
reading is a multi-pathway process then helping developing readers
sustain and extend their flow is helping their comprehension
processes help their decoding processes. In addition to the
phenomenological processing help, being able to read at higher
rates and with more interesting vocabulary improves self-esteem in
reading and minimizes the psychologically toxic effects of
learning to read which has to be the 2nd biggest retardant
(actually my biggest concern).
What
about Diacritical Markings?
Few
people (outside linguistics) remember the meanings of diacritical
markings. I think it is critical that the cues be visual-morphic
analogs of the sound attributes they prompt (i.e. larger for
louder etc, - thus requiring very little 'memory' to decode the
cues.). I want
developing readers to learn to recognize only 4 or 5 distinctions
(the thresholds for which have yet to researched) in order to use
a cue system. I am also less interested in covering everything
than in striking a 'practical' balance between ambiguity
irrelevation and overhead (for the developing reader and the
institutions who have to buy into a system).
What
about other marking systems?
I
think the idea of a marking system is more reasonable than the
spelling reforms that require otherwise unaffected constituencies
to conform to new spellings, but as I have said, I
personally don't want children to have to learn an interpretive
key. That would introduce another loop of processing overhead into
the process. I want the key to be replaced by phonimorphic
variations in the characters themselves. I am along way from
settled on exactly what that will look like but I am provisionally
convinced its the right direction.
How
do PCUES compare with the Initial Teaching Alphabet?
From:
The advantages and disadvantages of i.t.a. the initial teaching
alphabet.
i.t.a.:An
independent Evaluation. FW Warburton and Vera Southgate. Pages
152-4 http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/spell/itaaddis.html
1 The use of i.t.a. has made the early stages of learning to read
easier and more enjoyable for children. As a consequence they
learn to read earlier and in a shorter space of time. 2 There were
instances of parents reporting the frustrations experienced by
children, who were not yet ready to transfer from i.t.a. to t.o.,
when they attempt to read t.o. print at home in books, comics,
newspapers and other printed materials. 3 Certain parents find it
a disadvantage to be unable to give the help requested by their
children who are reading or writing in i.t.a. at home.
4 Many parents, teachers and other educators are very conscious of
the problem which arises when a family moves and a child who is
not a fluent reader in i.t.a. has to attend a school using only
t.o.
What
we are proposing differs quite a bit from the ITA. We are not
suggesting we change the alphabet or the way we spell with it in
any way (which ITA did). The only transition would be from having
to not having the 'cues' themselves. Our assumption is that
because the children would be learning to read with the normal
alphabet and spelling (just getting help from the cues in decoding
how they 'sound' together) their repeated successes with ever more
familiar sub-word decodings will give them a kind of 'training
wheels' effect. When we later drop the cues the majority of their
reading experience will still be applicable. Recognizing letter
combinations/sub-word sounds and how they combine should be much
easier (again very closely paralleling the bicycle training wheels
metaphor).
What
about Accents?
We don’t change the alphabet for each accent. The cues I am
suggesting emphasize the way a letter sounds relative to the other
letters (like: sounds likes its alphabet letter name or not,
silent to loud, blended or distinct, duration, etc.) This should
still allow for accent variation. The cues don’t require us to
‘fix’ the sounds in some standardized way that everyone must
subscribe to.
How
about reading without ‘hearing the sounds’ – such as in
Speed Reading?
Whereas some skilled readers develop the ability to
bypass the sounding out (virtually or actually) our understanding
(from observation and in the literature) is that while learning to
read (our only concern) the initial decoding involves some
variation (virtually or actually) of hearing the sounds.
What is the role of
Pcues in writing?
First, because the variations we are
proposing don’t change the fundamental underlying letters or how
we spell with them, children could write as they currently do and
we could see the variations of letter appearance (the cues) as
special case props for reading. Second, (something we want to
experiment with) would be to explicitly leverage the concept
toward helping children learn to write. In writing as in reading,
there is an ambiguity problem. It’s quite probable that the cues
can work in reverse and provide another mental resource. By
learning 4-to-6 alphabet general variations in the emphasis of
writing a letter (not a great extension to what they already have
to learn) they have a new tool to help them think about converting
sounds to spellings. (I think research here would show that the
cues would have a natural dovetailing with the ‘invented
spellings’ children come up with).
What about
preserving English Spelling?
We agree that once one can read well enough
the spelling system in English provides for a great number of
advantages (including etymological cues).
I chanced upon an article called "In Defense of the
Present English Spelling System: A Juxtaposition of Linguistic,
Historical and Sociolinguistic Justifications" that I thought
made these and other points very well: http://linguistik.hypermart.net/EngLing.html
This, I think, is why dozens of spelling
reform attempts have fallen flat and why my issue with spelling,
for now, is confined to how it impedes the initial learning to
read process. It is my respect for the arguments for traditional spelling and my acceptance of
the alphabet's inertia that leads me to propose a system that
rides atop them both without changing either.
This is not to say that I
don't think we shouldn't understand the relationship between
spelling ambiguities and the growth of
negative-to-self-assumptions. I am convinced that the role
spelling plays is significant and is, like reading, a field of
high ambiguity that does harm to the learning capacities of
children. However, I don't think spelling reform as it has been
historically proposed has any chance of
overcoming the inertia of the system. I think the best
way to get the spelling system researched and reformed is to lead
the educational research community into understanding the
significance of the flow of 'ambiguity' during learning. When what
I am proposing is demonstrated I think it will open the door to
further modifications (spelling) because the value case for
reducing unnecessary ambiguity will have been demonstrated in a
less threatening way.
How
do you think Phonemic Awareness and Decoding are related?
See http://www.implicity.com/reading/app2twocore.htm#PA
for summaries of what is meant by the terms as they are
used by the US DOE and it researchers. My sense is that Phonemic
Awareness is the operationalized awareness that words (which can
sound very run together) are made up of sub sounds (or can be
abstractly represented as a combination of sub-sounds). Its
importance is that unless one develops such a 'ground floor
distinction' they can't possibly take the next step in relating to
written language - they have no inner mental structure to 'placehold'
the sub sounds.
PA and Phonological Coding are reciprocal. The oral language
doesn't need us to make many PA distinctions in order to use it.
Written language is built on those distinctions. PA develops in
interaction with reading and writing far more than it does through
the use of the spoken language. If someone doesn't get the PA
distinction they will not read - but its like saying if someone
doesn't learn to walk they won't win a marathon. There is a lot in
between, most importantly the decoding which underlies all
comprehension.
PA doesn't in itself inform decoding - PA provides the
infrastructure necessary to map sound-symbol correspondences with
word-sub-sounds - after its functioning its all phonological code
processing (decoding).
What is the role
of comprehension in decoding?
Reading is not a serial process. The flow of
comprehension provides a kind of 'contextual gravity' that
'attracts up' the flow of decoding by anticipating the flow of
meaning and therefore reducing the extent of semantic uncertainty surrounding
word recognition processing. This, of course, depends on the
decoding process not consuming to much attentional resources. I
want to see if we can minimize the decoding disambiguation
overhead (not by more code to interpret the ambiguous code with)
but by rendering irrelevant the need to disambiguate
correspondence ambiguities via providing an alternative
route to say/hear (virtually/actually) the sounds that will keep
the flow of decoding above the threshold of comprehension.
Why are you focused on reading?
For me reading is like the tip of an iceberg. The underlying
problem is that we as race are virtually unconcerned with the
'flow of ambiguity' in children and its relationship to their
learning. If ever we 'get' the significance of the relationship
between 'ambiguity' and 'learning' we would proceed to reform
virtually every intentional learning environment - we would reduce
unnecessary, extraneous ambiguity and develops ways to respond to
the children at the level of their felt-thought ambiguity where we
couldn't. My interest in reading has less to do with whether
children learn to read and more to do with what they are learning
about learning - what they are learning about themselves in an
environment (our orthography) that is plagued with (technological
artifactual) ambiguity that makes them feel at fault for not being
able to master it. I see my role in the long run as making the
case of becoming ambiguity-centric in our approach to education
and educational research. Reading is simply the simplest case.
On Getting PCUES accepted and
tried:
Why
has the English writing systems resisted reform?
In
the early days of writing, writing systems were sacred.
In
the medieval days of writing, writing served only the elite few.
In
the 16th through 19th centuries the
literacy-divide served the upper classes.
In
the 20th Century we accepted our orthography as a
fixture in our thinking about reading (because all thoughts of
changing it had such unacceptable implications).
One
Factor in why writing systems have resisted reform is that those
who are able to read and write can exercise power over those who
can't. In the 19th
Century, the difficulties of English spelling served as an instant
social screening tool. Don’t you face the same problem?
Though
it seems that the class mechanics (a century ago) were served by
how English proficiency provided such a screening tool, I don’t
believe it prevails to the level of any similar significance
today. I think your argument was once a strong one but is a very
weak one in today’s landscape, at least in terms of the U.S.,
England, Australia, and Canada.
Today,
the central issue is institutional inertia, the success of written
English in becoming the world’s leading language in so many
global communication domains: economics, politics (if only in so
far as dealing with the USA on trade or AID) science, technology,
medicine, entertainment. The constituencies affected by any change
to the language are the most powerful constituencies in the world.
The written language works for them – any change a nuisance and
disturbance. They collectively resist change because their
interests are best served by preserving things the way they are.
People who are not above a certain threshold of
literacy-proficiency don’t even exist for them (practically
speaking – they may exist as beneficiaries of their
philanthropy).
What
makes P-Cues Different? Why will the institutions that have
resisted other attempts at orthographic reform embrace (or not
resist) P-Cues?
Past
attempts at reform all suffered the same basic problem: people
unaffected by the orthography were being asked to submit to
changes that, though they helped some people (not among their
constituents), were a nuisance for them. The people and
organizations for which our orthography isn't a problem don't want
to have changes to it forced upon them.
P-Cues
do not require any change to our orthography as it is commonly
used throughout the world. They offer a learning-on-ramp
supplement to orthography that is used only during the initial
learning to read process.
I
think the good news is that these constituencies that resist
change also benefit by a rise in their number of constituents (an
increase in the number of literally-proficient people means an
increase in the number of constituents (customers)). Their value
system is open to support of reform in 2 ways: the obvious
philanthropic and the less obvious but more directly beneficial
consequences of a rise in their numbers of constituents.
Isn’t
reverence for the traditional code an example of how we are
shackled to the past?
I think reverence may not be accurate. Again
I think we have taken the code for granted because we can't
imagine it could be otherwise and have become dull to the issue
after hundreds of years of failed attempts to fix it. This is
supported by some who believe that the ambiguity that impedes
learning to read, becomes helpful to the language once someone can
read (analogous to the 'invisible hand' in the market place).
To solve this we will have to get together a
diverse enough group, representing the different constituent
groups of thought and influence, and begin with agreeing that we
are all well-intentioned people who have seen the problem and what
to do about it differently. Our real job is to frame the questions
they can't help but want to answer.
I
think everyone agrees that it (poor letter-sound correspondence)
makes reading and writing more complex and harder to teach and
learn. It increases the incidence of dyslexia. Isn’t the real
issue what to do about it?
I don’t agree that ‘everyone agrees’. I
don’t think ‘we’ have traveled very deep into the problem
because of the kind of proposals that have come forth about what
to do about it. I don't think NICHD or NIH or DOE has a solid
research based understanding of the how much this problem is
directly implicated in reading problems (they don't even mention
it in their research summaries). I think because of the
impracticality of reform proposals and how well the orthodoxy has
insulated themselves from their assaults, I don't think they
really get the dimension of the problem of the code's ambiguity.
Like in any endeavor its important to understand the problem
without constraining our thoughts to what a solution looks like -
take the problem deeply home and then from there get creative. I
think the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. People may all
generally agree there is a relationship between reading difficulty
and code ambiguity but I don't think they have seen the dimension
of the problem or made the connection that this ambiguity is
responsible for causing a hundred million people to 'hurt' or that
its causing hundreds of billions of dollars to be lost.
I don’t think we can travel very deep into
the ‘what to do about it’ until we better understand what
‘it’ is – what I call ‘code-induced ambiguity
overwhelm’.
There are studies that suggest such a
relationship (correspondence problem and reading difficulty) but I
am not sure how a definitive study would even be set up.
Ah, that's
the point. How do we design such a study? How do we communicate to
the research community the need for such a study? What I am
proposing so far may be nothing other than a low-overhead
comparative that has lower student-experiment risk because we are
not changing the spelling... We have to make our inquiry
interesting to the orthodox research community. If we dismiss them
they will certainly dismiss us and we won't ever escape the field
of the (orthography reformist) converts.
What about the US DOE’s
Research Community?
I remain persuaded that the only way
any reform proposal will ever travel beyond the 'converts' (orthography reformists) depends on the mainstream research
community 'getting' the necessity of understanding the role of
ambiguity in the retardation of the learning to read process. When
they see how their own values are impeded by the ambiguity (and
its economic and social costs) then perhaps they will become open
to an iterative experimental process that can arrive at a smart
balance between feared upheaval and reducing the ambiguity. We,
this project, need to develop ways to pilot/drive the researchers
into working the problem. I
don’t believe the US DOE will ever accept spelling reform
proposals as the risk is too great to prove them and because they
require otherwise unaffected constituencies to change the way they
write.
The
US educational community recently woke up to the fact that for the
past few hundred years every philosopher with an educational bent
has tried to persuade the educational community to incorporate
their views. The results have been a mess. The castle walls
have been recently and substantially reinforced at the policy
level - even the press has been co-opted. If it doesn't have a
rigorous scientific research backing the US DOE is
encouraging the educational community to stay away from it. Look
at the language coming out of congress. They mean to stop
distracting experimentation and develop a rigid orthodoxy
(pedagogically not necessarily curriculum wise) protected by the
research community. In a way this is understandable.
Any
reform to the 'code' will have to go through the research
community. They currently are numb to the talk of spelling reform.
Because they don't see a way of changing the code they accept it.
It’s 'behind them'. Their research models ASSUME it.
Those
of us concerned with making the learning to read process more
developmentally friendly to our children (no matter which vector
we may come in on) can either scream into the night with our
protest against the insanity of the code, or formulate research
projects that get the attention of the research community. If the
projects we propose start off with requiring the use of systems of
spelling or alphabet modifications they will never get tried. The
risk to the students of teaching them systems that are
incompatible with the prevailing orthography is prohibitive - it
could retard their overall educational process.
We
need to demonstrate to the research community in language and
concepts relevant to them that this ambiguity problem is
worth their attention. To do this we need to develop research
models that can explore this without requiring children be guinea
pigs to an abnormal orthography. We need to decouple understanding
the dimensions of the ambiguity-affect from solutions to it that
are so threatening and impractical that the idea of entertaining
the problem goes down with them.
This
is where P-Cues comes in. I think developing an exploration of the
ambiguity problem that doesn't require changing the spelling or
the alphabet is an easier pill to swallow for the research
community. So long as the cues are well within the perceptual
distinction threshold of developing readers and so long as they do
not ambiguate the underlying letters, their only downside is
weaning readers off of them if they work and that's a better set
of problems.
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2001 - 2003: Training Wheels for Literacy & Implicity
