Neuroscience has also found literate brains break words down into phonemes - letters or groups of letters that make sounds. As the child learns to read these two parts become connected. According to neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, reading involves two key areas of the brain - the part that's evolved to recognise objects, which he calls the letterbox, and the "language circuit" which the child already uses for oral language. Through brain scans, scientists have found that the brains of humans across the globe all do something very similar when they read. That includes using "cues" like sentence context and pictures - potentially only decoding the letters as a last resort. And often children are encouraged to make sense of texts using all sources of information, especially when identifying an unknown word. Phonics is part of this approach, but it's usually not taught systematically. While the old fight was pitched between phonics (decoding words by sounding out letters) and whole language (learning mainly through words in context), the battleground has moved.ĭevelopments in neuroscience and psychology now appear to point towards taking an explicit, systematic approach that emphasises the basic rules of how written language works - particularly an understanding of the links between letters and sounds, known as phonemic awareness.Īdvocates say that knowledge allows children to decode words, which - when combined with strong oral language and vocabulary - allows them to increasingly build their reading comprehension until they become fluent.īut most New Zealand schools are still following "balanced literacy" with an emphasis on using different approaches depending on individual children. Some say the struggle ended years ago, but passionate debate over how best to teach young children the basics of reading rages on, at least in New Zealand. But is it really the cure-all for our education ills? In the second of a three-part series, Dubby Henry talks to the experts - and a school that's adopted the approach, with promising results. It's called structured literacy, and they say it's backed by scientific research into how the brain learns to read. Now a growing group of parents, educators and academics believe they have the solution. New Zealand's literacy rates have been declining for over a decade.
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