Evidence-based methods of how to teach reading differ markedly from such
teaching literacy is more than
teaching simple reading skills: it
cant be done in five easy steps
By Robyn Ewing
If we truly care about all Australian children and young people becoming literate
I believe it is vital we understand and define the complexity of literacy.
The conflation of different terms like reading instruction and literacy is not very
useful. While reading is part of literacy, literacy is a much bigger concept which
is continually changing due to the ever-increasing forms of literacy that are
developing.
Educators who specialise in literacy are currently working with the Australian
Curriculum definition (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority) which defines literacy as encompassing:
listening to, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating oral, print, visual and
digital texts, and using and modifying language for different purposes in a range of
contexts.
Literacy encompasses the knowledge and skills students need to access,
understand, analyse and evaluate information, make meaning, express thoughts and
emotions, present ideas and opinions, interact with others and participate in
activities at school and in their lives beyond school.
Becoming literate is not simply about knowledge and skills. Certain behaviours and
dispositions assist students to become effective learners who are confident and
motivated to use their literacy skills broadly.
For example, the Australian curriculums definition of literacy thus far exceeds
the key skills addressed in the recently launched FIVE from FIVE project
proposed by the Centre for Independent Studies. FIVE from FIVE is being touted,
with much fanfare, as some all-encompassing way of teaching children to read.
simplistic solutions.
Each one of the five key skills (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,
vocabulary and comprehension) listed by the FIVE from FIVE project is indeed an
important skill. This is why they are already embedded in most teachers reading
programs. In my experience there are few literacy educators who would deny
the importance of phonics and phonemic awareness (identifying, thinking about,
and working with the individual sounds in words) as needed when becoming
literate.
However, these are not the only skills needed in helping a child learn to read.
Any child being taught to read in a way that focuses solely on these skills will be
short-changed. I believe that asserting that such a program is sufficient could be
damaging to many children as it could lead to them disengaging from the
literacy learning process.
Stop telling teachers there is a simplistic way to teach reading
Like many educators, I am fed up with the suggestion that teachers and
principals, parents and policymakers are unaware of the importance of teaching
these skills. Competent, experienced readers sample just enough visual
information to feel satisfied that they have grasped the meaning so far of
whatever text they are reading. They also bring their past experiences and
knowledge of language to the information in a specific text and use prediction
and questioning strategies to test and retest that they have understood the
authors purpose in a particular context. An overemphasis on lettersound
relationships can be very confusing for children learning to read.
Australian teachers, principals, parents and policymakers already have a deep
understanding of the repertoire of strategies and approaches that need to be
chosen to suit the intellectual and learning needs of individual children. They
know how important it is to make sure that all children learn to read for meaning
and to enjoy the process.
Lets talk about what is important
I agree with eminent Australian literacy educators and educational researchers Instead we should be investing in more teachers to work with the children who
Emmitt, Hornsby and Wilson who explain that the: need more intensive support. Our public schools should be appropriately funded
to provide rich authentic resources and ongoing teacher professional learning.
These are the things that will make a difference.
Three important sources of information in text are meaning, grammar and letter
sound relationships often referred to as semantics, syntax and graphophonic
relationships respectively. Emmitt, Hornsby and Wilson (2013, p.3)
18 thoughts on Taching literacy is more than teaching simple reading skills: it cant be done in five easy
These sources, or cueing systems, work together simultaneously. Overemphasis
on any one cueing system when learning to read is not effective. steps
1. Greg Ashman
April 26, 2016 at 10:51 am
Also, as teachers know, a rich vocabulary and fluency are significant but children
need to be able to go beyond simple literal comprehension of a text. They need
Dear Robyn
to be able to make inferences and evaluate the importance of words within a
text.
Thank you for a very thought provoking article. I was wondering if you could
point me towards the evidence to support these claims:
Teachers of reading today share rich authentic literary texts with their students.
They know extensive research has demonstrated the importance of prediction An overemphasis on lettersound relationships can be very confusing for
and questioning strategies in learning to be literate. children learning to read.

One of the best ways for children to excel in reading comprehension tasks is for These sources, or cueing systems, work together simultaneously. Over

them to have the opportunity to interact widely with a wide range of books, emphasis on any one cueing system when learning to read is not effective.

selected by them, for enjoyment.

Children not only need to learn how to make meaning from text to carefully
analyse the arguments or assertions in a text, to evaluate texts, but also how to
create their own with confidence and creative flair.
I am sure that you will be familiar with the 2005 Rose review from the UK.
Appendix 1 seems to be at odds with the second of these claims:
http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5551/2/report.pdf

Best wishes

There is no single recipe for literacy learning. The FIVE from FIVE project is yet
another implicit criticism of the Australian teaching profession; and a good Greg

example of what we should not be doing by reducing the teaching of reading to

2. Robyn Ewing
five skills.
April 26, 2016 at 12:32 pm
 Many thanks for your comment Sue. We must find a way to value the teaching in that it may be too much, too soon and who can control it.
profession and our teachers expertise and hard work as they strive to meet the It is worth noting that to reduce ambiguity and support the current curriculum, it
diverse learning needs of so many children. would be worthwhile to engage the general capabilities and cross curriculum
Best wishes priorities in the wording of our definitions. This could help to make it easier for
Robyn educators and re-service teachers to see the relationships. It would also allow us
to see at the first glance that Five to Five and its little list of what counts are well
3. Robyn Ewing and truly written by people who borrowed old stuff from the XIX century and
April 26, 2016 at 12:35 pm brought nothing new or relevant with them. Nobody in the field of genre, clinical
psychology, critical theory, corrective phonetics (another LOTE link), science or
Thank you for your comments Greg. As a start, it would be helpful to read the
neuroscience could look at that list of 5 as helpful, telling or indeed even as a
work of Stephen Krashen which is readily available online. I am happy to provide
good list to begin with. Furthermore, our definitions and lists should continue to
a detailed reading list if youd like.
remind who we want our students to be. Should they be able to analyse? Or
best wishes
should they be able to assert their authority in discursive situations (Anne
Robyn
Freadman)?. These are two very different perspectives: one about performing a
job without stakes, another one about agency. Should they be able to
4. Sue Beveridge
comprehend or well, how can we link comprehension and agency, or is
April 26, 2016 at 11:07 am
comprehension neutral? Should they be able to know lots of words, and if so are
words the building blocks of thoughts, expression, and texts? Where do we look
Congratulations Robyn, the profession has worked long and hard at improving
for evidence of our beliefs? Just because we see it, it does not mean that that
literacy outcomes for an ever increasing range of students engaging with a
gaze was not taught and is pure. As for phonics etc,, voice is a stream (thats
broadening array of text types. There is no quick fix as you so correctly
why some of us born elsewhere have an accent in English). And once again my
indicate but the continual support of teachers through effective professional
experience from LOTE tells me that modelling and explaining does one thing:
development and teacher learning.
denies students agency. So learner as power to generate more power (play n

5. Ania Lian habitus) could be a good way to change the way we look at things. Personally,

April 26, 2016 at 11:34 am
Dear Professor Ewing,
Thank you for drawing our attention to some of the new things on the literacy
landscape.
I frequently wonder what happens to us after our PhDs are done. There we write
about Foucault, Freire or maybe even Bourdieu, Latour or other French guys (but
never Anne Freadman too far off to the land of LOTE), only to remove the world
and our roles in it from literacy definitions as soon as the worry starts creeping
rather than collect evidence about practice, we need to focus on collecting
evidence about the object of our teaching. In order not to take too much space, I
will conclude with Freadman:
But asserting authority over a discursive situation is not, by and large, what we
teach our students in a foreign language classroom. We teach them implicitly,
to be sure to be submissive, to bow to the law of a language which they may
never master: their errors and the restrictions on linguistic scope that define
them as students will always leave them in a position of non-mastery vis--vis
their interlocutors. (1994, p. 21, Freadman, A. (1994). Models of genre for
 language teaching. The 1994 Sonia Marks Memorial Lecture. University of Im going to be far less polite than other commentators, So, heres a trigger
Sydney) warning!
Were told that competent, experienced readers sample just enough visual
with sincere regards information to feel satisfied that they grasped the meaning so far of whatever
Ania Lian text they are reading .. and that teachers already have a deep
CDU understanding of the repertoire of strategies and approaches
Good grief! We had all this from our professors in UK for years. And where did it
6. Jennifer Buckingham get us? By 1997, the OECD concluded that over 51% of adults were illiterate or
April 26, 2016 at 2:56 pm
poorly literate mostly as a result of professors like Robyn Ewing peddling Frank
Smiths and the Goodmans nonsense and dressing it up in academese to give it
Professor Ewing is correct that reading and literacy are not the same. However,
authority and make it sound reasonable.
learning to read proficiently is an essential precursor to becoming literate in the
This is pompous and pedantic nonsense. Has this professor ever seen a class of
broader sense.
four and five-year-olds sampling text and bringing all their past experiences
The FIVE from FIVE project focuses on how children become proficient readers. It
and knowledge of the language to it. This is cloud cuckoo land.
is a free and accessible resource to provide up-to-date information for busy
Whats more hundreds, possibly thousands, of students are likely to be taken in
teachers, parents and policymakers about sound, methodologically valid
by this rubbish because they havent yet entered the classroom and dont know
research findings on the teaching of reading,
any better.
The five essential components of effective reading instruction are not at all
And, as for quoting Krashen at Greg Ashman: Krashen has never drawn the
simple. Indeed, they are each highly complex and interdependent, which is why
distinction between the spoken word, which everyone in their own language
it is critical for teachers (and of course, teacher educators) to be well-informed
learns naturally, and writing, which is not learned naturally and has to be taught.
about the research.
This professor also does not seem to be aware of the difference between the
A literature review of the evidence base underpinning FIVE from FIVE is provided
primary and secondary learning. Neither does she seem to understand that the
as a free download on the website http://www.fivefromfive.org.au. It includes
writing system is an invented system to represent the sounds of the language.
high quality, rigorous studies published up to 2015. On pages 27 and 28, it notes
No expert on writing systems would deny this fact!
the importance of comprehension skills identified by Professor Ewing
My advice to all of those would-be teachers and teachers out there is to not put
questioning, making inferences and predicting.
thy trust in professors who wouldnt know what a good quality phonics
I invite and encourage all who are interested in effective reading instruction to
programme looked like if was sitting in front of them. Seek out the people, like
read the publication and peruse the website.
Jennifer Buckingham, Greg Ashman and Alison Clarke (of Spelfabet) and read
carefully what they have to say.
7. John Walker
Finally, remember this: if a child cant decode (read), they will never be able to
April 26, 2016 at 7:34 pm
sample or enjoy a text. Teach them to read!

8. Robyn Ewing
 April 27, 2016 at 6:45 pm
Thanks for your comments John. Its disappointing and rather sad that you feel
the need to cast aspersions on my character, knowledge and experience. Having
been an early childhood and primary teacher and a literacy educator, working
with children learning how to read and write and with experienced and early
career teachers for nearly forty years, I am very confident about the comments I
have made. Too often we underestimate what young children understand and
can do. Further, I have always acknowledged that decoding is one component of
the reading process. I did not discount the five key skills proposed in the FIVE
from FIVE project. I have suggested that learning to read and learning to be
literate is far more complex than decoding. Decoding should never be equated
with reading. Learning to read is not a singular global skill that we acquire for life
it is something that must be worked at constantly.
9. Georgina Mavor
April 28, 2016 at 7:48 am
How many of those early childhood and primary school teachers followed up the
learning trajectories in later years of the students they taught? The figures
quoted from the OECD report also reflect high school students sitting in
classrooms. They came from somewhere, they were presumably taught in early
childhood classrooms. What happened? Do we say that for all of them their low
levels of literacy were due to innate factors? Or do we acknowledge we didnt
get the teaching right? I am the parent of a child taught by a teacher who did
not have a deep understanding of the repertoire of (evidence based) strategies
and approaches. He was by no means alone and I am appalled that this situation
continues to be fed with inaccuracy.
10. John Walker
April 28, 2016 at 11:21 pm
Well, professor, perhaps youd like to tell us when you last taught a class of
kindergarten children, or Year 1, or Year 2, to read and spell. [I always include
the two because, essentially they are two sides of the same coin.]
And, Im not especially impressed by your claim to authority 40 years teaching
and lecturing, etc because Ive actually spent longer than you have teaching
and lecturing. What I am interested in is evidence that your approaches to the
teaching of reading work. If such evidence exists, this would seem to be a good
opportunity to direct your readers to it.
11. Maralyn Parker
April 28, 2016 at 8:43 am
I think it is relevant to disclose that John Walker is co-author of a real phonic
programme that teaches in simple steps how the sounds of the language are
represented by the writing that is currently being sold in the UK.
12. Pat Stone
April 28, 2016 at 12:52 pm
Also relevant is that he rarely uses the word read in relation to what he
promotes, preferring or only feeling able to talk about spelling. In his comment
here, read is in brackets telling. A search for an evidence base on the website
of his phonics programme will show you that he calls spelling literacy and
states that spelling tests are a more valid assessment of reading than reading. I
kid you not.
13. John Walker
April 28, 2016 at 11:10 pm
I feel I ought to disclose that Robyn Ewing is paid by her university to dispense
advice on the teaching of reading. So what? If I was the author of a set of
readers published by the Oxford University Press, would that have induced you
to write your remark? I doubt it! I never hide who I am or what I do. The
Department for Education In England has included the Sounds-Write training in
its list of recommended programmes and its Ofsted report on our training is
 posted on our website, unexpurgated and for all to see. It declared that the Our approach is enormously successful and we have empirical evidence to
training was outstanding, by the way. support it, though there are many different phonics programmes here and some
of them are very poor indeed. Many schools in England also labour under the
14. David Hornsby long-standing legacy of several decades of whole language and mixed methods
April 29, 2016 at 11:07 am approaches. The confusions that abound from this are going to take a long time
to clarify.
John, Im disappointed by the tone of your comments. Its important to have
As is the situation in Australia, many ITT programmes in English universities are
rational, respectful debate.
led by whole language advocates who havent read the research and have very
Now, just two brief points:
little knowledge of what a modern phonics programme looks like. Most have
(1) If your approach is so successful, can you explain why England is so far down
never even taught or attempted to teach phonics.
in international comparisons?
Yes, the English writing system has a morphophonemic structure. That doesnt
(2) English spelling is more influenced by morphemes than phonemes, which is
mean that you start teaching it by talking about how sign is cognate with
one of its strengths. For example, when we understand that meaning is central,
signature, etc. good luck with explaining that to a beginning reader!
we understand why there is a g in sign (it belongs to the same meaning
Heres how:the English alphabetic code works:
family as signal, signature, significant, etc. Theres a w in two because it
Spellings, comprised on one, two, three or four letters, are used to spell sounds
belongs to the same meaning family as twin, twice, twenty, between, etc.
from left to right across the page;
Phonics is important, but meaning is required to make phonics work. For
Sounds can be spelled in multiple (but limited) ways for example, [ n ], [ nn ],
example, no-one can read the word wind on its own and sounding out wont
[ kn ], [ gn gnash, gnaw, reign, oh, and sign], [ pn ], [ne ];
help. Does it rhyme with find or with sinned? Meaning is REQUIRED to make
Many spellings can represent more than one sound [ i ] on sit or kind.
phonics work. Synthetic phonics approaches emphasise the least helpful cueing
If children are to learn to read successfully, they need to be taught the code
system in text and downplay the importance of the most helpful cueing systems.
how all the sounds in English are spelled and they need to be taught the three
We need a comprehensive approach that allows young learners to use
vital skills needed to be able to use the knowledge they have: segmenting,
EVERYTHING they know about language, not just sound. Why restrict young
blending and phoneme manipulation.
learners to one cueing system? A teachers core job is to make learning easy,
All of this takes three years on average, at the end of which most children are
not difficult. Allow young learners to use all the information available to them.
highly proficient readers and spellers.
Is anyone suggesting that meaning isnt important? Of course not! Its an old
15. John Walker
chestnut that anti-phonics people like to bring up. If a child reads the sentence
April 30, 2016 at 11:32 pm
The wind left dust on the mat and they read the spelling [ i ] in wind as /ie/ (to
rhyme with tie) and not /i/, their brain would be saying wind? (as in kind) and
Hi David,
registering that it doesnt make sense. But, if theyve been taught that the
Im not sure what exactly it is you find irrational and disrespectful about my
spelling [ i ] can be /ie/ and it can also be /i/, they simply make the substitution.
comments. I thought that you Aussies liked a bit of plain-speaking.
This is exactly what mature readers do when they come across a word in their
However, to answer but a couple of your points:
reading they have never read before but have in their spoken vocabulary.
 Far, from emphasising the least helpful cueing system, phonics is the only game
in town as a first step to reading or writing a word, because if a child cant
decode, they cant read and, if they cant read, they cant understand any text.
In the words of one of the experts on the worlds writing systems Peter Daniels:
Writing differs from language, though, in a very fundamental way. Language is
the natural product of the human mind the properties of people that make it
possible for everyone to learn any language, provided that they start at a young
enough age while writing is a deliberate product of the human intellect: no
infant illiterate absorbs its script along with its language: writing must be
studied. Id add taught.
You can read what else I have to say on the issue of decoding, comprehension
and muddled thinking here: http://literacyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/decoding-
comprehension-and-muddled.html
16. Ania Lian
April 27, 2016 at 8:58 am
To me, when I look at the graphs in the
document http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5551/2/report.pdf Appendix 1 (pp. 77, 81), I ask
myself, how are the graphs showing to teach kids reading differently than we
would teach a chimp.? Can anyone see the cutting edge there? Anything new or
exciting? A chimp can do lots of things humans cant do and vice versa in terms
of memory and its management. The graphs spell out Direct Instruction or at
least do nothing to offer/show anything different. I am yet to see in those graphs
what proficient means or what comprehension is and how is recognition
linked to any systems in the brain doing the recognising. To me, the graphs
reflect a 19th century model where words have meanings and we are here to
learn those. Words do not come with meanings; meanings are entire networks
we create in our brains and this takes a long process by which we create
complex language knowledge. Also, any second language learner knows that:
dictionary does not come with meanings. In any case, could one give students
words and argue that this is the process for learning to write poetry, stories,
comedy sketches or any other form of communication? Stuff is missing in those
graphs badly.
We are all now told to look for evidence about practice, but I am not sure if we
actually know what criteria we will be looking for to differentiate between good
and bad. Those graphs are no reference. Also, the idea, as someone else
suggested in this discussion chain, to look to phonics for some clues reminds me
of that YT video when French comedian goes to a spy school to learn English and
they go through: I want to buy a hamburger they do this repeat pls a 100
times with no results. Sounds are not sounds; like any other forms of data that
our brain processes, sounds do not come to us as ready-made shapes. And so
whether phonics or writing, both skills need to be integrated into a bigger
picture of literacy, they cannot be just little exercises we can do with chimps. Or
to put it differently: what is the ontological basis on which we create these
truths? This could be a god starting point of a literacy discussion, I think.
As for learning spoken language being natural, we now know that deaf infants
who do not sign from birth use sign language as if it was their second language.
So much for reading being not natural. I tried to learn about sign language lately
and learnt that sign language is not OBJECT=SIGN. It is a complex system
requiring reading and engaging the left hemisphere, just as reading does. This
could be one good path to follow up and learn more about.
Lastly, I do want to draw attention to our vocabulary in this exchange. Some
people mentioned the word teach. Sure, in a way we can justify it but there is a
reason why for at least 40 years research attempts to shift to supporting
learning. The idea of doing teaching leads to lots of confusion.
With best wishes
Ania Lian, CDU
17. Pamela Snow
May 1, 2016 at 10:28 am
I have written a reply to this post on my blog, The Snow Report:
pamelasnow.blogspot.com.au
18. Samsara Soon
May 24, 2016 at 1:43 pm
As a parent of an 11yo who has much difficulty with spelling and reading, I am
dismayed by the above argument. I wish that my son had access to evidence
based teaching, I wish he had access to systematic and explicit phonics. I wish
his teachers knew about synthetic phonics and did not teach him phonics
embedded into the literacy program (analytical and /or balanced phonics
approach). I wish he did not have reading recovery. Maybe then he would have
not developed his bad habits such as guessing the word from the first letter
(he is very good as using cues such as context and pictures to make the rest up).
I wish he had developed all the skills that the five from five are advocating. I
dont think it is a case of criticising teachers we should be critical of the
academics and universities that are not teaching evidence based approaches
especially the good phonics lets say it again systematic and explicit phonics
(no not that embedded implicit stuff), stuff like a good synthetic phonics
program. I dont think the research states that literacy is only the five from five
no, but it is the foundation for developing all those other lovely literacy skills you
talk about. Without a good foundation learn to read so you can read to learn
you are pretty much up the creek without a paddle. Or for a parent thousands
of dollars poorer for trying to help your child learn to spell and read with real
evidence based synthetic phonics programs/therapy, to fill in the gaps and
minimise the harm from current common teaching methods. I challenge you to
go into the classroom and see for yourself the cohorts of children who are
being left behind who all have less than adequate reading and spelling after
experiencing embedded, implicit phonics, even though they have been
immersed in resource rich literacy experiences.. I challenge you to learn about
the different types of phonics (analytical and synthetic) and try and find a school
that teaches a good synthetic phonics program/approach and see the difference
for yourself. The foundations are critical to develop greater skills, greater
vocabulary, to make inferences and learn to love to read. It is hard to analyse
and evaluate information, or develop these higher level skills when you have so
much trouble reading and spelling. The reason for the fanfare is because so
many schools, teachers and educators still do not get it!