Talk:Reading education in the United States

message: The whole language approach is not the same as the "look-say" approach, though it does incorporate the use of sight words. The whole language approach emphasizes learning to read in context. The look-say, or whole word approach, has fallen out of favor, but there is still debate on the validity of whole language versus phonics. See the article titled "whole language".
The part on speed reading is contradictory to the article Speed reading.
:If the work of the National Reading Panel has any bearing on "favor," then the Whole Language approach is definitely out of favor, instead of being the latest best thing. While its die-hard proponents, such as Kenneth Goodman, insist that their approach has been misunderstood, the term is almost anathema for teachers interviewing for public school jobs. In general, this article suffers from lack of references to support tricky claims, such as, "Its application to learning a primarily phonetic language like English has questionable value and has been associated with artificially inducing dyslexia." Jerekson 05:48, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 2006 talk

message: This page duplicates information found on other pages, such as the phonics and whole language pages.  Furthermore, it is not NPOV, in my opinion.  Some editors clearly favor phonics and others whole language; this is problematic.  Furthermore, the page never addresses instruction in other areas, such as reading comprehension and vocabulary.  There have been many studies in both areas and these should be added.  I propose that the page be almost completely rewritten, save some incorporation of key ideas.  
I would like feedback on this proposal before I make these changes.  Kearnsdm 09:02, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs Major Revision 

message: I removed this statement, "The Orton-Gillingham corporation market products products and training derived from the work of Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham."  This is simply a false statement -- there is no such thing as "the Orton-Gillingham corporation".  The phrase Orton-Gillingham is used generically to refer to a type of method, and there are various companies and associations which incorporate O-G in their name -- example: "Institute for Multi-Sensory Education for Orton-Gillingham", "Academy of Orton-Gillingham" -- but these are separate, unaffiliated organizations. It's hard to "source" a negative (i.e., to prove that there is no such thing) - but a quick internet search will document simply that there is no Orton-Gillingham "corporation" to be found. Armarshall 14:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inaccurate/untrue factual information 

message: Hi,
Someone made a good faith edit to the following text in the section "Cognitive elements of reading" section:  
This text:  
Children who readily understand spoken language and who are able to fluently and easily recognize printed words do not have difficulty with reading comprehension. However, students must be proficient in both competencies to read well; difficulty in either domain undermines the overall reading process. 
was changed to this text: 
Children who readily understand spoken language and who are able to fluently and easily recognize printed words are less likely to have difficulty with reading comprehension. However, students must be proficient in both competencies to read well; difficulty in either domain undermines the overall reading process. 
I changed it back to the original text because that is what the cited reference says.  It's fine with me for this to be changed, but the change will require a different reference to be cited for that sentence. 
Best,
Rosmoran 22:02, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverted edit regarding reading comprehension 

message: Are there any references to difficulties experienced by beginner readers in other than US English-speaking countries? Or it is all like 'we r dumb cant read'Linefeed (talk) 14:21, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  US / UK / other English-speaking countries. 

message: The section on Chinese has quite obviously been summarised by a non-speaker of Chinese from a book written by an amateur on the Chinese script. To say the least it is extremely confusing. To be more accurate, one would have to say it is  garbled and almost completely unintelligible to someone who understands Chinese writing, let alone someone who knows nothing about it.
123.121.193.121 (talk) 09:11, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: The section on Chinese

message: This article only covers education in reading English. It should be either renamed or rewritten. m.e. (talk) 05:59, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There does seem to be some discussion about Chinese, and about comparing English reading instruction with that of other alphabetic languages, but I agree that it would be good to either rename this article or greatly expand the non-English-language sections. --WhiteDragon (talk) 20:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Languages other than English

message: I would have to disagree with the statement in the article that English is not strictly an alphabetic language.  English is by definition an alphabetic language, since it only uses the 26 (or 52 if you count uppercase) letters of the English alphabet.  There are no ideograms or logograms. --WhiteDragon (talk) 20:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  English is (or is not) an alphabetic language 

message: :Reading education In the USA → Reading education in the USA —
This talk page (with a capitalized In) has become separated from the main article.
* The upper-case-In has no main article and a full talk page.
* The lower-case-in has the main article with a talk page redirecting to the upper-case-In talk page.
The simple-minded way of rejoining the articles doesn't seem to work and I don't know what to do. YBG (talk) 07:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. —harej (talk) 11:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move this talk page back to the main article  

message: There is a great need for a WIKI Reading project. There is a complete lack of continuity betweeen all the WIKI reading articles, and many are opinion based, there is also a need for a reading by country category to explin reading langauge by langauge, country by country.
Bascially the whole range of Wiki reading articles are a mess
dolfrog (talk) 12:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki reading project

message: Further to the above discussion, the history section is pretty bad too. It's entirely written from a viewpoint that there's a problem.
:To further complicate the matter, the early publishers hired many foreign typographers because originally there were very few British typographers. etc - source?
:Dr. Johnson made a very serious linguistic error - source for this assertion?
:Due to the changing pronunciation of words with time, what was bad in 1755 is even worse today - secondary source for this?
:Time required to learn to read English compared to other alphabetic languages - section totally focuses on the views of a handful of spelling activists. Frank Laubach in particular was a missionary with Views on language; his system is one of many literacy initiatives. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Point of view in history section

message: Yes, WP:POV is part of the problem. More general, as I see it, is the lack of concern for appropriate placement and organization. Thus, unhelpful links such as U.S. are generously repeated, while links to relevant articles are sparse. Various matters are stuffed into various paragraphs and sections to which their relevance is tangential, and whole sections (history of the language, for example) are too long for their relevance to the article, poorly written, and more poorly linked to better articles on their topic. I mean, let's not be nasty towards illiterates, but let's also not rely upon their skills to produce clear, concise, cogent literature. Flags for some of these problems are plentiful, especially for arguments that are not only uncited but tendentious, but they haven't inspired anyone to tackle those problems.  So, today I trimmed a bit of the tangled underbrush, and hope not to be alone in this. Jim.henderson (talk) 12:48, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Going a bit further, I don't see that the flag calling for a topical expert has attracted or will attract appropriate attention. My impression is that several people with experience in the field have inserted their diverse and well informed concerns and opinions willy-nilly, forming an amorphous, uninformative morass of text. The article needs less, rather than more of such material and no section needs expansion at least until the dead wood is hacked out. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:48, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expert wanted? 

message: Not sure why Reading education is forwarded to Reading education in the US, or why this article is named the latter. Most of it isn't nation-specific.--Strangesad (talk) 20:21, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  In US 

message: Reads like a marketing effort from the sudbury Schools. Mind if I delete?
"Learning to read and write in Sudbury schools
Sudbury model of democratic education schools assert that there are many ways to study and learn. They argue that learning is a process you do, not a process that is done to you; That is true for everyone. It's basic.[29] The experience of Sudbury model democratic schools shows that there are many ways to learn without the intervention of teaching, to say, without the intervention of a teacher being imperative. In the case of reading for instance in the Sudbury model democratic schools some children learn from being read to, memorizing the stories and then ultimately reading them. Others learn from cereal boxes, others from games instructions, others from street signs. Some teach themselves letter sounds, others syllables, others whole words. Sudbury model democratic schools adduce that in their schools no one child has ever been forced, pushed, urged, cajoled, or bribed into learning how to read or write -- no need to do that to the modern child, streetwise and nurtured on TV -- and they have had no dyslexia. None of their graduates are real or functional illiterates, and no one who meets their older students could ever guess the age at which they first learned to read or write.[30][31] In a similar form students learn all the subjects, techniques and skills in these schools."--Strangesad (talk) 03:34, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sudbury promotion 

message: Section 5.1:
>Attempts to make English spelling behave phonetically have given rise to various campaigns for spelling reform; none have been generally accepted. Opponents of simplified spellings point to the impossibility of phonetic spelling for a language with many diverse accents and dialects. Several distinguished scholars, however, have thoroughly disproven all reasonable objections to spelling reform, including this objection. See, for example, Dictionary of Simplified American Spelling.[42] Thomas Lounsbury presented a devastating rebuttal to all reasonable objections to spelling reform in 1909.[43] A shorter rebuttal of all the reasonable objections to spelling reform was made by Bob C Cleckler in 2005.[44]
This is clearly editorializing. Language like "thoroughly disproven all reasonable objections" and "devastating rebuttal" do not belong on an encyclopedia that purports to have a neutral point of view. I don't really know very much about the subject but it's clearly an area of controversy (at least going by the English-language spelling reform page), therefore this section should either be rewritten to fairly summarize the debate as it stands, or expunged entirely. 2A02:C7F:4649:5800:502C:F07:D199:11A6 (talk) 18:31, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ridiculously slanted coverage of spelling reform 

message: A few sections seem too generic to be here in an article talking about the United States. With the exceptions of sections "History", "Practical application", and "Instructional methods", everything else could be moved over to Reading education. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 )  04:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyeditor passing by 

message: Please discuss at  the proposed merger of Reading education in the United States with Learning to read, proposed by . Biogeographist (talk) 15:01, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested merger

message: I have added information to the History section in "Learning to read" from the Phonics page "Practices by country or region". I believe the Learning to read article can now stand on its own, so if there are no objections I will soon redirect "Reading education in the United States" to "Learning to read". John NH (talk) 14:53, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Preparation for merger of "Reading education in the United States" with "Learning to read"