The (Dia)critical Science of Reading
The single biggest driver of how fast children learn to read is orthography – the way in which a language is written.
Languages with “transparent” orthography (like Spanish where letters make very consistent sounds) can be read accurately after a few months of instruction. Languages with “complex” orthography (like English, with lots of exception words and tricky patterns) take years to learn.
TinyIvy has developed a series of training wheels that can be applied to English to make our complex orthography transparent. In this essay, we explain the science of reading relating to orthography, which provides the rationale for this innovation and the supporting evidence that explains our impact.
Introduction.
To a five year old, English spelling seems chaotic. After learning the sound of an O, an N, a C, and an E, the child opens a book and finds ONCE, not WUNS, upon a time…. They find IS and not IZ, WAS and not WUZ. They see the C in SCHOOL, CHIN, CAR, RACE, CELLO and SPECIAL.
This degree of inconsistency of the letter-sound relationships is unique to English and presents a truly unique challenge for the beginning reader (Share 2008). 97% of our words can’t be decoded with the simplest sounds we teach our kids.
We know that it is our system of writing, not factors of intelligence or socioeconomic status, that makes learning to read English such a long and hard task, one requiring years of additional study to achieve competency (Seymour, Phillip, & Aro, 2003; Geva & Siegel, 2000; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1993).
English orthography (our writing system) is so complex that it is regarded as a genuine outlier compared to other alphabetic writing systems (Share 2008, Aro 2004). This complexity plays a direct role in the reading development of English, including slower attainment of reading accuracy and fluency, and slower phonemic awareness development (Galletly, 2004).
Cross-linguistic studies posit that it takes 2.5 times as long for students to master English reading accuracy as it does to achieve the same mastery in a transparent orthography (i.e., those with simple one-to-one letter to sound correspondence) (Seymour, 2003). Other studies confirm these results, suggesting that the rate of learning to read English is at least twice as slow as in languages with simpler orthographies (Ellis et al 2004).
In fact, word reading proficiency can be achieved with 95% accuracy within a single year of instruction in most transparent orthographies (Seymour, 2003). The same level of word reading accuracy in English is not achieved until at least Grade 5 (Geva & Siegel, 2000; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1993).
More recently, we have also confirmed that improving English transparency with annotations leads to material, near-immediate, dose-responsive improvement in reading skills (Donnely, 2020).
The science of reading is crystal clear. Building from this foundation, and working closely with teachers, researchers, academics and policy makers from around the globe, TinyIvy has developed a solution to the root cause of poor English literacy performance.
TinyIvy created a series of diacritics that can be easily applied to text, enabling every English word to be decoded from left to right, without error or exception. This novel approach transforms English into a simpler, more transparent language and acts as a set of training wheels for children learning to read. This innovation is packaged into both the traditional in-classroom curriculum as well as digital tools to support teachers, students and their parents.
To a five year old, English spelling seems chaotic. After learning the sound of an O, an N, a C, and an E, the child opens a book and finds ONCE, not WUNS, upon a time…. They find IS and not IZ, WAS and not WUZ. They see the C in SCHOOL, CHIN, CAR, RACE, CELLO and SPECIAL.
This degree of inconsistency of the letter-sound relationships is unique to English and presents a truly unique challenge for the beginning reader (Share 2008). 97% of our words can’t be decoded with the simplest sounds we teach our kids.
We know that it is our system of writing, not factors of intelligence or socioeconomic status, that makes learning to read English such a long and hard task, one requiring years of additional study to achieve competency (Seymour, Phillip, & Aro, 2003; Geva & Siegel, 2000; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1993).
English orthography (our writing system) is so complex that it is regarded as a genuine outlier compared to other alphabetic writing systems (Share 2008, Aro 2004). This complexity plays a direct role in the reading development of English, including slower attainment of reading accuracy and fluency, and slower phonemic awareness development (Galletly, 2004). Cross-linguistic studies posit that it takes 2.5 times as long for students to master English reading accuracy as it does to achieve the same mastery in a transparent orthography (i.e., those with simple one-to-one letter to sound correspondence) (Seymour, 2003). Other studies confirm these results, suggesting that the rate of learning to read English is at least twice as slow as in languages with simpler orthographies (Ellis et al 2004).
In fact, word reading proficiency can be achieved with 95% accuracy within a single year of instruction in most transparent orthographies (Seymour, 2003). The same level of word reading accuracy in English is not achieved until at least Grade 5 (Geva & Siegel, 2000; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1993).
More recently, we have also confirmed that improving English transparency with annotations leads to material, near-immediate, dose-responsive improvement in reading skills (Donnely, 2020).
Building from this foundation, and working closely with teachers, researchers, academics and policy makers from around the globe, TinyIvy has developed a solution to the root cause of poor English literacy performance. TinyIvy created a series of diacritics that can be easily applied to text, enabling every English word to be decoded from left to right, without error or exception. This novel approach transforms English into a simpler, more transparent language and acts as a set of training wheels for children learning to read. This innovation is packaged into both the traditional in-classroom curriculum as well as digital tools to support teachers, students and their parents.
The challenge of improving literacy at scale.
Reading skills in the US plateaued roughly thirty years ago, with 65% of our fourth grade students unable to read proficiently on grade level. 79% of low-income students in 2019 didn’t reach that mark (NAEP). This was before the pandemic, which has only broadened the gap between high and low performing students.
No research, pedagogy, curriculum, or program, has proven powerful, scalable, and cost-effective enough to alter the trajectory of our reading scores as a nation. Not a single state in the US stands as a shining example of how to teach kids to read faster nor more equitably. Not a single major district achieves reading proficiency at a level that commands all others to adopt their model. The history of the science of reading is largely one of null or unscalable results.
Huge programs, leveraging the best science we have, have failed. Programs like Head Start have no significant effect (Pages, 2020). Technology adoption has no significant effect (Inns, 2019). $3.5B in School Improvement Grants were deployed in 2010 and “overall, across all grades, we found that implementing any SIG-funded model had no significant impacts on math or reading test scores.” (Dragoset, 2017). The billions spent on No Child Left Behind, which included a significant drive towards standards-based, evidence-based curriculum, “may have actually been to put a damper on potential progress” (McCluskey, 2015).
The challenge we face is that far, far too many of our nation’s children can’t read at the level we know leads to lifelong success and prosperity.
The real tragedy is that despite a massive increase in funding and despite three decades of scientific research to find the optimal path, nothing has worked. English is, by definition, too hard for most of our students to learn.
Reading skills in the US plateaued roughly thirty years ago, with 65% of our fourth grade students unable to read proficiently on grade level. 79% of low-income students in 2019 didn’t reach that mark (NAEP). This was before the pandemic, which has only broadened the gap between high and low performing students.
No research, pedagogy, curriculum, or program, has proven powerful, scalable, and cost-effective enough to alter the trajectory of our reading scores as a nation. Not a single state in the US stands as a shining example of how to teach kids to read faster nor more equitably. Not a single major district achieves reading proficiency at a level that commands all others to adopt their model.
Huge programs, leveraging the best science we have, have failed. Programs like Head Start have no significant effect (Pages, 2020). Technology adoption has no significant effect (Inns, 2019). $3.5B in School Improvement Grants were deployed in 2010 and “overall, across all grades, we found that implementing any SIG-funded model had no significant impacts on math or reading test scores.” (Dragoset, 2017). The billions spent on No Child Left Behind, which included a significant drive towards standards-based, evidence-based curriculum, “may have actually been to put a damper on potential progress” (McCluskey, 2015).
The challenge we face is that far, far too many of our nation’s children can’t read at the level we know leads to lifelong success and prosperity.
The real tragedy is that despite a massive increase in funding and despite three decades of scientific research to find the optimal path, nothing has worked. English is, by definition, too hard for most of our students to learn.
K12 per pupil spend has no impact on reading achievement.
The power of orthography.
English, as it stands today, is extraordinarily difficult for the beginning reader. An efficient orthography must balance the often competing needs of the novice and expert reader (Berg Aronoff, 2017; Rogers 1995; Share, 2008; Unger, 2014; Sampson, 2018; Venezky 2007). English does not.
For the learner or novice, an effective orthography must provide a means for decoding new words independently (Share 1995, 2008). In an efficient orthography, the very process of decoding new words lays the foundations for rapid, whole-word recognition. This is possible only if the learning process draws the reader’s attention to the connections between spelling (the specific letters and their ordering) and sound as well as between spelling and meaning (Ehri, 2014).
This “do-it-yourself” or “self-teaching” aspect of an orthography (Jorm Share 1983; Share, 1995, 2008) supplies a means for identifying and memorizing new words and establishing the detailed memory traces (“orthographic representations”) on which rapid, whole-word skilled word recognition (and spelling) is founded. “Self-teaching” is therefore at the very heart of becoming a skilled reader.
Unfortunately for the beginning reader, English is outrageously difficult and, as is, constantly undermines self-teaching. Decoding English is a challenge even for the native speaker (Seymour et al., 2003).
This difficulty exists even after acknowledging that most consonant letters (unlike the abominably variable vowel letters) are, thankfully, quite consistent (Adams, 1990). Thus, English spelling is not chaotic, just exceptionally challenging for the beginning reader.
To allow for rapid, instant, whole-word recognition, an orthography must also provide distinctive and consistent word-specific spellings required for unitizing word recognition – that is, for transforming the new string of letters into a single unit (or “sight word”) recognized at a glance. This is where English (a so-called “morpho-phonemic” system) excels. The “unitizability” criterion for an efficient orthography requires that each unit of meaning (“morpheme”) should have one and only one spelling even if there are different pronunciations.
The ideal orthography not only has uniform spellings for the same words (soft/soften) or word parts (walked /t/, saved /d/, waited /əd/ are not spelled walkt, savd, waitid) (Rastle, 2018)), but also spells words with distinct meanings (distinct morphemes) differently, even if they are pronounced the same (e.g., pair/pear/pare) (Berg Aronoff, 2017).
In short, the idea that soften and soft both have the same root spelling (“soft”), helps the skilled reader to consolidate spelling-meaning connections for rapid reading. This benefit to the advanced reader is at the expense of making life uniquely miserable for the beginning reader of English. In an important sense, our language itself is an example of systemic inequity. The English writing system is easier and more beneficial for those with the resources to master it.
English, as it stands today, is extraordinarily difficult for the beginning reader. An efficient orthography must balance the often competing needs of the novice and expert reader (Berg Aronoff, 2017; Rogers 1995; Share, 2008; Unger, 2014; Sampson, 2018; Venezky 2007). English does not.
For the learner or novice, an effective orthography must provide a means for decoding new words independently (Share 1995, 2008). In an efficient orthography, the very process of decoding new words lays the foundations for rapid, whole-word recognition. This is possible only if the learning process draws the reader’s attention to the connections between spelling (the specific letters and their ordering) and sound as well as between spelling and meaning (Ehri, 2014).
This “do-it-yourself” or “self-teaching” aspect of an orthography (Jorm Share 1983; Share, 1995, 2008) supplies a means for identifying and memorizing new words and establishing the detailed memory traces (“orthographic representations”) on which rapid, whole-word skilled word recognition (and spelling) is founded. “Self-teaching” is therefore at the very heart of becoming a skilled reader.
Unfortunately for the beginning reader, English is outrageously difficult and, as is, constantly undermines self-teaching. Decoding English is a challenge even for the native speaker (Seymour et al., 2003).
This difficulty exists even after acknowledging that most consonant letters (unlike the abominably variable vowel letters) are, thankfully, quite consistent (Adams, 1990). Thus, English spelling is not chaotic, just exceptionally challenging for the beginning reader.
To allow for rapid, instant, whole-word recognition, an orthography must also provide distinctive and consistent word-specific spellings required for unitizing word recognition – that is, for transforming the new string of letters into a single unit (or “sight word”) recognized at a glance. This is where English (a so-called “morpho-phonemic” system) excels. The “unitizability” criterion for an efficient orthography requires that each unit of meaning (“morpheme”) should have one and only one spelling even if there are different pronunciations.
The ideal orthography not only has uniform spellings for the same words (soft/soften) or word parts (walked /t/, saved /d/, waited /əd/ are not spelled walkt, savd, waitid) (Rastle, 2018)), but also spells words with distinct meanings (distinct morphemes) differently, even if they are pronounced the same (e.g., pair/pear/pare) (Berg Aronoff, 2017).
In short, the idea that soften and soft both have the same root spelling (“soft”), helps the skilled reader to consolidate spelling-meaning connections for rapid reading. This benefit to the advanced reader is at the expense of making life uniquely miserable for the beginning reader of English. In an important sense, our language itself is an example of systemic inequity. The English writing system is easier and more beneficial for those with the resources to master it.
The Benefits of Simplifying Orthography on Learning to Read
As described above, there is clear evidence that a major cause for low literacy in the US: English orthography itself is a key factor in the difference in observed rates of literacy acquisition in various alphabetic languages (Share 2008).
The benefits of transparent orthography is crystal clear (Gallety 2013).
- When looking at word reading accuracy, learning rates are reduced dramatically due to spelling inconsistencies that exist in our language, exclusive of socioeconomic factors (Geva & Siegel, 2000; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1993).
- In nations with a phonologically transparent orthography, reading accuracy and phonemic awareness develop rapidly to ceiling level with most readers proficient by the end of Grade 1 (Aro, 2004; Holopainen, Ahonen, & Lyytinen 2001; Seymour et al., 2003; Spencer & Hanley, 2003).
- In transparent-orthography nations, readers with delayed reading-accuracy are few and respond very effectively to reading-accuracy remediation (Cossu, 1999; Schneider, Ennemoser, Roth, & Kuspert, 1999).
- Transparent-orthography reading-accuracy development has few prerequisites (Lyytinen et al., 2004; Poskiparta et al., 1999).
- Healthy working memory and IQ levels are not prerequisites, such that even readers with severe intellectual disability attain reading and spelling accuracy (Cossu, 1999).
And, more directly, as mentioned above, we know that the underlying concept of TIPS is effective. Annotation of vowel sounds has been shown to yield benefits to decoding accuracy and passage reading accuracy (Donnelly, Gijbels, Larson, Matskewich, Linnerud, Kuhl & Yeatman, 2020).
As described above, there is clear evidence that a major cause for low literacy in the US: English orthography itself is a key factor in the difference in observed rates of literacy acquisition in various alphabetic languages (Share 2008).
The benefits of transparent orthography is crystal clear (Gallety 2013).
- When looking at word reading accuracy, learning rates are reduced dramatically due to spelling inconsistencies that exist in our language, exclusive of socioeconomic factors (Geva & Siegel, 2000; Geva, Wade-Woolley, & Shany, 1993).
- In nations with a phonologically transparent orthography, reading accuracy and phonemic awareness develop rapidly to ceiling level with most readers proficient by the end of Grade 1 (Aro, 2004; Holopainen, Ahonen, & Lyytinen 2001; Seymour et al., 2003; Spencer & Hanley, 2003).
- In transparent-orthography nations, readers with delayed reading-accuracy are few and respond very effectively to reading-accuracy remediation (Cossu, 1999; Schneider, Ennemoser, Roth, & Kuspert, 1999).
- Transparent-orthography reading-accuracy development has few prerequisites (Lyytinen et al., 2004; Poskiparta et al., 1999).
- Healthy working memory and IQ levels are not prerequisites, such that even readers with severe intellectual disability attain reading and spelling accuracy (Cossu, 1999).
And, more directly, as mentioned above, we know that the underlying concept of TIPS is effective. Annotation of vowel sounds has been shown to yield benefits to decoding accuracy and passage reading accuracy (Donnelly, Gijbels, Larson, Matskewich, Linnerud, Kuhl & Yeatman, 2020).
Conclusion.
There is no graph line more impervious to change than reading proficiency in America. For decades it has remained largely constant, despite tremendous growth in our knowledge of the science of reading. Fewer than 35% of students achieve grade level reading proficiency by fourth grade. All of this points to the fact that a major cause of low literacy may have far, far less to do with how we are currently teaching than the essence of the writing system we teach.
We view the above as a mandate for innovation. A need for a transformational approach to teaching literacy that fundamentally reshapes English itself for the early reader.
Quite simply, we must make English easier so that more children will be able to read it.
TinyIvy is committed to conducting rigorous academic research on the efficacy of our program and is actively seeking funding to support large scale RCT to demonstrate the effectiveness of our program in a series of progressively larger and more rigorous studies.
To see the current state of this research, explore our results here.
There is no graph line more impervious to change than reading proficiency in America. For decades it has remained largely constant. Fewer than 35% of students achieve grade level reading proficiency by fourth grade. All of this points to the fact that a major cause of low literacy may have far, far less to do with how we are currently teaching than the essence of the writing system we teach.
We view the above as a mandate for innovation. A need for a transformational approach to teaching literacy that fundamentally reshapes English itself for the early reader.
Quite simply, we must make English easier so that more children will be able to read it.
TinyIvy is committed to conducting rigorous academic research on the efficacy of our program and is actively seeking funding to support large scale RCT to demonstrate the effectiveness of our program in a series of progressively larger and more rigorous studies.
To see the current state of this research, explore our results here.
How does it work?
Learn more about how we bring this research into practice in the classroom.
References cited.
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GRAPH DATA SOURCE: NCES, Link, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, 1919-20 through 1955-56; Statistics of State School Systems, 1957-58 through 1969-70; Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education, 1970-71 through 1986-87; and Common Core of Data (CCD), “National Public Education Financial Survey,” 1987-88 through 2018-19. (This table was prepared September 2021.)
