Three-Cueing and the Law

Yes it only takes a minute to realize you should have said the bacteria was minute!

The K-12 education system is suffused with toxic alchemy rather than with science. Anything goes. It is kind of like the science illiteracy that is being promulgated by our fascist president-elect Trump and his sycophant cabinet. We are in a world of hurt when we give up evidence-based approaches to teaching reading. Thus, it is not surprising that more than half of US children cannot read at grade level. My analysis of 20 years of NAEP Reading data demonstrates that almost 50 million 4th graders do not read at proficient levels. Beyond imagination. But that's what you get when you trade science for medieval alchemy. No?

I teach in Ohio. You hit the nail on the head! We have now made such a major shift to all phonics instruction and basic “stories”. Reading for comprehension is being thrown out the door. There has to be a middle of the road. I often wonder how we all became readers. Yes, we also should not all journalists to guide our best practices for teaching.

Gale--

A literal reading of the legislative text is not nonsense... it is the way the law works. If the statute fails to define its terms, then we are to assume their plain, literal, ordinary meanings. In this case, any model of reading that includes teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues is to be outlawed. Taken literally -- as law is supposed to be -- this seems to ban any approach to reading that is consistent with the simple model, the reading rope, Ehri's theory of orthographic mapping, and many other descriptions of reading that make a lot of sense. I think some lawyer could have a lot of fun with this one.

tim

A solid post. It is important that those who write legislation better understand that once a child decodes a word in text the context is important to confirm that the decoded word makes sense. Thus also teaching syntactic and semantic understanding is necessary.

"My analysis of 20 years of NAEP Reading data demonstrates that almost 50 million 4th graders do not read at proficient levels. Beyond imagination. But that's what you get when you trade science for medieval alchemy. No?" I continue to hear and read this finding, and while I would like all Americans to read proficiently, to evidence good critical thinking and evaluative skills, I am looking for the time in history when we knew our education system performed this well. I just don't know exactly what "proficient" reading at say 4th grade level looks like and/or how we determined just what this is or should be. This is all vague to me. I have watched grade level standards in reading and math get pushed down into lower and lower grade levels during my 40+ years in education. My grandson in TK was given sight words to practice at home, but I never had an iota of reading instruction until grade 1. So, pardon me if I ask how we define proficiency at a grade level and how we KNOW that all 10 year olds, for example, need to reach a particular cut-off?

I have two kids with Dyslexia, my first was taught in school using LLI a curriculum littered with 3 cueing instruction by the beginning of first grade I could not put a book in front of him because he made up stories with no reliance upon the letters. My second received instruction in letter sounds and is in a better place at the same grade. Wi just passed a ban on three cueing because the education establishment has no interest in turning away from what they have been told and trained works. Somewhere around 80% of WI schools used curriculum with three cueing. If the educational system was going to fix this on their own terms then they would have done so by now. Mark Seidenberg spoke at our state hearings about the passing of the bill and was in favor of a ban, because we have been unable to get change by the educational establishment so that kids like mine have a chance to learn at school.

Why do we read? We read to understand, AKA comprehend! As a primary teacher, starting out in the early 1980s, teaching sound-spelling relationships was the main focus of reading instruction. This instruction was a cumulative endeavor beginning in Kinder, building foundationally in 1st grade and 2nd grade. Phonics was what we taught, leaning into comprehension. Moving to another district in the mid-nineties, I was reprimanded for teaching phonics because of the whole language movement. (I did make a little noise about that!) Since 2015, I've been semi-retired, working as a literacy coach and approaching the end of my doctoral degree in literacy. My point here is that it is exhausting and disheartening to hear people who are not educated in research make demands and create stupid laws that BAN teaching methods and books, yet increase teacher accountability. In fact, research also tells us that lots of teachers "have had it" and are leaving the profession due to increased mental, emotional, and physical distress. I am one who believes we must turn around pejorative opinions regarding teachers and their reading instruction and offer them greater ethics of care (Noddings, 1995, 2005, 2012).

Great food for thought. I wonder though, all the people that weren't taught to decode, when they read this, will they read it thoroughly and take away what you have said?

The movement of de-professionalising the teaching of reading is both alarming and counterproductive. Teacher expertise is paramount when discussing literacy approaches.

Thank you for stating the following in your blog:

‘When politicians try to legislate a science of reading, they should consult with scientists not journalists, social media experts, or representatives of special interest groups.’

I would also add that politicians should consult with the real people who are working daily in the classroom with children, under real conditions.

Legislation could (and probably should) be amended to refer to "reading" in its narrow sense of "word reading". It is a simple fix, I think, at least in the guidance docs that correspond to that legislation. Also, I'd like to proposed that we use different terminology to distinguish between the three-cueing system used in word reading with the 'cues' readers use to grapple with comprehending text. I don't think anyone would suggest that a reader not consider semantics and syntax when trying to comprehend text, but using them doesn't mean that the 'three-cueing' system is being applied. That system trains students to look away from the word, a disasterous habit that is extremely hard to correct, in order to determine what that word might be. In fact, the reader is taught to look away from the word after considering only the first letter or two, and as such is effectively discouraged from properly using graphophics to crack the code of the word. This 'three-cueing' is more akin to a wild goose chase than a system that might be successful in leading you to where you want/need to go. As such, it should not be a system that is used anywhere, and certainly not when trying to comprehend text.

Many teachers think that three-cueing is just fine as they believe they have taught some children to read using it. In reality, those children have learned to read *despite* three-cueing, rather than because of it. It undermines the development of the reading circuit in the brain because of this habit to look away from the only thing that should be used to read- the letters.

In a recent interview with Susan Lambert, Hugh Catts said that comprehension is really not a component of reading; it is not easily changed with instruction or intervention, it is not a skill you can train and apply across the board, and it develops and changes over a very long period of time- many, many years.

Decoding and encoding are skills you can train and 'use across the board', with any text. I say, keep the three-cueing system ban; just add definitions and clarifications in legislation and guidance docs, and find a different term to refer to what is going on in the processes of comprehending text.

I am a Reading Specialist and I work with groups of students every day. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability related to reading. A percentage of these children experience severe and persistent reading difficulties. For these students, systematic instruction in phonics is essential. That does not mean that all students should be learning to read using a program of systematic phonics instruction exclusively. Learning to read involves phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. All elements should be included in reading instruction from the onset. All primary students should have systematic, sequential instruction in the spelling patterns and phonics structures of the English language. Some children will need more repetition to master these skills and concepts. All children also need to have opportunities to enjoy and comprehend language in the form of stories, poems, meter, cadence etc...To ban teaching methods that help all children understand and comprehend stories and language is just utterly ridiculous. To ban methods which make learning interesting and engaging is to degrade our public school system and our professional educators.

Dr. Shanahan,
I am interested in the fact that you first named the 3 cueing systems as semantics, syntax, and graphophonics; and then later reference the Ohio law outlawing the 3-cueing systems, which refers to them as "semantics, syntax and structure, and visual skills" (which seems to be making it a list of four cueing systems). One of the main criticisms I have read about during this "debate," is that one of the cueing systems encourages children to look at the pictures and guess the words. I much prefer your use of "graphophonics," as I have always understood the visual cueing system to mean looking at the letters in the word to match them to phonemes and sound out the word, based on the letters, spelling patterns, word parts, and syllables, as they progress in their reading. I am not going to suggest that teachers have not ever said, "look at the picture," but I don't think that was suggested for them to wildly guess at the words. I also find the discussions and comments that I have read (elsewhere) about not letting children use pictures at all, but beginning read alouds with a picture walk through the book, to be opposing views. I am glad to see that you do not support the laws about outlawing 3-cuing systems and appreciate your discussion of the important portions of instruction that would be left out if each of those components are left out.
I was also surprised that you did not reference Marie Clay and her work with running records and observation. It is true that the miscue analysis of the running records focused on words that were not read correctly, but the analysis (as I learned it) has always helped to target instruction for that child to turn their focus where it should be. Thanks!

Julie--
You are correct that Clay emphasized using Reading Records to identify which cueing systems were in use -- and you can only conduct such an analysis of cueing systems by looking at errors. However, if students are relying on decoding more than the others, then teaching shifts to getting the kids to use context to get at the words... without any distinction of when in the process that information is supposed to come in. For instance, if you told me that a student misread words, I would increase my phonics instruction. If you told me, the student was misreading words and not noticing that they were not the correct words, I would encourage the student to use meaning to evaluate the decoding result. That, unfortunately, is not how Reading Record results are usually used (nor the way that her books guided teachers).

tim

Louise--

I suspect at least part of the problem is that the legislation fails to provide either bureaucrats or teachers with guidance as to what should be done, rather than trying to prevent them from doing things the state doesn't want done. As a classroom teacher, I learned early that telling kids what not to do was rarely as effective as telling them what I needed them to do.

tim

Julie--
We don't know exactly how well students should be able to read. That is why most states have adopted standards for that with a wide range of acceptable levels (at most grades it is about a two-year span). Large percentages of students leave high school unable to read texts that they need to be able to read if they want to succeed in the workplace, or in college, or in the military. Those estimates of needed levels of proficiency are meant to protect those children -- ensuring that they don't fall through the cracks.

tim

(please delete original comment)
First, the issue of MISUSING and MISIDENTIFYING the three cueing systems and what they are. What some teachers have done (are doing) does not fit what Clay first said and found. Clay's work original study was based on what NORMAL readers do, not just readers with reading problems. Clay talked about the issue of word guessing. She said, "Some writers have stressed the importance of semantic context, others have stressed the letter-sound relationships, and these two viewpoints have been the source of much chicken and egg debate over teaching method. Currently, reading experts advocate that both aspects be prominent in any reading programe." The bottom line is that readers need access to both. That was Clay's position, and yet some teachers implemented her ideas in a way that deemphasized decoding and encouraged word guessing.

Scanlon has a large body of research around the role of context that is being ignored and discounted. I'd like to know what you think about what she has found. In addition, the current situation in England also needs to be addressed. Synthetic phonics by itself has failed to produce the promised results. Ten-plus years in, and readers in England continue not performing as promised. You, of course, are aware of Bowers' and others' research. In addition, there is research on the impact (lack of impact) of programs like OG. Teacher knowledge improves, but student knowledge and use of that knowledge do not.

In what I have come to call my centrist thinking- I maintain that if you overemphasize phonics and underemphasize meaning, you tend to create word callers. If you do the opposite, you tend to create word guesses. Neither of those is a desirable outcome. Especially in light of Scanlon's research, it is a bad idea to take meaning out of words that solve problems. Thanks for listening, and I await your thoughts on Scanlon, Bowers and Clay's original idea that we need to do both. Thanks. Dr. Sam from St. Louis

Sam says: "Scanlon has a large body of research around the role of context that is being ignored and discounted. I'd like to know what you think about what she has found."

In Donna M. Scanlon and Kimberly L. Anderson's "Using Context as an Assist in Word Solving: The Contributions of 25 Years of Research on the Interactive Strategies Approach," published in Reading Research Quarterly in September 2020--along with a subsequent article in The Reading Teacher--the authors do a good job emphasizing the importance of graphophonic cues because they are essential to facilitate orthographic mapping where letters, sounds, and meaning work together to map words to memory. It is therefore extremely puzzling to find that the very first cue in their cueing chart is "check the picture," not "change one or more of the sound associations (most probably a vowel) and try again," as Venezky advises. We simply can't ignore the importance of flexible pronunciations (set for variability). Tim, your piece does a great job managing the muddle, but it is very disheartening that we are still so muddled!

In my instructional guide to reading, From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense, I refer to you in the chapter on orthographic mapping (Making Sense of Words We Remember):

In his article “Is it a Good Idea to Teach the Three-Cueing Systems in Reading?” (See Resources), Timothy Shanahan explains how research has confirmed that good readers do not use multiple cues for word identification, a process that is too slow and cumbersome. Instead, readers use orthographic knowledge to identify words and then, if necessary, use other sources of information for word confirmation if the reader is uncertain of the pronunciation or does not recognize the meaning of the word. That’s when context and picture cues can offer support. In the example in the Four Part Processing Model, the letters ‘b’, ‘o’, and ‘w’ have two pronunciations and several meanings that may impede comprehension. But knowing that ‘ow’ can be pronounced in two ways is the byproduct of teaching phonics, and uniting phonology with orthography is always the first step toward identifying words with word confirmation through context to follow as needed.

Harriet

Scallon’s review of those studies is misleading. She draws conclusions that the original researchers wisely did not draw. It is not possible to determine the effect of any variable in a complex intervention without separating that variable out. That was not done in any of those studies. Context definitely plays a role in decoding and decoding development but it is not the role 3 curing advocates cling to.

Tim

I respect and love your articles and insight, and follow and read everything you put out.
As a reading teacher, I am still confused how the 3 cueing systems and using graphophonics cues has been interpreting as teaching students to guess. As a North Carolina teacher, former Reading Recovery teacher (because this 3 cueing system legislation in NC did away with our job) is so far from what we actually do. These concepts/ideas are not taught in a way, where students are taught to guess. Plus, teaching for 18 years in the classroom, then stepping out as an instructional coach, and eventually a Reading Recovery teacher (because I finally saw something that truly worked and helped students more than anything I had every experienced) I know this works. They have passed the legislation in North Carolina also, so our school system has taken away Reading Recovery, and turned our jobs into something that goes against what we believe in and what we know works. Reading Recovery teachers get such: great training, constant professional development, feedback, reflection, etc., which makes the difference. These teachers are usually some of the best quality teachers who: love what they do, are passionate about students and their learning, and are constantly reading, learning, and growing to be the best they can be to help these students. We believe in what we do, because we have seen that it really works. But in no way do we feel that teaching the 3 cueing systems involves guessing, so we are so confused as a group when people say this and to where this misconception has come from. All good learning starts with curiosity and looking at things in a way to make some sort of connection, to start trying and understanding. Brian Gwyn, a staff attorney, prepared the analysis for House Bill 259, Section 7.64 of the 2023 Appropriations Act. Here is our Legislation that has turned our world upside down, and caused many in our field to decide that enough is enough and get out of education. So we are losing such good people. So sad.
Section 7.64 of the 2023 Appropriations Act, also known as S.L. 2023-134, prohibits the use of three-cueing systems and visual memory-based curriculums in North Carolina schools. This includes instruction and interventions for pre-K through third grade students, as well as charter schools, laboratory schools, and schools for the deaf and blind. The prohibition also applies to Science of Reading coursework at educator preparation programs. The law went into effect on October 3, 2023, for the 2023-2024 school year.

Miriam P. Trehearne

Thank you, Tim, for providing clarification regarding the three cueing systems…. again!
I agree with Linda Diamond “that once a child decodes a word in text the context is important to confirm that the decoded word makes sense. Thus, also teaching syntactic and semantic understanding is necessary”. As you have said Tim “when we decode words we need to monitor our success – and we do that by evaluating our pronunciations against “meaning, structure and syntax.” This is common sense! Thank you, Miriam Giskin, for providing clear understandings in just a few words: “Yes it only takes a minute to realize you should have said the bacteria was minute!”. I love it!!

As a learner of other written languages so many cues are required to learn decoding, encoding, comprehension and writing a specific language. Picture cues themselves do hold an important role - and it is not teaching guessing - pictures help make the links to written words and to embed both the ‘written letter structure’ and phonics structure of a word. Picture cues also provide an extremely helpful and reassuring check. Obviously we need to see the ‘whole ‘written word itself and to learn and understand the sound symbol components-phonics..the process needed to develop orthographic mapping. Syntax and semantic are essential to the process decoding new words in context and to the comprehension process to check word meaning - as in the example of ‘minute’ .
As you get to know/learn words they become ‘totally recognisable as a group of symbols/letters. Pat, bat, cat, mat are each distinguished by competent readers by the letter combinations not the sounds. We differentiate the words ‘would and wood’, not through sounds but letter structure. When I look at the letters ‘wood’ I see the stuff of trees - but when I see the letters ‘would’, I know a question is being asked.
Reading languages is complex and the complexity requires many skills and strategies. Trying to simplify the process into single dominant skills just makes the learning harder.
Cueing systems should not be ignored or outlawed.
Essential elements for teaching reading comprehension and fluency are: graphophonics, vocabulary, semantics, syntax and picture clues. All rely on each other.
Different skills and strategies are used through the development of the reading process and it is essential teachers know and uses all of them.

Great read. Since it's so central to your post, I would add the relevant Ohio Code to your reference list. It is a real bummer:

https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3313.6028

I`ve read this twice and read the comments.
SoR is according to TRL a movement that is supposed to reduce the large numbers of students falling through the cracks re Dyslexia.
The comments from Dr. Shanahan here have zip to do with those students because they don`t learn with all the cues.
They learn with explicit and systematic PA and Grapheme correspondence.
I have been in the remedial reading business for 24 years,none of the kids we serve learned with RR.
They pretty well all went through it because it went viral and it`s still very much out there.
It doesn`t work for those kids.

Emily-
First of all, reading recovery teachers may be certain that what they are teaching is working but the research seems to tell a different story. While many students taught with RR do make marginally better early gains -- in the longterm they don't do as well as comparable children not taught those things or taught in those ways. One candidate for why RR seems to be a long term problem for its students may be 3-cueing. Instead of teaching students how to decode, the program emphasizes identifying words using context, etc. As this blog indicates, there is a role for context, but it is in evaluating one's decoding success, not in identifying words. I'm frustrated with laws like the one you mentioned. I think they would be better off mandating practices that have been found to be effective rather than trying to block the teaching of less effective ones.

tim

Denyse--
You are correct when someone does not know how to read a language, they will often find ways to get around reading the words as much as possible. However, that is not reading, per se, but a work around to solve an immediate problem. Studies of children as young as 2 would suggest that such attempts to gain meaning without the words is a natural ability, one that we don't really need to teach. Instead of teaching, English Learners ways to ignore the words, I would suggest building their vocabulary and providing them the decoding tools needs to translate from print to pronunciation.

tim

Tim... great post as usual. The quote below from one of Linnea Ehri's papers helped clarify the issue for me in a revelatory way. It's a bit off the beaten mainstream path, since the study was done with kids who were "primarily language-minority" (sic) and today we would refer to as "emergent bilingual." Officially they were not "English Learners." As you know, the criteria and their application for identifying English Learners vary quite a bit across and within states. In any case, these kids came mostly from Spanish-speaking homes, attended low-SES urban schools, knew English to varying degrees, and were having reading difficulties in a first-grade English-medium program, ie, not bilingual education (which, btw, quite likely would have been a better option, but that's another story for another day).

The intervention Ehri supplied was based on an intervention for English monolingual kids having reading difficulties and included all the usual suspects--phonological awareness, phonics, decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, spelling, writing, the whole deal. But bc the students she was now working with were learning English as they were learning to read it, Ehri added an English oral language component to support their literacy acquisition and early development. The goal was what should be the standard goal for any reading instruction for anyone learning to read in English, whether they know English or are learning it: Fluent reading with comprehension. So the intervention provided the necessary *written language* (aka literacy) skills, AND it also provided the necessary *oral language* (aka oracy, which I realize is an odd word... but it's real!) skills that are necessary for fluent reading with comprehension.

Here Ehri describes the purpose of the intervention with these emergent bilingual first-graders:

“One purpose was to develop oral language by encouraging students to talk about the books and by explaining the meanings of new vocabulary words. These words were written in students’ personal books, and the meanings were reviewed each time the book was read. … ***Students were encouraged to decode unknown words by relying on their letter–sound knowledge and then cross-checking with meaning and pictures to confirm the identities of the words.***” (Ehri et al., 2007, p. 424)

Note what's between the ***s I added. This is NOT 3-cueing, although there are 3 "cues"--sources of information--involved. ("Meaning" typically invokes semantics, but syntax also influences meaning--"The man bit the dog" means something different from "The dog bit the man.") Instead, there is a clear protocol being taught: First use your letter-sound knowledge to decode a word you don't recognize right away, then use meaning and even--holy moly!--pictures to confirm what you read. This is the mental habit (if you'll pardon a behavioral intrusion) we need to help young readers develop. Some will acquire it very or fairly easily, maybe even intuitively, while others will need a lot of coaching, scaffolding, practice, and repetition.

To repeat myself: THIS. IS. NOT. 3-CUEING, which I think of as a "choose your own adventure" approach to word recognition... It's like giving learners a menu of options: "You might look at the pictures, look at the first letter, what would make sense here? Not sure? That's ok, skip it then maybe try it later." UGH. Bad idea, generally speaking, and particularly for lot and lots of students who rely on clear, consistent, and systematic instruction to help guide them through the initial mysteries of written language. If we don't demystify it as efficiently, directly, and transparently as possible, the cost to these students is considerable, and for some of them, immeasurable.

Finally, I agree 100% with you that forbidding 3-cueing by law is probably a terrible idea, primarily because the language that's used (or attempted) is so ham-handed that it is (a) incorrect and self-defeating, as you point out and (b) needlessly alienating when people read something that prohibits teachers from using pictures to teach beginning reading. It sounds just loony. In principle, we could get the language right and precise enough. But then the question becomes whether that level of granularity belongs in legislation. I'm not sure; maybe. But for all the efforts I've seen (and obviously I've not seen them all), we're better off without them than with them.

Kia ora Tim
Greetings from New Zealand. A wee story. I used to teach my classes the three cueing systems as part of our learning. I had heaps of running records written up and would send a child to read the running record into a tape recorder. I would then take that and find out the child's strengths, etc and share this with the child. Christoper was eight years old, and we were going through his running record. He lost some meaning, so I asked what he was thinking - his reply was priceless. "Oh, Dragon (me) I made a syntactic miscue and that altered the meaning." My reply, "OK smarty, tell me that in English." "OK, in my mind I added a comma and that changed the meaning!" Every afternoon before the kids went home we had a sharing time about their learning, and he used that example. Next day he came and shared this... Let's eat grandma. Big discussion about the importance of commas! Prety good, eh? All appraoches have merit when well used. Nga mihi nui - big greetings..... Heather Bell

Thank you! I wish this message would reach widely enough to stop the exaggerated literacy policies that are limiting what teachers know and can do to support their students' literacy development.

At the start of 2025. RR funding in NZ is going to be discontinued. Thank goodness for that. My concern is the mountains of Whole Language reading books which still populate junior classrooms. These readers encourage three cueing , particularly the guessing from pictures and distracting children from focusing on words.

If you are gong to ban 3-cueing , I think purging many of these 'infernal' readers also needs to be considered since they reinforce 3-cueing. Controlled vocabulary readers and with phonic readers or books combining both aspects are needed. I believe some States have mandated phonic readers. Since I am a traditionalist I believe reviewing the controlled vocabulary books of the so called 'bad old days' of whole word be considered . These have frequent repetition in patterning as in 'The Gingerbread Boy' , 'The Three Little Pigs' etc but few clues obtained from pictures. There are also those books like high interest with good stories eg 'I can Read ' series ( RA 7years) with fairly controlled vocabulary. As part of a private remedial reading programme we had children read one of these books to a parent every day for six weeks- 30 altogether,, once they knew all their basic phonemes and common spelling patterns well .

Instead of being for or against the three cueing systems, I think it’s more useful to consider that concept as an integral part of a model of reading that includes the reader’s expectations of what words will appear next—expectations that may influence the reader’s perceptions. That important aspect of the model has unfortunately been misinterpreted as “guessing at words” and dismissed along with the three cueing systems. But according to the model, readers simply use all available information to check what’s on the page against their ongoing expectations. The anticipation that’s such an integral part of the process is a reflection of how our brains function in all things. It’s not surprising that we anticipate as we read.

So I’m not sure what it means to say “when someone fails to read a word, they may rely on those semantic or syntactic cues, but not when they read the words.” Using syntactic and semantic information isn’t a fallback position. Those two types of cues, together with phonetic cues, are at the heart of reading. With experience, novices become more adept at anticipating and at using all three types of information in a smooth, coordinated way.

The model describes what readers do. It’s not an instructional program. The key is for teachers to understand the process so as to be able to help students use it effectively. Those teachers who understand it don’t teach their students to guess. They also recognize that students’ instructional needs vary, with some needing more help in using letter-sound relationships and others needing to be more attentive to language structures and meaning. Those teachers also know that the students’ needs may change with time and with the texts they are reading.

The most recent eye movement studies from researchers like Eric Paulson, Maria Liwanag, Koomi Kim, and others, strongly support this model of reading. The research shows that novice and experienced readers alike do not look at all the letters when they read and that they tend to look most closely at words that are not in line with their expectations. The research has also shown that when readers deviate from the printed text with, for example, omissions or substitutions, they have looked at those very places in the text longer than average, so the anomalies can’t be attributed to carelessness or inattention. See, for example, Understanding Literacy Using Eye Movement Miscue Analysis in a Global World by Liwanag and others (DIO Press, 2021) and Scientific Realism in Studies of Reading by Flurkey and others (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2008). Both books are welcome contributions to our understanding of reading as a thinking process that involves using phonics thoughtfully in conjunction with knowledge of language and attention to meaning.

In my previous post, I omitted the name of Goodman's model of reading. He named it a "Transactional Sociopsycholinguistic Model of Reading" that he describes as an interaction between thought and language. Goodman displays this model in a graphic figure with 20-some processes and cycles. He also explains the model in 11 steps and decision points which do not take place in sequence but recur throughout reading. Goodman also describes his model in terms of Language (Cue) Systems, Cognitive Strategies, Cycles.

It is a disservice to Professor Goodman and who literacy educators to reduce his thorough and detailed reading model down to three language cueing systems and the vernacular term "guessing." According to Flurkey, et al (2003) Ken Goodman published 131 research articles, 26 books and monographs, 86 book chapters and 6 research reports. Language and literacy researchers need to give credit where credit is due. This is one of my pet peeves about legislators making laws to regulate literacy pedagogy. We academic researchers must speak out against the mischaracterization and oversimplification of each other's research.

Flurkey, A. D., & Xu, J. (Eds.). (2003). On the revolution of reading. The selected writings of Kenneth S. Goodman. Heinemann.

Tim,

I appreciate the stance you are taking regarding bans on "the three-cueing approach" and "models of teaching. You quote the Ohio law that supposedly bans “three-cueing.” “As used in this section, "three-cueing approach" means any model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues.” This makes me wonder how in the world the Ohio legislators who passed this law define reading and/or writing: If students cannot be taught to derive meaning from language’s structure and syntax, and readers cannot use visual cues (grapho-phonics, print), then how can teachers possibly teach them to read and write? Is it the number “three” that bothers the literacy researchers because they believe that only one “cueing system” should be used for reading: phonology? Do they conclude that phonological recoding renders a printed text into comprehensible language that is devoid of semantics and syntax? There can be no comprehension without meaning (semantics). There can be no fluency in reading without syntax. Just look at Marilyn Adams research on levels of processing in reading, such as in her chapter that I cite here.

Adams, M. J. (1980). Failures to comprehend and levels of processing. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 11-32). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

My concern is that I don’t find in your argument a full and precise definition of what you mean by “three-cueing instruction.” As I see it, “three-cueing” has been morphed into a method or approach to instruction that goes beyond the categorization of the errors or mismatches (miscues) observed in real readers’ oral reading performance of real authentic texts. Goodman’s extensive research using miscue analysis of oral reading performance of hundreds of readers, which also involved eye movement research. This large database is the basis for his complex model of reading, which he named “ There are far too many different definitions of “three-cueing” being used as a basis for claims about effective reading and writing instructional strategies for us to be sure that we’re talking about the same thing. In any research study, a clear and accurate definition of terms is required.

In the case of a law prohibiting certain actions or behaviors from classroom teachers, the lack of a common and universal definition of “three-cueing” and a “three-cueing” approach, method or strategy is very problematic. This is because teachers must be very clear about what they are not supposed to do so that they can conscientiously avoid running afoul of the law. If there is no agreement about what “cueing” in reading and writing is, then how can teachers be held accountable for either doing it or not doing it? Oftentimes, a law will be declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it is “void for vagueness”, which I believe to be the case with these bans against “three-cueing.”

You provide this definition of the terms "cue" and "three-cueing": "Three-cueing refers to how people recognize and read words. A cue is a signal that provides a hint as to how to read a word."

With all due respect, as a bilingual/multilingual with expertise in both English and Spanish linguistics and biliteracy learning, a espouse a different definition of "three-cueing." Cueing is what language does, not what people do to read words. Language cues meaning through its components or subsystems, which are identified in linguistics (the Science of Language) as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. When people speak, we are using cues of language to communicate our thoughts, ideas, and knowledge. We encode our thoughts into language through its cueing systems (subsystems). When we write, we encode the language of our thoughts into graphic symbols that our society of users of a language have agreed-upon as conventions for representing speech sounds (cues) of that particular language. There can be no speech and there can be no printed text to be read by someone unless an author creates it, usually for the purpose of communication. Without encoding there can be no decoding. As you yourself state in this book chapter, writing and reading both depend on the subsystems of language and “draw on a common base of knowledge of linguistic features…”

Shanahan, T. (2016). Relationships between reading and writing. In C. A. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), The handbook of writing research (Second ed., pp. 194-207). Guilford Press.

“Studies have often shown substantial correlations between measures of linguistic features in reading and writing, including phonemic, orthographic, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and discourse features (Abbott & Berninger, 1993; Ahmed et al., 2014; Berninger, 2000; Shanahan, 1984; Shanahan& Lomax, 1986, 1988)…. That so much linguistic knowledge underlies reading and writing, and that the use of knowledge in one area of language can facilitate performance in another is not to say the relationships are symmetrical. Reading and writing may each draw on a common base of knowledge of linguistic features, but how this is done may differ across reading and writing in important ways.” (p. 197-198)

There are several bodies of research from psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, and second language reading, as well as neuroscience, that address metalinguistic awareness and metalinguistic knowledge development that provide empirical evidence to support instruction in each of the subsystems of language to support oral language development as well as literacy and bi/multiliteracy learning. See for example this excellent meta-analysis:

Ke, S. E., Zhang, D., & Koda, K. (2023). Metalinguistic awareness in second language reading development. Cambridge University Press.

It is my hope that we will oppose efforts toward pedagogical censorship that are based on misinterpretations and/or incomplete examination of multiple relevant bodies of research, not just the Science of Reading.