Why Kids Read Aloud in a Monotone

 

            Parents notice it. Teachers bemoan it. Kids are ashamed by it - but so many do it, and wish they didn't.

 

            We're talking about reading aloud in a monotone: a slow, emotionless, bland, boring delivery. It differs sharply from human speech, ignores punctuation, and makes you wonder if the student understands what he or she is reading. When a child reads aloud without a lot of dynamics, and no inflection, stumbling over words, and without the musical rhythm of the language shining through, it almost sounds as if the child is deaf.

 

            And that's no coincidence. Hearing-impaired children learn to read by looking at pictures and printed words. They can't learn to read with phonics - a simple system of decoding language using the sense of sound - because they can't hear. When they read aloud in a monotone, no one minds, because it's so wonderful that they can read aloud at all.

 

            But when a child who can hear is taught to read without using his or her sense of sound, it's not empowering. It's handicapping. It sharply limits comprehension, vocabulary growth, fluency, accuracy . . . and most of all, enjoyment of reading.

 

            Formal reading instruction in school isn't the only reason for this. We can also blame parents who never read aloud to their children, and don't converse with them very much. Kids who don't get much practice with oral and written language don't develop an "ear" for speech and a thirst for reading. An early childhood spent mostly listening to commands in a day-care setting, or passively watching and listening to TV without generating much speech, isn't good for a child's language learning, and we know that's going on with a lot of kids today.

 

            But we must scrutinize reading instruction in K-12 schools for the lion's share of this dysfunction, which is so detrimental to the child's reading progress, not to mention enjoyment of reading. They are creating the monotone reader because they cling to the failed methods of Whole Language reading instruction. It's foolish for schools to deny children the power of their sense of sound when they learn to read, but that's what's happening all around the country. When schools try to teach reading with any other strategy than phonics-only reading instruction, it's as if they are giving the children a handicap on purpose.

 

            Phonics helps children connect the sounds the letters make with the written symbols that stand for them on the printed page. But most schools today try to teach reading with the visual methods that predominate in the Whole Language philosophy, currently being called "balanced literacy" or "eclectic" reading because they do mix a little phonics in with the sight-reading process.

 

            Sight reading - basically looking at words and guessing how to decode them, either orally or silently - was developed as a way to teach deaf children by Thomas Gallaudet (1787-1851). He postulated that deaf children, who can't hear the sounds the letters make, might be able to memorize the visual patterns of the letters in combinations, as in words. He showed the deaf children illustrated cards with simple words, and with these visual cues, they could "read." He opened the Hartford (Conn.) School for the Deaf in 1817. His method was highly successful; a college for deaf and hard of hearing students is named for him, Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.

 

            Among other things, his primer for teaching deaf children to read begins: "Frank had a dog. His name was Spot." It was the inspiration for the "look and say" sight-reading curriculum with the tightly-controlled vocabulary, "Dick and Jane," that most people grew up with - but unfortunately, it pushed phonics to the very back burner.

 

            Early American public education leaders Horace Mann and Thomas Dewey both promulgated Gallaudet's methods to the point where most teachers and schools now believe it is superior to phonics.

 

            The irony, though, is that very few of them actually know how to teach reading with phonics-only methods, because the vast majority of people in this country, including educators, were never taught those methods in the first place.

 

            And if they had been, they would discover that nearly 100% of the children taught to read with phonics can read aloud with enthusiasm, style, emotion and expression . . . because they're really reading, and understanding what they read.