In Pursuit of Knowledge

It was a pleasant and challenging journey during my first semester in the Language and Literacy program. When I entered a classroom at the first time I did not know what to expect:I experienced mixed feelings of happiness and worrisome. But it turned out to be wonderful! I am grateful to my classmates and professors who gave me a great support and inspiration! Happy Holidays to everybody!!!

Reading: History and Modernity

Viktoriia Dudar
Professor Barbara Gleason
Theories and Models of Literacy
9 December 2009

Reading: History and Modernity

Reading process that seems so natural and simple to the modern person in the highly industrialized societies is just the tip of the iceberg that hides far more complex issues under the obvious appearance. The evolution of the silent reading, the approaches to teaching reading, and the interpretation of the text by readers will be discussed to better understand reading and the different dimensions of this phenomenon.

The Evolution of Silent Reading

Writing and reading are indissolubly connected, interacting and influencing each other. As a result, the modifications in writing transformed the way of the process of reading that evolved from aloud to silent.
After the Greeks introduced vowels, word separation was not longer necessary to make the meaning out of the text; therefore, Greece became the first ancient civilization to apply scriptura continua. In contrast, the Semitic languages, such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic continued to be written with word separation to avoid ambiguity (Blake 94). Although Greek and Roman civilizations were most likely aware about the Semitic tradition of writing, they did not find any reasons to employ it because deeply oral and rhetorical societies were not interested in fast, comprehensive reading, and a narrow circle of readers, usually specially trained scribes or clergy, did not consider reading either necessary or accessible to the greater part of the population (Saenger 11). Furthermore, texts, especially religious, were meant to be read aloud in order to live and to bring meaning to people in contrast to the dead word on the page (Manguel 45). The absence of word separation,punctuation marks, paragraphing, tables of contents, and page numbering made the process of script deciphering toilsome and long. However, some instances of silent reading, such as Alexander’s the Great reading of a letter from his mother in the fourth century BC and St. Ambrose’s reading in silence at the end of the fourth century are recorded in the history as extraordinary events (Manguel 42). In the monastic communities that emerged in the fourth century, reading the sacred texts privately in the cell and publicly in Church were alternating with long periods of silence. However, not all of them could read, but all were advised to learn the texts by heart. To help those that were poor readers, the continuous text was divided into lines according to the meaning, so that the reader would know when to raise his voice and when to lower it, at the end of the sentence or thought. Manguel considers this method – by the name of per cola et commata – a primitive form of punctuation, since it also facilitated locating a particular passage in a text (49).
A dramatic change in writing happened in the seventh century when the Irish scribes copied spaces between words from the Syriac Gospels, which they were translating, in order to better comprehend writing. Blake states that this invention was “a major factor in the dissemination of new ideas about political and religious freedom, individual study, religious contemplation, and personal expression” (115) that occurred eight hundred years later. Furthermore, scribes developed punctuation that is still used nowadays and started writing comments between the lines to explain the ambiguity of Latin grammar, which was heavily inflectional; these changes led to emerging of silent reading. However, these innovations were not known beyond the borders of the British Isles until the tenth century, and became widely used only in the beginning of the thirteenth century (Manguel 50).
Silent reading brought significant changes in all spheres of life. First of all, it facilitated the spread of independent thought because readers could read privately even writings that were against widely accepted religious doctrines. Although silent reading encouraged critical thinking, it paralleled with evoking anger among governing elements that started implementing censorship of books spreading heretical thoughts. Consequently, book burning became a common routine in order to prevent heresy against church in the fourteenth century (Blake 104-105). Nevertheless, the spread of humanism and the interest in philosophy, science, art, and literature led to the revival of learning in Europe, known as the Renaissance. Vernacular languages underwent remarkable changes in grammar and in the way of transcribing. For example, during the late Middle Ages Old English changed from a heavily inflected language to an analytic language with more regular spelling that eased the act of reading. In addition, more works were composed in vernacular languages, so scribes started applying cursiva formata to accelerate the copying process. Moreover, many schools were opened where reading and writing was taught. As the result of these processes the number of people who could read increased enormously demanding cheaper reading materials. Partially this demand was satisfied by libraries that were significantly changed in order to accommodate silent readers. Besides the improving of the features of the text format, such as composing lists of subjects arranged alphabetically, using of titles, chapters, capital letters, colored paragraph marks, and cataloging of manuscripts, the users of libraries were forbidden not only to talk, but even to whisper (Blake 101-103). The spread of literacy led to the invention of the printing press in the middle of fifteen century, an event that opened even greater opportunities to the readers, contributing to the Western civilization.
The tumultuous history speaks directly to our modern world in topics of language and literacy, like teaching children and adults how to read, the relationship between a text and its reader, and oral vs. written culture, to name only a few. When my classmates and I had the chance to visit the Department of Rare Books in Columbia University, I started pondering upon the great length of time for the development of writing and upon how restricted writing and reading were for so many centuries. Silent reading could not have existed as a part of the human intellect should all these preliminary steps have not taken place.
If we think about the continuous and indissoluble connection between reading and speaking, remembering that Aramaic and Hebrew used the same word for the two “different” actions, we can probably better understand how we relate to a text on a page in comparison with how the previous generations did. Humanity advanced from reading a text aloud towards inner utterance, thenceforth towards a text with a fixed system of graphems that can be full of information, but also (and most importantly) a springboard for the reader’s own inner reflection, connecting what he reads with his previous experience. The reader not only gives life to the “dead” text on a page, but he also brings his personal interpretation through his unique experience. Silent reading deprives us from one level of transmitting meaning (voice inflections, tone, volume, rhythm, accent, and color), but gives us a different way of understanding. It can be facilitated by punctuation alongside with previous experience that help a reader nowadays to construct the meaning of the text: as Winterowd states, “[t]he information brought to the text will make even blurred type more readable!” (70). He presents three cues in deriving meaning: grapophonic (connecting the written or printed symbols with the way words are pronounced), syntactic (the grammatical level) and semantic (60). Today, most of the readers derive meaning from a text without using their voice, but when the text is too difficult to apprehend, they start sounding it out. Nevertheless, these cues are mandatory in learning how to read and how to understand a text.
The history of reading is of a vital importance to humankind, if we realize that it repeats itself with every child and adult learning to read. Suffice to say, nobody is born with a reading ability, much less – silent reading. We all must acquire the alphabet first, slowly moving to syllables through vowels; the young reader’s first books are filled with words corresponding to images. The teacher makes the connection between the print and the oral, emphasizing the intonation that corresponds to the punctuation. Plain-voice reading of a student usually reflects little understanding of the text. The student, child or adult, struggles for some time with writing after dictation and several repetitions of each word in voice or sub-voice are needed before he can write it, but in this stage, words are morphing from oral to written and backwards without meaning. Another difficult step in teaching children how to write is the separation of words because they are inclined towards a certain scriptura continua (Saenger 2); the most plausible explanation is their inner connection with the continuous oral speech. The space between words not only facilitates meaning (and really long words slow us down or even “force” us sounding them out), but it also points toward the separation of words as units with a single meaning and pronunciation.
In conclusion, by comparing silent reading to oral utterance, the written text receives a new life and the relationship between the reader and the text becomes more personal. If we consider sound and voice belonging somehow more to an “outside” world, silent reading brings the text in our inner self, “next” to our own thoughts and experience, compelling their inter-action.

The Great Debate

For many years, scholars have argued upon which is the best approach to teach children to read. Two instructional approaches known as phonics and look-and-say have been the subject of the Great Debate for over a century gaining popularity at different times.
At the beginning of the 20th century educators agreed on the beginning reading methods, such as (1) emphasis on comprehension of the reading material from the beginning of reading, (2) stress on the silent reading, (3) reading of the stories about the every-day life that children can connect to their own experience, (4) encouraging to identify new words with the help of picture clues, (5) using phonics only in the remedial classes or implementing it very slowly while avoiding isolation and blending of sounds, (6) instructing children in small groups formed on their achievements in reading (Chall 13-15). Consequently, the look-and-say approach became predominant in teaching reading with the publication of basal-reading series such as Dick and Jane by Scott Foresman that were repetitive and highly predictable, emphasizing simple words that can be easily remembered.
Leonard Bloomfield, a distinguished linguist, criticized this approach in the early 1940s, and emphasized the learning of the letter-sound correspondence as the first step in instructing beginning readers. However, his theory was in the most part ignored until the success of Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read that defended learning of the alphabetic code as the first step in teaching reading (Chall 24). Flesch heavily criticized the prevailing methods of reading instruction and believed that the look-and-say approach is a “guessing game” where children try to guess words or wait for the teacher to identify them, and the real reading never starts because children easily confuse between such words as cow, horse, pig, sheep, and chicken (Flesch 16-20). He argues that for thousands of years, starting from the invention of the alphabet, people learned to read by memorizing the sound of each letter in the alphabet, but not memorizing the whole words as if they were logographs. He says that teaching of reading in the USA is “totally wrong and flies in the face of all logic and common sense” (Flesch 2). Furthermore, Flesch states that English is a purely phonetic system, but just with a few more exceptions in pronunciation than other languages that makes it possible to use phonics instruction starting by teaching words that spell regularly (12-13). Therefore, phonics instruction was accepted by parents as well as teachers that started embedding it into their classroom activities. Moreover, in many instances it was combined with writing, spelling, reading conventional basal and library books, and typing that resulted in appearing of other approaches, such as the Initial Teaching Alphabet, Moore’s Responsive Environment, Individualized Reading, the Language Experience approach, Programmed Learning and others (Chall 16).
Although the look-and-say and phonics approaches to reading instruction reflect very different underlying philosophies and stress very different skills, very few educators today would be strict advocates of either approach. Recent studies show that neither of these approaches produces high results when children are deprived of the reading material. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that reading performance for children remained stable despite the different approaches to reading education that have prevailed at different times for the last 30 years. But the strong relationship between NAEP reading scores and the access to print was revealed, and that indicates the importance of exposure to books (McQuillan 74). For example, McQuillan states that phonological awareness is largely the result of reading as well as a traditional basal method that produces better reading achievements in print-rich classrooms (43, 61). He believes that the key to improving reading among children lays in ensuring that they have enough meaningful reading material in their classrooms, libraries, and homes stating that “approaches heavy in print exposure are almost always superior (and no worse) than the alternatives” (McQuillan 61). This argument is continued in Parent’s Guide to Literacy for the 21th Century by Janie Hydrick where she introduces the notion of emergent literacy theory and emphasizes the crucial importance of literature-based reading programs and response to literature at home. Hydrick talks about opportunities for children to read and to listen to literature as well as frequent trips to libraries and book stores where trade books can be borrowed or purchased (Hydrick 48-54). Furthermore, she describes emergent literacy not merely as reading readiness, but as a complex idea of supportive environment that provides opportunities for children to practice different aspects of language and literacy, such as speaking, listening, writing, and reading, as a part of children’s daily lives at home as well as at school (Hydrick 42-43).
The approaches to teaching reading raised my interest because phonics instruction and the look-and-say method that govern reading education in the USA for decades were new ideas to me. I grew up learning the Ukrainian language that has exact correspondence between sounds and letters. Therefore, I was taught how to read through simply learning the alphabet and the correspondent sounds at first, and then recognizing the letters in the word, sounding them out, uniting them into syllables, and then into words. The phonics instructions were given mostly during the first year of school, and starting from the second grade I was practicing my reading through fables, folk tales, and rhymes. Only while reading Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and other good-night stories to the boy whom I used to baby-sit, I came across pattern books and found them interesting and melodic.
Literacy will become accessible to all students only when teachers learn to identify the individual needs of every student and try to use the most suitable way of instruction. While both approaches shown above emphasized the importance of literature (available for children at home and in libraries), the debate itself presented how crucial the methods of teaching are, calling for teachers’ personal gifts and capacities in order to find the proper balance. As questions to myself, would I extensively engage the phonics method in my teaching or would I also use the look-and-say method? In what proportion? Which one should come first? Or maybe we can use them in parallel? The answers are indeed very complex, pointing toward an idealistic personalized method: traditional phonics or look-and-say philosophies do not represent the aim itself, but they are only meth-odos (Greek for “on the road to”) and the “perfect recipe” for teaching one child could bring very little or no results whatsoever in another one. In another words, there cannot be a universally effective method. While the debate itself does not carry an answer, it does raise awareness on how important the preparation of a lesson is: only through his or her personal experience, knowing the weaknesses of a class in general and of a student in particular, can a teacher start pondering upon the appropriate balance between phonics and look-and-say in a lesson. For a teacher, the “right” response can only come after the “right” question and “correct” diagnosis of the class. Another important factor in teaching reading is including it in the greater picture of emergent literacy, a broader way of acknowledging children’s interaction with many other aspects of literacy, taking into consideration their predispositions and motivators.
Teaching reading should not be left exclusively for a “specialized” environment and tutor; on the contrary, overcoming the breach between school and home, learning and playing, we can benefit in our methods of teaching. Alphabet games, letters and food (like cereal or cake), rhymes, songs and images are only few examples of potential support in one’s endeavor to instructing reading.

Reader Response

Shakespeare’s great plays and Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy are two archetypal examples of understanding the world. They represent two different ways of thinking that are described by many psychologists and educators.
Blake describes two ways of apprehending reality, namely the narrative (fiction, poetry, plays) and paradigmatic (scientific, rational, abstract) modes of thought basing his differentiation on the theory of Elliot Eisner and Jerome Bruner. Eisner includes other arts besides literature in the narrative mode of knowing, calling it an aesthetic mode of knowing. The knowledge is acquired differently through these two modes of thought that “neither contradict nor corroborate the other” Bruner believes (qtd. in Blake 128): knowledge is created through narrative mode, and it is discovered through paradigmatic mode (Blake 125-126). Bruner states that the Western culture is closer acquainted with the paradigmatic thought based upon categorization and conceptualization than with the aesthetic mode that establishes knowledge through pleasure initiated by a form of art and through the structures created by this mode (e.g., a poem, a novel ) (Blake 126). In addition, the reading of informational and literary texts significantly varies: while the primary purpose of informational texts is to convey knowledge, resulted from observation, the approach to reading literary texts differed through years. Therefore, scholars distinguish three stages in a theory of literary criticism, such as: emphasis on the author and his or her aims (Old Criticism), stress on the autonomy of the work itself (New Criticism), and emphasis on the reader and his individual interpretation of a text (Reader Response) (Blake 143).
Reader Response theory lays in the heart of Louise Rosenblatt’s criticism of the old school that excluded human consciousness from the literary transaction. While emphasizing an active role of the reader in the construction of the meaning of the text, she introduces a transactional approach to explain the reading process based on the philosophy of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley. Rosenblatt explains the interaction between reader and text not as simply a linear phenomenon, but as “an ongoing process in which the elements and factors are, one might say, aspects of a total situation, each conditioned by and conditioning the other” (17). Particular stimuli of the text that reader responds to evoke emotions, feelings, associations, ideas, memories of the past experiences, allowing readers to engage into the active and dynamic process of creating personal meaning that becomes part of one’s literary experience. Furthermore, Rosenblatt differentiates between efferent and aesthetic reading: when the former is concerned with the information inferred from the text, the latter refers to the live-through experience of the text (Flynn 59). Likewise, Winterowd introduces the notion of determinate (or stable) and indeterminate (or unstable) meaning believing that deep comprehension of a text goes beyond simply imparting of information and extends to understanding of emotions and values (71). He uses the example of the word “pornography” concluding that even the meaning of one word is “blurred” and can be interpreted dissimilarly by different people, “let alone a complex text” (72).
However, these ideas are doubted by some scholars who believe that text has one, stable meaning, intended by the author. For example, Hirsch states that only a single interpretation is possible based on the logic and evidence found in text (Flynn 62). Rosenblatt as well as Winterowd opposes an autonomous nature of a text stating that reading is a complex social interaction where a poem is “an active process lived through during the relationship between a reader and a text” (21) where every reader brings their own understanding. She vividly describes the importance of students’ personal response to literature that can be expressed at the beginning as an emotional ambiguity, the first step towards rational understanding (Flynn 57). Furthermore, Rosenblatt views literature first of all as the source of enjoyment and satisfaction from reading (74) that can be destroyed by educators who “place the screen between the student and the book” (61) by imposing accepted ideas about literature while depriving them of personal encounter with a text. When a teacher encourages spontaneous responses that do not have to follow a particular form and accepts the importance of the personal relationship to a text, the new enthusiasts of literature are born who are not simply passive “spectator sports” audience.
The topic of Reader Response is particularly compelling to me because of one simple reason: I love literature and very often respond to it with smiles and tears. I believe that while reading and constructing the meaning of a text, a person discovers her or his own inner world, feelings, emotions, and the very essence of her or his being unless the meaning is imposed by teachers, critics’ reviews or even peers. I think that the best way to read is to start from the original work without any background knowledge about an author or a particular epoch, and only after the personal “acquaintance” with text, some additional information, and sharing with others can only deepen one’s understanding. How often do we hear exclamations like “I did not even think about that!” or “Now I understand it!” when the class discussions help to establish the meaning in a particular community of readers. It indicates the fluidity of meaning that, as Winterowd described it, “is once again not in the text, but part of group consensus” (73).
In addition, for centuries the question of the “true” meaning of a text has been the matter of concern for humankind. The best example would be the Biblical text that is believed by many to have the only stable meaning. People’s lives were at stake when they “fall” into heresy based on their own interpretation of the Bible.
Also, the understanding of modes of knowing and the transactional theory of reading is crucial in teaching practice. Educators can greatly facilitate children in learning how to read and to write when they point out the different forms of text as well as the variety of their purposes. For example, if children are asked to write a poem about their Christmas holidays, it can be very helpful to emphasize that usually poems are the reflections of one’s emotions and feelings, but not a report about how many presents they received. Besides, teachers can significantly influence students’ attitudes towards literature making it a precious part of their lives or, on the contrary, just the work that has to be done in order to receive a grade and then never return to it again. The careful selection of reading material that connects to students’ lives, a class where every opinion is appreciated, and the interesting activities with a text like a “Jeopardy” game or prediction of the end of a story can awake curiosity and love to literature.
In conclusion, reading is one of the fundamental elements of literacy, and the mastering of this ability, in conjunction with writing, is the essential quality that is necessary for productive functioning and integration in the 21st century society. The better this process is studied, the greater the chances educators understand it and effectively apply their findings in spreading the universal literacy.
 
Works Cited
Blake, Brett Elizabeth, and Robert W. Blake. Literacy Primer. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Print.

Chall, Jeanne S. “What the Debate is All About.” Learning to Read: the Great Debate. 3rd ed., Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996. 13-52. Print.

Flesch, Rudolf. “A Letter to Johnny’s Mother.” Why Johnny Can’t Read. 3rd ed., New York: Harper and Row, 1986. 1-21. Print.

Flynn, Elizabeth A. “Reconsiderations: Louise Rosenblatt and the Ethical Turn in Literary Theory.” College English 70.1 (2007): 52-68. Print.

Hydrick, Janie. A Parent’s Guide to Literacy for the 21st Century. Urbana: NCTE, 1996. Print.

Manguel, Alberto. “The Silent Readers.” A History of Reading. Viking, 1996. 41-53. Print.

McQuillan, Jeff. The Literary Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions. Fullerton: Heinemann, 1998. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. “The Poem as Event.” The Reader, the Text, the Poem: the Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. 6-21. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. “The Setting for Spontaneity.” Literature as Exploration. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983. 57-77. Print.

Saenger, Paul. “Introduction.” Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. 1-17. Print.

Winterwood, W. Ross. “To Read.” The Culture and Politics of Literacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 57-83. Print.

So you want to be a writer?

This poem reminds me of W. Ross Winterowd's words from The Culture and Politics of Literacy,
"[w]e have, in other words, forgotten that the best reason for writing is the pleasure which the writer derives from the act"(123). On the other hand, it undermines the belief that everybody can learn how to write unless they posses a special talent. I liked the poem a lot, but I am strongly disagree with its main statement. What do you think?


So you want to be a writer?

by Charles Bukowski


If it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything,
Don't do it.
Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut,
Don't do it.
If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen
Or hunched over your typewriter
Searching for words,
Don't do it.
If you're doing it for money or fame,
Don't do it.
If you're doing it because you want women in your bed,
Don't do it.
If you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again,
Don't do it.
If it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
Don't do it.
If you're trying to write like somebody else,
Forget about it.

If you have to wait for it to roar out of you,
Then wait patiently.
If it never does roar out of you,
Do something else.

If you first have to read it to your wife
Or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
Or your parents or to anybody at all,
You're not ready.

Don't be like so many writers,
Don't be like so many thousands of
People who call themselves writers,
Don't be dull and boring and
Pretentious, don't be consumed with self-love.

The libraries of the world have
Yawned themselves to sleep
Over your kind.
Don't add to that.
Don't do it.

Unless it comes out of
Your soul like a rocket,
Unless being still would
Drive you to madness or
Suicide or murder,
Don't do it.

Unless the sun inside you is
Burning your gut,
Don't do it.

When it is truly time,
And if you have been chosen,
It will do it by
Itself and it will keep on doing it
Until you die or it dies in you.

There is no other way.

And there never was.

The poem as event

Thank you so much for your participation and the interesting discussion that we had on Wednesday. I am very happy to complete this task, and just after that I realized how it is to lead a discussion :) Good luck to Meagan and Tara next week!

I embedded the discussion flyer lower. If you have any comments, please, feel free to annotate.

25 November 2009

Rosenblatt, Louise M. “The Poem as Event.” The Reader, the Text, the Poem: the Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. 6-21. Print.

In Chapter Two of her book, “The Poem as Event,” Rosenblatt describes the reading process and identifies its components, their functions and meaning. After examining the process of readers’ interpretation of the poem “It Bids Pretty Fair” by Robert Frost, she arrives at the following conclusions:

Ø The readers were active and dynamic;

Ø They paid attention to the images, feelings, attitudes, associations, and ideas that the words and their referents evoked;

Ø The readers referred to their past experiences evoking images, feelings, ideas that created the particular world of the reader built into the literary process;

Ø The interpretation of a poem is a critical and self-corrective process;

Ø The text of the poem fulfils two functions: stimulating (it activates the concepts that are connected with verbal symbols) and regulating (it helps the readers to select what to keep their attention on while interpreting the text).

To eliminate the confusion in critical theory Rosenblatt differentiates the terms “text” and “poem” stating that:

Ø “Text is a set or series of signs interpretable as linguistic symbols” (12).

Ø “Poem is the whole category of aesthetic transactions between readers and texts. It presupposes a reader actively involved with a text and refers to what he makes of his responses to the particular set of verbal symbols… It is an event in time” (12).

The author of the book illustrates further the reading process by giving examples of the reader’s interpretation of Shakespeare and the musical performance, stating that both text and reader are the essential components of this process: “A specific reader and a specific text at a specific time and place: change any of these, and there occurs a different circuit, a different event—a different poem” (14).

To illustrate the dynamics of the reading process, Rosenblatt introduces the idea of transaction that was developed by John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley that the author explains as “an ongoing process in which the elements and factors are, one might say, aspects of a total situation, each conditioned by and conditioning the other,” (17) but not a simple and linear interaction between reader and text. Furthermore, Rosenblatt strengthens the idea that “the living organism [reader] selects from its environment [text] the stimuli to which it will respond” (17), based on the transactional view, by the following examples:

Ø According to the Ames-Cantril experiments (transactional psychologists), the viewer describes the room as being rectangular although its shape is distorted because his perception depends on expectations and past experience.

Ø In ecological terms, man and environment are the part of each other. In other words, reader and text create an environment for the other during the reading process.

Ø Linguistic philosophers differentiate between an utterance and a speech act that reinforces Rosenblatt’s distinction between the text and the poem.

Rosenblatt concludes that reading process is the result of a complex social interaction where a poem is “an active process lived through during the relationship between a reader and a text” (21) creating a new world that becomes a part of the reader’s literary experience.

Questions:

1. What is “the true meaning” of a text? What are the criteria for “an accurate” interpretation of a text?

2. What makes one critic of, for example, a novel more authoritative for a reader than another one?

Phonics in 5 minutes

An interesting video on how to teach phonics in 5 minutes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1NZhWILJtY

Alphabetic Literacy

Viktoriia Dudar

Professor Barbara Gleason

Theories and Models of Literacy

21 October 2009

Alphabetic Literacy

Scholars make a distinction between alphabetic and non-alphabetic (restricted) literacies describing the former as the literacies that are based on the alphabet and the latter as those deriving from the logographic scripts. There is a thin line between the two; a good example would be the argument whether or not Semitic writing systems should be considered alphabetic: while Olson classifies them likewise, Blake states that “the term ‘alphabet’ – a word simply made up of the names for the first two letters of the Greek alphabet – should be applied only to the Greek system and to those scripts derived from it” (42). Moreover, different approaches exist about the importance of the invention of the alphabet, the intrinsic nature of its social and cognitive consequences, and the different characteristics of the alphabetic literacy as an autonomous phenomenon. Consequently, the evolution of the alphabet, the development of various alphabetic scripts, and the diverse theories about changes in human consciousness as a result of acquiring literacy will be discussed to better understand the concept of alphabetic literacy.

First of all, the modern alphabetic literacy is the result of a writing evolution that spans over thousands of years. Ignace Gelb differentiates four steps in its development, such as picture writing, followed by word-based writing, then sound-based syllabic writing, and concluding with the invention of the alphabet (Olson 9). The origins of writing systems can be traced back to the Sumerian cuneiform, the oldest script in the world. The clay objects, variously shaped (e.g., animals, jars), dating back to 8000 B.C., were discovered in lower Mesopotamia, and they are believed to be the earliest pictographic examples of human attempts to write. However, archeologists think that the major advancement in Sumerian script took place about 3200 B.C. when instead of using tokens, the signs were inscribed into the clay tablets and the phonographic principle (the use of a sign to represent a sound) was adopted. The first logographic form of writing emerged, containing about 1,200 characters represented by the geometric shapes and stylized pictures of objects. Although Sumerian script remained for the most part logographic, it was implemented by the Akkadians, and later by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, who significantly developed the phonographic properties of the script (Olson 10). The further development of the alphabet corresponds to the invention of Linear B, a Mycenaean Greek writing system that was based on the sound structure of the language. This syllabic script is thought to have been developed about 1400 B.C. and it consists of about 200 signs that represent phonetic and semantic values (Olson 11).

Furthermore, “the final stage in the evolution of writing systems was the discovery of the alphabetic principle, the procedure of breaking the syllables into its constituent consonantal and vowel sounds” (Olson 11). Thus, the Semitic 22- graph system invented by Phoenicians in the 2^nd millennium BC is the earliest-known alphabet. Sanskrit, Aramaic, Persian, Hebrew and Arabic scripts have developed from the Semitic writing system. The absence of signs representing vowel sounds, the notable characteristic of Semitic scripts, creates a subject for argument among scholars. Olson states that the Semitic script remains complete and unambiguous even with unrepresented vowel sounds because they are used to distinguish mostly “grammatical rather than lexical meaning” (12), so it can be considered an alphabet per se. On the other hand, Blake argues that the Semitic script is a rather unvocalized syllabary with ambiguous symbols that makes reading “a difficult, often puzzling, and laborious task” (43). Despite this divergence, both scholars agree that the adoption of the Semitic script to the Greek language, which occurred sometime between 1000 – 900 BC, can be considered one of the greatest achievements of human culture. The Greeks borrowed letters from the Semitic writing system to represent consonant sounds, and used six other Semitic signs that did not occur in the Greek language to stand for vowel sounds.

The Greek alphabet became a model for the Romans who borrowed it through the Etruscans (a civilization in the Tuscany area of central Italy) to form the 23-letter Latin alphabet. Latin language remained the main medium or instrument of state and scholastic matters until the end of the Middle Ages and the liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Church until the beginning of the 20^th century. However, the shortage of writing materials, the lack of standardization of writing, the using of scriptura continua (a script without word separation or any punctuation marks) led to a phenomenon where the ability to read and write belonged to the narrow circle of church clergy and specially trained scribes who often were slaves.

In addition, another writing system, namely the Cyrillic alphabet, derived from the Greek language. It was invented by two brothers, Saint Cyril and Methodius, who spoke fluently the Macedonian dialect of the Slavs around Thessalonica (their home town) in order to have liturgical services and preach to the people in their own tongue. The brothers and their students have not just invented the alphabet, but they also translated the first Slavonic Bible and Slavonic service books to take into their mission to Moravia and Bulgaria in 863 A.D. Church Slavonic still remains the liturgical language in many modern Eastern Orthodox Churches and is easily understood by Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, and other nations in Central and Eastern Europe, Balkans and the northern part of Asia. According to Timothy Ware, an English theologian, Slavic Christians could hear the Gospel in their native language and “enjoyed a precious privilege, such as none of the peoples of Western Europe shared at this time” (83). Only the invention of printing technology with movable type by Johannes Gutenberg and publishing of the 42-line Bible in 1455 made it possible in the Western nations. According to Havelock, “alphabetic literacy, in order to overcome the limitation of method and so achieve its full potential, had to await the invention of the printing press”(qtd. in Blake 49). This novice technology triggered the significant transformations in the Western World such as the fast spread of literacy, the expansion of libraries and universities, the development of modern science, the Protestant Reformation and the publishing of the first Bibles in vernacular tongues in the West (the Luther’s Bible in 1534, and the King James Bible in 1611). These changes led to the establishing of different European language as the national tongues at the end of the18th and the beginning of the 19^th centuries. For example, the process of differentiating of the 26 letters in the Modern English language was completed no sooner than the 19^th century.

The 20^th century is characterized by the invention of the new electronic technology that drastically changed human reading and writing habits and marked the beginning of the so-called Information Era. However, the invention of alphabet “initiated what printing and electronics only continued, the physical reduction of dynamic sound to quiescent space, the separation of the word from the living present, where alone real, spoken words exist” (Ong 22). So, Ong, as well as Goody, and Olson, asserts that the alphabet possesses the unique qualities, such as arbitrariness, opacity, regularity, efficiency and autonomy on the opposite to the restricted literacies (Brandt 23). That is to say that the use of letters that represent phonemes in the alphabetic writing is much more efficient than the use of graphs in logographic scripts because the meaning of the words is represented symbolically, but not iconically. As a result, the number of symbols in logographic and syllabic scripts can reach a several thousands and ought to be memorized in order to communicate. For example, a literate Chinese speaker operates about four thousand symbols, and it imposes the problem of ambiguity that makes it more difficult to decipher language (Olson 13). However, when talking about the process of silent reading Saenger suggests the opposite, “the Chinese graphic tradition provides optimal conditions for rapid lexical access and allows Chinese children to develop silent reading at an earlier age than in Burma or in the West” (2).

In addition, the consequences of the alphabetic literacy on the cognitive and social levels are the subject of dispute among scholars. Goody, Ong, and Olson believe that the acquisition of the alphabetic literacy leads to substantial changes in the human consciousness opposite to mastering non-alphabetic literacies like Chinese (Collins 78). They agree that the alphabet transforms human thinking, relationship to language and representation of traditions. Literate people are capable of rational, abstract thinking that fosters metalinguistic awareness, detaching of meaning from context, and moving from collective to individualistic society (Collins 78). This school of thought propagates the Great Cognitive Divide theory of literacy that has many supporters as well as critics. On one hand, some scholars believe that “the alphabet literally changed the cognitive and psychological processes of the Western mind” or “the alphabet and literacy provided novel ‘models’ for thinking about language and ways of using language in writing as well as in speaking” (Blake 70). On the other hand, critics are challenging the idea of the alphabetic literacy superiority over the non-alphabetic literacies (the drastic differences between the Western and non-Western world). In particular, Gough, using the data from Ancient India and China, argues that the non-alphabetic literacy was widely spread in those countries as well as in Ancient Greece. Furthermore, China developed a rich historiographic tradition (not myth), and systematic science without alphabetic literacy. In addition, the process of printing with the movable type was invented by Bi Sheng four centuries earlier than in the West (Collins 79). This argument is further complicated by the diverse opinions about the autonomous nature of the alphabetic literacy, and the different points of view on the literate versus oral traditions. For instance, while Goody argues that “a single literacy was responsible for the shift from preliterate to literate cultures”(qtd. in Blake 24), Street criticizes this idea and asserts that literacy is always embedded in cultural practices and cannot be detached from social situations (Collins 80). Finally, the argument that only literacy fosters abstract thinking is disapproved by Scribner and Cole who suggest that the cognitive consequences associated with literacy are the result of social practices such as schooling (Brandt 25).

In conclusion, the diversity of theories about the development and the consequences of the alphabetic literacy demonstrate the high interest in scholastic circles toward this concept. The profound study and the rethinking of literacy can help to improve the methods of teaching writing and reading to children as well as to adults. In addition, it will foster the spread of universal literacy that is one of the most important struggles of the modern society.

Works Cited

Blake, Brett Elizabeth, and Robert W. Blake. Literacy Primer. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Print.

Brandt, Deborah. “Strong Text: Opacity, Autonomy, and Anonymity.” Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers, and Texts. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. 13-32. Print.

Collins, James. “Literacy and Literacies.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 75-93. JSTOR. Web. 13 Oct. 2009.

Olson, David R. “Writing.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Web Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2009. Web. 2 Sept. 2009. .

Ong, Walter J. “Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought.” Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 19 – 31. Print.

Saenger, Paul. Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. 1-17. Print.

Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Print.