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Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

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Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#31

Post by taeric »

tuukkah wrote: post #7
gus_massa wrote: post #3

It would be nice to replicate in other languages. In Spanish and German, reading is almost phonetic, unlike English. Anyway, from my experience with my daughter, the step from single letters to silabes is difficult.

You should think "the step from single sounds to syllables", and the way to do that is to begin with the easy syllables like "tu", "mi", "el" (not unlike the multiplication or addition tables) before moving to longer ones. [And note that M alone is not "em", it has to be "m" when learning to read - a common pedagogical mistake! M + I makes "mi" not "emi", so M must be "m".] At least that's how children are taught in…

I contest this. There is no correct "step from" in this. There is a post-hoc explanation for why a lot of things work. And there is some benefit in regularity. But most of this is, as stated, post hoc.

Consider, how do you read "f=ma", or "e=mc^2"? Why don't those follow the same rules? They use the same symbols as our alphabets, after all?

Or consider "do re mi" is pronounced differently from "do re me". And, amusingly, most people will not read those correctly. This doesn't rob the names of the notes as meaningless. Nor does it mean that they are not taught correctly. But you learn to interact with the symbols. Not merely transcribe them between representations.

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#32

Post by aleqs »

anonymars wrote: post #23
aleqs wrote: post #18

Somewhat off-topic but related - doing a lot of AI-assisted coding lately, multiple projects at the same time. I'm basically in 15 hour loops of reviewing code/output and creating prompts, switching to the next project while Claude (and others) work. I noticed an almost dyslexia emerging where I'm thinking of the prompt/instructions while typing, then I look at what I typed and it's not what I was thinking - sometime…

> I'm thinking of the prompt/instructions while typing, then I look at what I typed and it's not what I was thinking > I'm basically in 15 hour loops When does...sleeping...happen?

It happens, but I know it's not enough, and I semi-regularly dream about my projects and AI coding at this point. I do take breaks as well, for food/showers/etc, so not as crazy as it sounds - though I try to line up any breaks with periods when the bots are working on something long/hard..

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#33

Post by arjie »

What I would like very much is a 'runbook' of techniques in pedagogy. I've read a couple of the books in the space hoping for something and it seems like all of them have philosophical content. The Intentional Teacher is generally pretty good with motivating examples and underlying theory but I'm just looking for a large number of techniques. If anyone has things to share on this front I'd appreciate hearing.

I imagine some kind of teacher training handbook or something. I'm pretty good with rote practice and mechanical repetition, so if there is a list out there of "in case of X, do Y" I will be able to memorize it. Do share if you know what I'm talking about.

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#34

Post by HPsquared »

zerof1l wrote: post #12

It would be interesting to see a study comparing languages where writing encodes sounds like English versus languages where writing encodes meaning, like Chinese. And also how a person’s visual and auditory capabilities relate to reading. Because languages like English need both I think. I’m learning Japanese, and I’ve started learning Chinese characters, both their meanings and how to read them. Reading them feels d…

English does encode meaning in the spelling, and the connection between spelling and pronunciation is loose at best.

The spelling of a word is more connected to the meaning than it is to the pronunciation.

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#35

Post by mjburgess »

arjie wrote: post #33

What I would like very much is a 'runbook' of techniques in pedagogy. I've read a couple of the books in the space hoping for something and it seems like all of them have philosophical content. The Intentional Teacher is generally pretty good with motivating examples and underlying theory but I'm just looking for a large number of techniques. If anyone has things to share on this front I'd appreciate hearing. I imagi…

Teaching requires simulating the thought process and emotional state of learners. And then modelling the appropriate thought process to them, repairing their misunderstanding, and managing their cognitive load and other emotions.

Outside of relatively narrow domains, I'm not sure a runbook makes any sense here. People are not, in this sense, machines.

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#36

Post by tuukkah »

phkahler wrote: post #30
tuukkah wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that only applies if learning to read in English. In a more phonemic writing system, if you can read, you can read any unfamiliar word too. This way, even a young child can read anything to quickly acquire more vocabulary unrelated to what their parents ever acquired.

>> In a more phonemic writing system, if you can read, you can read any unfamiliar word too. You mean pronounce the word. Reading is supposed to include comprehension.

No, comprehension is again orthogonal to reading as it is needed in spoken language too. Remember: everybody's (unless you have a severe speech or hearing impairment as a baby) first language is a spoken language, and to extend it to a written language you will have to learn (be taught) an artificial orthography to map to and from. You can know a lot of vocabulary before learning to read (if you ever do). In a language with a phonemic writing system, your sets of spoken and written vocabulary are the same, whereas in English they only overlap. In both cases, knowing a word is orthogonal to knowing its meaning(s).

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#37

Post by arjie »

mjburgess wrote: post #35
arjie wrote: post #33

What I would like very much is a 'runbook' of techniques in pedagogy. I've read a couple of the books in the space hoping for something and it seems like all of them have philosophical content. The Intentional Teacher is generally pretty good with motivating examples and underlying theory but I'm just looking for a large number of techniques. If anyone has things to share on this front I'd appreciate hearing. I imagi…

Teaching requires simulating the thought process and emotional state of learners. And then modelling the appropriate thought process to them, repairing their misunderstanding, and managing their cognitive load and other emotions. Outside of relatively narrow domains, I'm not sure a runbook makes any sense here. People are not, in this sense, machines.

Thank you for responding. My experience is different. A friend of mine shared an anecdote of his daughter not differentiating between two of something and three of something. Her grandfather, visiting from far away, is a child psychologist and after a short while with her and the right methods she reliably did so. The methods themselves weren't magic or highly tuned. They were actually a selection from a recipe book of techniques he had developed over decades of experience. It struck me that this must be trainable.

My experience with most things that appear to require holistic knowledge is that techniques do work. It's why education is scalable: you cannot reliably identify hundreds of thousands of individuals capable of modeling learners reliably. Teacher training programs do improve outcomes by training teachers on techniques.

Identifying the right techniques that work across humans is obviously very hard, but we have found quite a few. We know that 'phonics' works better for reading than 'guess the word', as an example.

People do behave mechanically in many ways. The game of basketball is not mechanical, but the training that makes the best players has many mechanical aspects. My wife is an artist and her work isn't mechanical, but gaining mastery over painting has a massive amount of mechanical work. My experience is that almost all things that appear to require some kind of gestalt comprehension have sub-components that can be mechanized.

In any case, The Intentional Teacher mentions quite a few. An obvious one from the first few pages is that children have more complex play in a sufficiently small space which they can fully model. It may seem obvious, but also obvious is the counter-version of "children have more complex play when they have unlimited space and a large number of novel things to work with". But only one of these obvious things is true. Hence, I'm looking for more such "rules of learning" so to speak.

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#38

Post by tuukkah »

arjie wrote: post #33

What I would like very much is a 'runbook' of techniques in pedagogy. I've read a couple of the books in the space hoping for something and it seems like all of them have philosophical content. The Intentional Teacher is generally pretty good with motivating examples and underlying theory but I'm just looking for a large number of techniques. If anyone has things to share on this front I'd appreciate hearing. I imagi…

Practical pedagogy is called didactics and primary school teachers (should) learn a lot of it: after all, a child's brain is still quite undeveloped and you cannot teach them like you would teach a peer or yourself. E.g. you cannot teach grammar rules but you can teach a foreign language through singing, learning games etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didactic_method

These approaches work for most children most of the time, but when they don't, you have special education teachers who have a different degree in diagnosing (debugging) learning difficulties big and small as well as implementing interventions etc. The service they provide is also called remedial education [and it's especially cool when a primary school teacher and a special education teacher work in a big classroom together, the latter immediately bringing back to speed anyone who grasped something slower than the others]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedial_education

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#39

Post by tuukkah »

taeric wrote: post #28
tuukkah wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand. In a largely phonetic language, almost everyone learns to read in one school semester, after which it's a fully solved problem - no spelling bees or anything. Peculiarly, you don't need spelling bees either when learning English later. ("Contronyms" and "words" are orthogonal to reading as they apply to spoken language too (and it's very much automatic).)

I think you don't understand the various orthographies. Again, you base the claim that English is not phonetic based on confusions in how different phonemes are represented using the 26 symbols of our alphabet. A thing that is defined as symbols representing phonemes. You could also have a syllabary or a logography. The syllabary would still be phonetic, of course. A logographic writing system is truly not phonetic.…

Of course, you don't have to believe me; you could also read about the orthographic depth of English vs other languages on Wikipedia or something. "In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: from the rules of pronunciation, one is able to pronounce the word correctly.[1] That is to say, shallow (transparent) orthographies, also called phonemic orthographies, have a one-to-one relationship between its graphemes and phonemes, and the spelling of words is very consistent. Examples include Japanese kana, Hindi, Lao (since 1975), Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, Latin, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Welsh. [--] English is unusual because it combines deep orthography, with multiple possible sounds for many letters.[2] This makes it among the most difficult languages in the world to learn to read." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth

Re: Analysis points to a unexpected cause of reading difficulties

#40

Post by taeric »

tuukkah wrote: post #39
taeric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't understand the various orthographies. Again, you base the claim that English is not phonetic based on confusions in how different phonemes are represented using the 26 symbols of our alphabet. A thing that is defined as symbols representing phonemes. You could also have a syllabary or a logography. The syllabary would still be phonetic, of course. A logographic writing system is truly not phonetic.…

Of course, you don't have to believe me; you could also read about the orthographic depth of English vs other languages on Wikipedia or something. "In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: from the rules of pronunciation, one is able to pronounce the word correctly.[1] That is to say, shallow (transparent) orthographies, also called phonemic orthographies, have a one-to-one relationship…

From the intro of the page you link: "The orthographic depth of an alphabetic orthography indicates the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence."

So, sure, if you want to discuss about how English orthography is deep, go for it. I won't even really disagree. Quite the contrary.

The opening claim was that it wasn't phonetic, though. That is a different thing.

It is funny seeing Japanese as the first example in your quote, as it has both a phonetic syllabary (two, actually) and a non-phonetic logography. That is, you literally have to learn to read a non-phonetic orthography in order to read Japanese!

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