Frank Smith is a psycho-linguist and dilettante extraordinaire. What I get from him is the nerve and audacity to examine various topics and not be afraid to reach my own informed opinion. You don't need to stand in awe of conventional academic dogma, or dogmatic people.
Below are a number of extracts. They come from just the preface and the first introductory chapter, so there's a wealth of thought there. One of the most powerful may be found on page 2:
Examination of a wide range of topics relevant to reading not only leaves little to be said about reading itself, it leaves little to be added about how reading should be taught. Instructional implications become self-evident.
From Reading Without Nonsense
- p viii Reading is not easily accomplished if you are nervous about your performance
- p viii Just as it is not difficult to make a book unreadable, so it is easy to make learning to read impossible
- p ix It is only through reading that children learn to read
- p ix Children can learn to read only through materials and activities that make sense to them, that they can relate to what they already know or want to know
- p ix The universal concern should change from what teachers should do to what teachers should know
- p x Learning itself is nothing but the endeavour to make sense
- p2 An analysis of reading also gives . . . a deeper understanding of . . . subjects like science or mathematics
- p 3-4 The training of teachers does not invariably encourage them to make their own decisions
- p4 All methods of teaching reading work
- p4 No method [of teaching reading] succeeds with all children
- p5 Without understanding, instruction is founded on superstition
- p5 'Breaking down reading' makes reading more difficult because it makes nonsense out of what should be sense
- p5 To learn to read children need to read
- p5-6 Two basic necessities for learning to read are the availability of interesting material that makes sense to the learner and an understanding adult as a guide
- p6 Children cannot be taught to read
- p6 A teacher's responsibility is not to teach children to read but to make it possible for them to learn to read
- p6 There is nothing unique about reading physiologically, visually or linguistically
- p7 [There is an] unwarranted assumption that anything that is not specifically taught cannot involve much learning
- p8 We do not have to train children to learn, or even account for their learning; we have to avoid interfering with it
- p8 Children who have learned to comprehend spoken language . . . and who can see sufficiently well . . . have already demonstrated sufficient language, visual acuity and learning ability to learn how to read
- p8 Learning to read is easy for a child - or should be, were it not for the fact that it is easy for an adult to make learning to read difficult
- p8 A child who can see, and who can comprehend speech, cannot be a failure at reading because of a 'specific learning disability', or minimal brain dysfunction, or dyslexia, or any of the other terms that are used to conceal ignorance about why some children fail to learn to read
- p8-9 Children will fail to learn to read who do not want to read, who cannot make sense of it, or who find the price of learning too high
- p9 Skill in reading actually depends on using the eyes as little as possible
- p9 The more we try to memorize as we read, the less we are likely to comprehend or remember
- p9 Meaning is not something that a reader or listener gets from language, but something that is brought to language
- p9 Reading is not 'decoding to sound' and . . . children cannot learn to read by memorizing phonic rules
- p10 Readers are not passive recipients of meaning from print, but must predict if they are to comprehend
On the 8th of September, 2019, I find another copy of the book (second edition 1985) at a second-hand book sale. Just $2 !
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