Ovsyannikova E. V.
Kandidat Nauk, PhD in Linguistics,
The teacher of English, lycée №99, Zaporozhye 
Ovsyannikov V.V., 
Kandidat Nauk, PhD in Linguistics, Associate Professor

 Reading problems of junior pupils
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Аннотація: стаття присвячена дослідженню міжнародного досвіду тлумачення поняття «грамотність» на прикладі результатів спостережень і експериментальних розвідок у цьому напрямку, виконаних Національною Академією Наук США. Завдяки Інтернету ці епохальні результати під назвою “Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children” зробилися матеріалом дискусій між науковцями різних напрямків і дисциплін. Стаття пропонує вийти за межи традиційного тлумачення грамотності, як вміння читати та писати, та працювати з цим поняттям з урахуванням інтердисциплінарного когнітивного простору, який забезпечують такі відомі наукові галузі, як психологія, стилістика декодування, соціолінгвистика та критичний дискурс-аналіз, так і галузі, статус яких уявляється ще ендемічним: акмєологія, соціоніка та сінергетика. Стаття знаходить багато спільного між виводами американських науковців та ідеологією Нової української школи. Розширене поняття грамотності потрібне для подальшого розвитку концепції школи особистісного розвинення.
Preliminaries: Teaching English to first-, 2d- , 3d- and 4th –graders made me draw a few conclusions about the problems facing teachers who are expected to raise the standards of literacy. The observations offered here are based on the points covered in the 1998 US National Academy of Sciences’ report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children available on the Internet. 
As a teacher of lycée № 99 of Zaporozhye I am part of the team that tries to put into execution the concept of “school of personal development”. One of the crucial terms that needs revision within this approach is that of “literacy”. Literacy is traditionally seen as the ability to read and write. As world experience shows the term “literacy” must not be taken for granted if we assume that literacy is to be taught in order to acquire skills of “how to do things with words”.
The aim of the article is to draw the attention of teachers and parents to the fact that progress in the sphere of modern means of communication takes its toll on reading skills, and this negative trend should be dealt with effectively on the basis of a commitment to a real interdisciplinary bond and to bridging the gap between theory and life by making the students see the point of getting things done. 
The urgency of the problem is to be seen against the backdrop of the increasing gap between the falling standards of literacy and the requirements of job offers.
The object under consideration: reading skills of junior pupils.
Key terms: phonemic awareness, word recognition, language, interpretation, language play, culture, family, alexithymia, school of personal development. 
Theoretical background: psychology (L. S. Vygotsky, Steven Pinker etc.), stylistics of decoding (I. V Arnold, G. Leech, R. Carter, P. Simpson etc.), critical discourse analysis (D. Machin and A. Mayr, A. Mooney and B. Evans etc.)
Methods and organization of research: bibliographical work, stylistic, grammatical, phonetic and sociolinguistic analysis of academic achievement of junior pupils; interviews of parents and discussions of the problem with colleagues.
The results of research can be summed up in the following points:
1. There are good reasons to believe that the appearance of the new means of communication (the Internet, social networks, personal computer, bloggers, mobile phones, the inescapable mass media etc.) have intensified the flow of information and as a result it had a powerful backlash in the form of a dramatic fall of reading skills:
“Students read texts and emails and Facebook posts throughout the day. They are certainly reading. However, they no longer report reading much literature as part of their reading for pleasure. Certain types of reading seem to be going out of fashion among university students. They are now more likely to spend time on a “visualized world” [Schewe, 2004: 82].
2. The 1998 US National Academy Sciences’ epoch-making report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, while recognizing the fact, puts an exorbitant emphasis on early phonemic awareness (children’s conscious awareness that oral words are composed of individual sounds or phonemes). Taking for granted the early phonemic awareness foreign language classes have successfully demonstrated the skills of children in this sphere provided the children are given a loving plunge into the intricacies of transcription versus spelling (English has 26 letters and at least 40 sounds).
3. Far more complicated are the bounds of lexical, stylistic and cultural word recognition skills that are often underdeveloped by the time of school age. Alexithymia (literally means "no words for emotions") is getting to be a visible presence in the teaching of literacy in the form of constricted imaginal processes, evidenced by a scarcity of fantasies.
4. Parents seem to be poor contributors to the development of literacy of children: most of them treat children to cartoons and different electronic gadgets rather than read books to them. Here comes the paradox familiar to many teachers. Very few parents are interested in such things as: “Playing with toys may well involve language, but it also requires physical activity. Ideology is not just expressed in language; it is found in every aspect of our lives, including the way children interact with toys” [Mooney, 2015: 54]. So, it would be logical to suggest that teachers who are theoretically more prepared must be exercising more influence on students than their parents. Deplorably, the opposite is true: if the authority of the teacher is not backed up by parents, even the most vigorous efforts on the part of teachers are likely to fail. The reason for the paradox was once formulated by Eric Berne: “Parents in all parts of the world teach their children manners, which means that they know the proper greeting, eating, emunctory, courting and mourning rituals, and also how to carry on topical conversations with appropriate strictures and reinforcements. The strictures and reinforcements constitute tact or diplomacy, some of which is universal and some local” [Berne, 1964: 17]. The paradox of an amateur (parent) dwarfishing a professional (teacher) emerges in psychology in different forms. When L. S. Vygotsky claims that the theatre faced the problem of the thought behind the words before psychology did, he implies that theatre (Amateur) outran psychology (Professional) in discovering elusive thought behind simple words [Vygotsky 1934: 123]. 
5. The teaching aimed at producing the ‘right’ Reader recognizes the difference between what is said and what is meant: “To be able to read is to be able to decode writing. The reader has to have an interpretation of the text or parts of it. For traditionalists, interpretation is a matter of what goes on in the mind. If readers know the language, can decode writing, and have the requisite background ‘facts’ to draw the inevitable inferences any writing requires, they can construct the ‘right’ interpretation in their heads. And this ‘right’ interpretation is the same for all competent readers. There are ‘fancy’ interpretations of texts like poems, riddles, novels and sacred texts. But to read is to have in one’s head a ‘basic’ interpretation” [Gee, 2012: 38 - 39]. 
James Paul Gee offers to look into real literacy on the example of “The aspirin bottle problem”. The text on the aspirin bottle says:
Warning: Keep this and all medication out of the reach of children. As with any drug, if you are pregnant or nursing a baby, seek the advice of a health professional before using this product. In the case of accidental overdosage, contact a physician or poison control center immediately.
The text on the aspirin bottle means:
You who this warning is primarily addressed to already know you should not give adult medication to children, or take certain medication when pregnant or nursing, or take an “overdosage”. You already know in fact that drugs like this one are potent medicine that can do harm. But if you, through negligence, act stupidly and so against your knowledge (as we all do sometimes), do not blame us, we warned you. If you are not this sort of person, then you probably are not reading or at least paying attention to this label, but do not let your lawyer say in court we did not warn you (officially speaking). If you are unlucky sensitive to this drug and even a small amount harms you, we did say anything over 8 is technically speaking an “overdosage”, and so you were warned too. We certainly do not want you to hurt yourself, and we would like the world to be a nice mainstream sort of place. In fact, both of these things favor our selling more of this medicine, which is our primary interest.
The example demonstrates the difference between ‘fancy interpretations’ and ‘real life interpretations’. This difference is apparent to every teacher: “The text’s functional significance as discourse acts as a gateway to its interpretation. While linguistic features do not themselves constitute a text’s ‘meaning’, an account of linguistic features nonetheless serves to ground a stylistic interpretation and to help explain why, for the analyst, certain types of meaning are possible” [Simpson, 2010: 2].
This understanding of literacy takes the process of word recognition from “teacher – student” cognitive space of the class-room to “student – life” cognitive space that abounds in challenges comparable to those that someone who got used to swimming in the pool discovers when he finds himself in stormy seas.
A must-read for teachers interested in reading between the lines texts from everyday life is “Language, Society and Power” by Annabelle Mooney and Betsy Evans. The book offers a wonderful journey into social media and newspapers, cartoons, YouTube and television [Mooney, 2015].
6. All the reformers of education have always insisted on the necessity of ‘liberating’ the mind of students and setting up ‘positive environment’ to bolster up the results of learning. The pursuit of liberty in different institutions of the USA has always carried the weight of a relentless crusade since the days of The Declaration of American Independence. It is necessary to point out that the idea of liberty is central not only to the Americans, but to the whole Anglo-Saxon world. It appears in different dresses, but rings everywhere. Every native speaker of English knows the idea even if he did not give much thought to Kipling’s lines from “Norman and Saxon”:
The Saxon is not like us, Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
However, liberty has a wide range of options in the Anglo-Saxon community. In some educational institutions it is combined with harsh discipline. It is worth remembering “The Lords of Discipline” by Pat Conroy, or the Spartan ways pursued in such famous British private schools as Eton and Harrow. But the idea of liberty runs supreme in Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 
At the same time the routine of school life has not changed much since the days of Tom Sawyer:
 Mr. Walters fell to "showing off," with all sorts of official bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. The librarian "showed off" - running hither and thither with his arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority delights in. The young lady teachers "showed off" - bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. The young gentlemen teachers "showed off" with small scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to discipline - and mo st of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up at the library, by the pulpit; and it was business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times (with much seeming vexation). The little girls "showed off" in various ways, and the little boys "showed off" with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeur - for he was "showing off," too.
(Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 4) 
Despite Mark Twain’s irony in the passage above, American institutions of learning show a much greater degree of independence and liberty than we get used to in this country, and henceforth a greater combat readiness to meet modern challenges. That’s why any effort in the direction of giving schools more independence is followed with sincere interest on the part of Ukrainian teachers.
New ideas have a stunning variety in American schools and colleges. Examples are numerous, and we can’t help mentioning at least one of them. This is the policy of “affirmative consent” that paved its way into American political terminology and began to be associated with the Antioch College. 
2018 saw an article in The New York Times (the 24th of February) about a curious contribution of the Antioch College to the American culture: 
In 1990, Antioch College students pioneered its affirmative sexual consent policy, formulating a document now called the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy. It was mocked by much of the rest of the world. Since then, campuses across the country have caught up. Education about consent is now part of college life.
In its most updated form, the S.O.P.P. is an eight-page document that spells out the tenets of “affirmative consent.” In each stage of a sexual interaction, consent must be verbally requested and verbally given, the policy says — and “silence conveys a lack of affirmative consent.” Before a national audience, the school and the women who created the policy were portrayed as endemic of a politically correct culture run amok that was trying to desexualize sex.
The reality may be quite the opposite.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/style/antioch-college-sexual-offense-prevention-policy.html
This little quotation allows us to draw important parallels between the dominant educational trend in the USA and the experiment some of the Ukrainian schools are now taking part in: both countries attribute tremendous importance to liberating the mind of students from the ties of myth, prejudice, bigotry, selfishness, arrogance, malice and pride.
7. Last but not least is the enthusiastic approval of the authors of this article of the central place of English in any educational reform. This is perhaps the only point where we find absolute consensus of the teaching community: English must be taught at school in such a way so that all the graduates should be able to speak English fluently BEFORE they enroll at Universities. Every teacher must disseminate among his or her students a very important idea: English will help them not only to make a career, but will keep them afloat and give them a powerful backing in the struggle for survival, while the inability to speak English fluently dooms them to the ghetto of losers. 
Conclusions:
1. Raising Competent Readers – the main problem facing junior school – is inseparably linked to another problem: that of liberating the mind of students from entanglements that may impede their way to learning.
2. Irrespective of whether the fall of reading and writing skills should correlate with the rising standards of computer literacy, the school is expected to bridge the gap by making pupils love books. Without that love no true literacy, aimed at self-improvement and bringing good to society, is possible.
3. Literacy should be reassessed in a broader context of combining reading and writing skills with enlarging children’s knowledge in the sphere of history, geography and masterpieces of fiction, music and art within a natural interdisciplinary alliance backed up by the corresponding syllabus and programmes.
4. In Ukrainian terms, Competent Readers require a new approach to teaching English: FLUENT English must be placed into the centre of a school reform. Close reading with commentaries on the figurative use of words shows promising results of 4th-graders with adapted versions of O. Henry, Conan Doyle, R. Kipling and other famous authors. 
5. The academic process requires an upgrade of bibliographic resources that rely upon a broader understanding of the concept of literacy which is still deplorably given a narrow treatment; such treasures as The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History should now be incorporated into the teaching process as part of the school effort to produce intelligent readers.
6. It would be wrong to dismiss those disciplines that have not gained a scientific status yet (synergetics, acmeology, socionics etc.) as having no future in the academic world just because their status is ‘endemic’. These disciplines may be a corollary to the crisis of literacy dwelt upon by the National Academy of the USA as well as pioneers to the unexplored worlds of education.
7. The “school of personal development” postulates the optimistic scenario that will pave the way to real literacy guiding the student into the world of self-improvement and desire to excel and be a useful citizen. 
Literature
1. Austin J. L. How to Do Things with Words. – Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 1975. – 169 p.
2. Berne, Eric. Games People Play. The Psychology of Human Relationships. – Penguin books, 2016. – 176 p.
3. Gee, James Paul. Social Linguistics and Literacies : Ideology in Discourses. – Routledge : London and New York, 2012. – 242 p.
4. Machin, David, Mayr, Andrea. How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis : A Multimodal Introduction. – London: SAGE, 2012. – 236 p. 
5. Mooney, Annabelle, Evans, Betsy. Language, Society and Power : An Introduction. – London and New York: Routledge, 2019. – 262 p.