Excerpted from Chapter 1 of Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers, by Louisa Cook Moats, Ed.D.

Copyright © 2000 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be quoted, reproduced, or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

In most colleges and graduate programs, language is studied by future linguists, speech teachers, actors, singers, or anthropologists. Seldom has language study been required of teachers, except in a general format designed not to overload the novice with too much detail. In such general courses on language development, teachers are often left on their own to find the connection between textbook information and instruction of children. The practical impact of understanding linguistics is seldom stated or illustrated. This book was written to alter that tradition and to show that language study is indispensable for teachers of reading, writing, speaking, and listening — the "language arts."

The aim of this book is to make language structure accessible for teachers of reading and writing so that they can use instructional programs with confidence and flexibility. The teacher who understands language and how children are using it can give clear, accurate, and organized information about sounds, words, and sentences. The teacher who knows language will understand why students say and write the puzzling things that they do and will be able to judge what a particular student knows and needs to know about the printed word. Literacy is an achievement that rests on all levels of linguistic processing, from the elemental sounds to the most overarching structures of text. To help the teacher deliver successful instruction, this book of necessity contains a great deal of information about the lower levels of language (units smaller than the word, such as sounds, syllables, letters, some morphemes) from which the higher levels (units larger than the word, such as phrases, sentences, and paragraphs) are constructed.

Reading and writing are forms of language processing. The print on any page is a visual representation of language form and structure that must be translated by the reader or transcribed by the writer. When we teach reading and writing, we are teaching language at one or all of its many layers. Reading, after all, is not a rote exercise in recitation of words but a translation of print to speech to meaning that is mediated by the language centers of the brain. Language itself is the substance of instruction.

What children bring to the printed page, or to the tasks of reading and writing, is knowledge of spoken language. What must be learned is knowledge of the written symbols that represent speech and the ability to use those productively. Knowing the difference between sacks and sax, past and passed, or their and there or knowing that antique says "anteek" requires language awareness at several levels. Students without awareness of language systems will be less able to sound out a new word when they encounter it, less able to spell, less able to interpret punctuation and sentence meaning, and less able to learn new vocabulary words from reading them in context. One of the most important jobs of any teacher of reading and writing is to give students sufficient understanding of the language they speak, read, and write so that they can use it to communicate well.

What is Language?

Generative language is an achievement unique to human beings. Human language is generative because its systems allow us to invent new messages without limit. Unlike the signing systems of some highly evolved animals such as wolves or whales, human language enables us to produce many messages each day that have never been spoken before. Speakers of a language share an understanding of the rule systems that govern the production of sounds, words, and sentences and when to use them. Speakers of English, for example, know that the sequence Understanding basic is to language teaching reading is not an allowable sentence but that Understanding language is basic to teaching reading is permitted. Speakers of English know that the names Nkruma and Zhezhnik are not English because sound sequences in those words do not occur in the English language sound system.

On every part of the earth, people have invented languages for talking to one another. More than 4,000 languages exist on the earth today,1 but many are disappearing quickly as Western civilization encroaches on developing societies. All of these human languages share properties known as universals. From a finite set of speech sounds (phonemes), speakers of an oral language say and understand many thousands of words. Words are composed of meaningful units (morphemes) that often can be recombined to make new words. Words themselves have meaning; the study of word, phrase, and sentence meanings is called semantics. Words belong to grammatical categories and are spoken in an order determined by underlying rules of syntax or sentence structure. Every speaker of a human language shares with every other speaker of that language the capacity to produce and comprehend an infinite number of sentences whose structures share basic properties. Pragmatics is the rule system that tells speakers how to use language for social communication. Humans have also devised systems of written symbols (orthographies) to represent the languages they speak; many of these are alphabets.

This last achievement, the invention of tools for reading and writing, sets humans apart from all other creatures. In evolutionary terms, reading and writing are very recent accomplishments. Humans did not invent writing until the Chinese and Mediterranean peoples used meaningful written signs for concepts and words between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. Alphabets, systems that use symbols for individual speech sounds, were invented as little as 3,000 years ago. It is understandable, then, that learning to read is not as natural or biologically "wired in" as speaking and listening and that reading must be taught directly to most children over several years through formal education. Our brains are not as fully evolved for the processing of written language as they are for the processing of spoken language, and, therefore, learning to read and write are much more challenging for most of us than learning to speak.

Languages are constantly changing as the need for new expressions arises and as old expressions become obsolete. Every year the speakers of a language such as English generate several thousand new words and word uses to add to their language systems. The age of electronics, for example, has spawned terms such as fax, e-mail, surfing the web, geek, and rad. Committees that are created by some governments to preserve language purity, prevent change, or establish a standard are bucking a natural human tendency — to generate new language forms and uses within an established system.

No language is superior to any other in terms of the complexity of the rule systems that it embodies. English, however, has one of the most complex alphabetic orthographies, is spoken and written as a first or second language throughout the world, and has the largest vocabulary. It has become the language of international commerce. Nevertheless, English has many variants, including some "dialects" that are really different language systems and that present a significant challenge for teachers of reading and writing.

Literacy is the Most Important Goal of Schooling

Few would deny that teaching children to read, write, spell, listen, and speak are among the foremost responsibilities of educators. Without well-developed reading skills, children cannot participate fully in classroom learning. They are at much greater risk for school failure and lifelong problems with employment, social adjustment, and personal autonomy. Literate cultures expect literacy of everyone, even so-called low-skilled workers, who must read labels, directions, lists, forms, and records. Although a fairly large number of individuals in our society have always had difficulty learning to read, it is no longer acceptable to ignore them, give them failing grades, or banish them to the ranks of lower-status jobs. The cost to society is too great. In addition, there are many children who would learn to read and write much better if their instruction were to teach them to understand the systems of their own language (sounds, spellings, meaningful networks, sentences, text organization) as well as the strategies to comprehend narrative and expository text.

When children are taught well and, consequently, begin to read in kindergarten or first grade, they are likely to reap benefits throughout their schooling. Those who read successfully from the start are more likely to enjoy reading, develop their knowledge of words and language patterns, and attain knowledge of the world by reading. Failure to read well, in contrast, undermines vocabulary growth, knowledge acquisition, verbal facility and writing skill. Once behind in reading, few children catch up to grade level unless they receive intensive, individual, expensive, and expert instruction, a scarce commodity in most schools. Teaching everyone to read well, however, is a goal that has eluded us in the past.

About 20% of elementary students are very poor readers; at least another 20% do not read fluently enough to enjoy or to engage in independent reading. Thus, it should not be surprising that on the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 44% of all fourth graders in the United States scored at a level "below basic." According to the United States Office of Technology, 25% of the adult population cannot perform the essential literacy requirements of a typical job. The rate of functional illiteracy in our capital city, Washington, D.C., is the highest in the nation at 37%. Individuals who are poor readers are much more likely than literate people to drop out of school; find their way to jail; or struggle to find and keep meaningful, satisfying work.

For children who live in poverty or are from ethnic minorities and attend urban schools, the incidence of reading failure is astronomical and completely unacceptable for a literate society. African American students, Hispanic students, students whose native language is not English, and those from impoverished homes fall behind and stay behind in far greater proportion than their white, middle-class counterparts. The rate of reading failure in these groups is 60%-70% according to the 1994 NAEP. This figure alone explains much about the poor academic achievement of some minority students and why they are underrepresented in professions that depend on higher education.

One's family background and cultural context, however, do not guarantee literacy. Students of all backgrounds and intellectual talents may experience difficulty with language and reading that erodes their overall academic achievement. In 1996, California initiated a series of laws to reform reading education after 49% of children of college-educated parents in that state scored "below basic" on the NAEP. One third of fourth graders who are poor readers nationwide are from college-educated families who presumably encourage literacy in the home.

Exposure to books is vital to becoming a good reader, but it is not enough for most students to learn to read. Even if their parents read to them at home or they are surrounded with good literature, the majority of our students need to be taught how to read. Many students need to be taught how spoken and written language work so that they have the tools to decipher and generate the written word. The good news is that when teaching is skillful and informed, most students can learn to read at acceptable levels.