Customer Reviews

Reading Without Nonsense

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book debunks any number of assumptions about reading. The chapter on phonics is a must read for anyone who belives that 'sound it out' makes sense. He looses a star for not citing his sources, which would be helpful. The lack of notations takes some of the authority out of his otherwise passionate defense of sensible reading instruction.

A revolutionary work!

Smith, using the most astoundingly clear language you will see a excruciatingly long time, lays a overwhelming case for a predominately whole-language approach for literacy instruction.

Every single one of these thirteen chapters equals every one of the others. I cannot pick out a superlative section; all sparkle and educate.

I think I have read the "dismantling & rebuilding" of phonics chapter (#4) the most because he amazes me with his ability to analytical render phonics a mess that needs fixing and re-focusing.

I put this book in my essentials library. Please read it. If nothing else, he will give you much food for thought before creating your emergent literacy lessons in your early childhood classroom.

This book really helped me to understand more about teaching reading and about the theories behind teaching reading. i would recommend it ot everyone.

I read Smith's book as part of research on the reading wars, the history of education, and for an essay about Rudolph Flesch. This book--written to promote whole word and to discredit Flesch--convinced me, once again, that Flesch was right.

Smith is famous for asserting, in this book, "Readers do not need the alphabet." I keep wondering how they would use a dictionary.

Smith wants you to ignore the phonetic clues within each word. He wants you to look only at the shapes of words. English thereby becomes a vast chaos of nearly one million logos.

Smith writes what I take to be a brilliant kind of sophistry. Everything seems so clear, so sincere. You have to read a paragraph several times to realize that the meaning is slipping away. In an odd way, I would recommend this book for people who want their minds stretched.

Finally, you have to wait for those flat assertions that you can compare to a reality you know. Smith states that children can acquire vocabularies of 50,000 sight words! I had read years before that only the smartest Chinese can master even 20,000 of their ideograms. (Note that these ideograms come in only one form--no upper case, lower case, script, etc.)

Smith claims that learning new sight words is easy--as when you see new cars or meet new people. Sounds good until you try to imagine somebody memorizing 10,000 cars or faces. Perhaps people with photographic memories could manage it. But not the average kid in school. And 10,000 words is just the threshold of literacy.

People not in education should know that twenty years ago, whole word was king, and Smith was an ed god. But now even California has figured out that reading without phonics is nonsense indeed. I still puzzle over Smith's motives, but tend to suspect that this book is a modern equivalent of alchemy.

(PS at later date: I created 7 graphic videos for YouTube that explain the problems in Smith's thinking; search "Phonics versus Whole Word.")

"Sometimes a teacher will object, 'If I tell students the questions in advance, they won't read any other part of the book.' But isn't that what any intelligent person would do? When we look up a telephone number, do we read and try to memorize every other name and number in the directory?" (p.94)

In a nutshell, this quote summarizes the entire polarizing viewpoint that Mr. Smith is trying to convey. At first, perhaps it looks profound, to suggest that the teacher try an approach radically opposed to convention, in order to evoke different results from students.

And then you take a second look at it.

Mr. Smith appears to have missed an essential component of literacy - that the point is not merely to comprehend what is presented to us, but to expand upon it. He talks grandly of each student bringing a "theory" to reading that influences their understanding of what they read.

However, if each student brings out of a reading exactly what answers they choose to, and nothing more, then what in the world are teachers for? Literature challenges the student to change their perspective, to consider what they may not have imagined previously. If the teacher sits back and says, "Did you understand that?" and then blithely accepts whatever the student says, that teacher has abdicated all responsibility to the student, and to the profession.

Perhaps phonics is not the best way to teach, but it at least provides a measurable quantity of success. I find it extraordinarily telling that Mr. Smith's book contains neither concrete examples of teaching methods, studies done by other professionals, or even a bibliography.

If he can't cite sources, provide proof that his system does anything other than revolutionize for the sake of seeing what an upset status quo looks like, why should anyone take what he has to say seriously?

Frank Smith's book is an important book. His arguments "against" phonics are very persuasive, especially the point that phonics only works once you already recognize the words (so what the point of phonics?) Who can enunciate 20 -or 10 of the many phonics rules? Probably not many people. And we expect a 5 year old to know the rules?! How often do you (or I) mispronounce a word we have have never heard before? It happens to me regularly. And as much as we want, we can't overlook names, right Sean -or it it Shawn?

Smith does repeat himself, but to me that is fine as it re-enforces the points. We so often hear about phonics, a little extra on the opposing camp is necessary to balance things out.

It was my re-reading of the book that really sealed it for me. The first read, in places it seemed so radical I rejected it. "How can he say that about phonics? Phonics seems so natural to me. There is so much published on the importance of phonics". Don't take my word for it about Smith's assertions. Read the book and experiment with random words yourself.

Finally his point about Chinese writing is well taken and that English has many similarities to it. I've studied Chinese characters and see that they are often logical and built up of small pieces that relate to each other. The point here is even if English could be re-written to be phonetic only, it would lose so many clues as to the meaning of a word, it probably would have as many negatives as positives.

This is a great book but that is not why this was a great buy. The shipping was quicker than I expected and free!! The book is new and it arrived in great conditions.

Spelling and reading have only been around for about 5000 years. Language is innate because it has been around for 30,000 to 40,000 years. Spelling and reading aren't natural. Ask any dyslexic. If we treat all children as if the act of reading is natural and they'll just 'soak' it up... then we are dooming 15-20% of them to failure. Both basal and whole language programs FAIL these children. Wake up and teach them, please.

Check out realspelling.com with Melvyn Ramsden. Spelling is cognitive in conception and execution. TEACHING IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR MANY STUDENTS'SUCCESS.

We are reading this book for a literacy methods class. The style is redundant and reminiscent of listening to a very boring lecture. He has some very harsh things to say about phonics education, which is controversial but not altogether bad.