Nurturing a lexical legacy: understanding the transition from novice-to-expert in children's reading development

培育词汇遗产：理解儿童阅读发展从新手到专家的转变

• 批准号: ES/M009998/1
• 负责人: Kate Nation
• 金额: $ 82.71万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FM009998%2F1
• 关键词: Nurturing; lexical; legacy; understanding; transition; Nurturing; lexical; legacy; understanding; transition

The written word is arguably the greatest cultural invention. Orthography (the conventional writing system of a language) provides a set of tools that allows us to write words so that others who share our tools can also share our thoughts, ideas, and dreams. The written word allows us to create narratives that play to our imaginations or teach us about the world; the written word transcends space and time and it is almost impossible to imagine the world without it. For skilled readers, the connection between the letters on the page and the image they construe in our minds is so fast, so rich in content and so automatic, we rarely stop to think of the underlying complexities of what we do as we read. Yet, learning to read is hard. It takes time and requires instruction. Reading is a skill and like other skills, practice is critical to making the transition from novice-to-expert.The scientific study of reading has taught us a good deal about the early stages of reading development. We know that children need to acquire the "alphabetic principle" - the fundamental insight that in a language like English, letters code for meaning via sound. This allows children to decode - to "sound-out" words and thus discover the spelling-sound correspondences that characterize their language. Evidence from a large research base has translated to the classroom with a phonics-based reading curriculum characterising the teaching of reading in the early years in the UK. Critically however, we know relatively little about how children develop from novice-to-expert: how do children move from the laborious process of decoding individual words to the sense of effortlessness we, as skilled readers, experience as we read? This is important for a full theoretical understanding of how the reading system works. A better understanding of this will help to devise curriculum materials and instructional approaches that promote learning. This is vital: despite a phonics-rich curriculum, too many children are failing to make the transition from novice-to-expert, as evidenced by the large number of children who enter secondary school with unacceptably low levels of literacy skill. This has serious consequences, given that literacy is crucial to educational, cultural and economic advancement as well as social well-being.The research described in this proposal aims to fill this gap in our knowledge. Carefully controlled experiments that nevertheless mimic the natural reading process will test out a number of hypotheses about how to promote children's learning about words via their reading experiences. A range of questions is asked: How do children deal with new words that they encounter for the first time when reading a story? How do we best structure and organise reading practice so as to optimize word learning and reading development? Do new words need to be encountered many times in order to be learned properly and if so, how many times and should the context in which they occur vary or stay the same? Is it better to learn little and often, or massed into one go? Does testing children's fragile knowledge while they are still in the process of learning ultimately lead to better retention in the longer term? And why is it that some children fail to make progress with learning to read?Answers to these questions will inform critical aspects of reading theory that are currently underspecified, namely how children move from being an effortful decoder to an effortless skilled reader. Our experiments will provide insights on how to best optimize reading practice for long-term learning in the classroom, with the ultimate aim of supporting more children to make a successful transition from novice-to-expert.

书面词可以说是最伟大的文化发明。拼字法（语言的传统写作系统）提供了一组工具，使我们能够写单词，以便其他共享我们工具的人也可以分享我们的思想，思想和梦想。书面词使我们能够创造出对我们的想象力发挥作用或教给我们关于世界的叙述。书面词超越了空间和时间，几乎不可能想象没有它的世界。对于熟练的读者，页面上的字母与他们在我们脑海中解释的图像之间的联系是如此之快，如此丰富，并且如此自动，我们很少停止考虑我们阅读时所做的工作的基本复杂性。但是，学习阅读很难。它需要时间，需要指导。阅读是一种技能，与其他技能一样，实践对于从新手到专家的过渡至关重要。阅读的科学研究使我们了解了阅读发展的早期阶段。我们知道孩子需要获取“字母原理”，这是一种基本见解，即用英语，字母代码通过声音来含义的基本见解。这使孩子可以解码 - “发声”单词，从而发现其语言表征的拼写对应关系。来自大型研究基础的证据已将基于语音的阅读课程转化为教室，该课程表征了英国早期阅读的教学。但是，至关重要的是，我们对孩子如何从新手到专家的发展相对较少了解：孩子们如何从解码单词的辛苦过程转变为我们作为熟练的读者在阅读时经历的毫不费力的感觉？这对于对阅读系统的工作方式有充分的理论理解很重要。对此有更好的理解将有助于设计课程材料和促进学习的教学方法。这是至关重要的：尽管课程丰富，但太多的孩子未能从新手到专家过渡，这是有很多儿童进入中学的识字能力低水平的孩子所证明的。鉴于识字对教育，文化和经济的进步以及社会福祉至关重要。这项提议中所描述的研究旨在填补我们所知的这一差距。经过仔细控制的实验，即模仿自然阅读过程将检验许多关于如何通过阅读经验来促进儿童学习单词的假设。提出了一系列问题：孩子们如何在阅读故事时第一次遇到的新单词？我们如何最好地结构和组织阅读实践，以优化单词学习和阅读开发？是否需要多次遇到新单词才能正确学习，如果是这样，它们发生的上下文应该有多少次和保持不变？很少和经常学习或一口气会更好吗？测试儿童在学习过程中仍在学习过程中的脆弱知识最终会导致长期保持更好的保留？为什么有些孩子无法通过学习阅读来取得进展？这些问题的答案将为阅读理论的关键方面提供依据，这些方面目前被指定了，即孩子们如何从努力的解码器转变为毫无智能的熟练读者。我们的实验将提供有关如何在课堂上最好地优化长期学习的阅读实践的见解，最终的目的是支持更多的孩子成功从新手到专家过渡。