|
Challenge for Jewish Education: Teaching Students to Read Hebrew and English Simultaneously As an evaluator of children’s abilities, I am awed time and again by the way most children learn to read with ease. Being aware of the complexities of the reading process makes me wonder why there are not more children out there with reading difficulties or dyslexia. This is further complicated in Jewish schools where children are asked to learn to read two languages at the same time.
As one reads, four brain processes go into action, each working independently yet in orchestration with the others. Reading begins with the visual input of the printed word. The eye ‘photographs’ this visual stimulus and sends the interpreted message to the ‘orthographic processor’. The ‘orthographic processor’, in turn, checks the validity of the incoming information using a number of tactics: First, it determines how many letters appear in the word. Then, it will establish the sequence of these letters. The ‘orthographic’ processor looks for letter patterns within words (such as a vowel pair of ‘ea’ or ‘ai’) and will reject a word that does not appear to contain an orthographically legal word, such as ‘hmose’. When the orthographic processor identifies a new word that fits in with the orthographic patterns known to the reader, it sends the letters of the words to the ‘phonological processor’ for a sound-symbol relationship. The basic function of the ‘phonological processor’ is to provide the reader with the appropriate sounds for the correct pronunciation of the word. Interestingly, research has shown that new words are better retained in one’s memory if they are said out loud. The ‘phonological processor’ provides us with the ability to do so. Sometimes, the word can be read but can not be understood. In this case, the phonological processor or the orthographic processor will send the word to the ‘meaning’ or ‘semantic’ processor where the word undergoes a definition search. If the word is found in the reader’s lexicon, the information will be retained until the reader finishes the sentence or passage he is reading. If, however, the ‘semantic processor’ does not locate the word in the reader’ lexicon, the word must undergo further investigation by the ‘context processor’. The context processor will examine the words before and after the word in question and using these, will try to guess the meaning of the new word. Sometimes the context processor is correct, sometimes it needs to wait until the end of the sentence or the end of the passage to determine the validity of its hypothesis. This is reading in a nutshell, but the most astonishing part of it is that all of this happens simultaneously in our brains, in a matter of milliseconds. In Jewish schools, five and six year old children are often expected to learn Hebrew and English at the same time. Each language has its own orthography and phonological structure, and of course each language is written from a different direction, and yet our kids (or at least the ones without reading disabilities) do not have much trouble mastering both. Reference: M. Adams (2000) Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA |
Most competent readers read without giving these processes a second thought. However, if one were to analyze what occurs in one’s brain during reading, even non-believers would have to agree that the reading process is nothing short of miraculous.