Is the Science of Reading Just the Science of Reading English?

Abstract

The science of reading has made genuine progress in understanding reading and the teaching of reading, but is the science of reading just the science of reading English? Worldwide, a majority of students learn to read and write in non-European, nonalphabetic orthographies such as abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas/alphasyllabaries (e.g., Hindi), or morphosyllabaries (e.g., Chinese). Over a decade ago, I argued that the extreme inconsistency of English spelling-sound correspondence had confined the science of reading to an insular, Anglocentric research agenda addressing theoretical and applied issues with limited relevance for a universal science of reading. Here, I ask if the science of reading has moved forward. Acknowledging some limited progress over the past decade, it is evident that even today, mainstream reading research remains entrenched in Anglocentrism, Eurocentrism, and another form of ethnocentrism that I call alphabetism. Even the two dominant theoretical frameworks for describing cross-script diversity, orthographic depth and psycholinguistic grain size theory, give little or no consideration to non-European alphabets or nonalphabetic scripts, promoting a one-dimensional view of script variation (i.e., spelling-sound consistency). Consideration of the full spectrum of the world's languages and writing systems reveals multiple dimensions of writing system complexity, each liable to create obstacles for the developing reader. If the science of reading is to contribute meaningfully to assessment, diagnosis, instruction, and intervention for all readers around the world, then we must extricate our field from entrenched ethnocentrism and embrace global diversity.

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) as a Kindergarten Predictor of Future Reading in English: A Systematic Review and Meta‐analysis

“…For the present study, we focused on articles in which English was the primary language of the participants, as consistency of orthography can moderate the RAN‐reading relationship (Araújo et al, 2015) and the largest number of published studies are in English. We acknowledge that English is not a representative orthography (Share, 2008; Share, 2021), but that this analysis serves as a starting point and allows specific conclusions to be drawn in at least this one language. As we were interested in early predictors of reading ability, we only included articles in which the initial timepoint with RAN assessment was in (the US equivalent of) kindergarten or preschool (the earliest stage at which RAN can be measured reliably) and reading was subsequently measured at some point in Grades 1–5.…”

Teaching Beginners to Decode Consonant–Vowel Syllables Using Grapheme–Phoneme Subunits Facilitates Reading and Spelling as Compared With Teaching Whole‐Syllable Decoding

“…The majority of evidence supporting the value of explicit GPD instruction comes from studies with English speakers (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018; Ehri et al, 2001). Critics have suggested that because the English writing system is less transparent and much more complex than other writing systems, research in English may have limited relevance for a universal science of reading (Duncan et al, 2013; Share, 2008a, 2021; Ziegler & Goswami, 2006). Landerl (2000) hypothesized that in more transparent orthographies such as Portuguese, the orthographic structure itself may provide sufficient unequivocal information about the alphabetic writing system to activate students’ phonological decoding abilities without explicit instruction in grapheme–phoneme relations and phonics.…”

A response to “The myth of normal reading” by Huettig and Ferreira, or: To the defence of reading research…

“…Last but not least, we need to consider the importance of generalising results across languages, orthographies, and scripts. Huettig and Ferreira argue, as have others before them (most recently Blasi et al, 2022;Share, 2021), that the focus of reading in English leads to models, theories, and reading instruction methods that are not generalisable to other languages. Figure 1 can be extended to a three-dimensional plot, where language and script characteristics would make up an additional dimension.…”