Posted by Mark Liberman

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=70512&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=reading-instruction-in-1853

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=70512

The McGuffey Readers are a series of elementary-school texts first published in 1836, and widely used in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I'm not quite old enough to have to have experienced McGuffey in school, but I've been interested for a long time in the problems of early reading instruction, and so I did skim some dog-eared copies of McGuffey many years ago.

My involvement with the "Using Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reading R&D Center" (U-GAIN) has now involved me directly in relevant research, in collaboration with others at Penn, at Digital Promise, at mdrc, and at Amira Learning.  Wikipedia tells us that "The Science of Reading (SOR) is the discipline that studies the objective investigation and accumulation of reliable evidence about how humans learn to read and how reading should be taught". And the methods that have emerged from that process are similar in many ways to McGuffey's intuitively-derived methods — minus one interesting feature, namely McGuffey's emphasis on training students to produce a rhetorically effective performance of the passages that are given to them to read.

Here's a quote from Section I, Preliminary Remarks, of the 1853 edition of McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Fourth Reader :

The great object to be accomplished in reading as a rhetorical exercise is, to convey to the hearer, fully and clearly, the ideas and feelings of the writer. In order to do this, it is necessary that the reader should himself thoroughly understand those sentiments and feelings. This is an essential point. It is true, he may pronounce the words as traced upon the page, and, if they are audibly and distinctly uttered, they will be heard, and in some degree understood, and, in this way, a general and feeble idea of the author's meaning may be obtained.

Ideas received in this manner, however, bear the same resemblance to the reality, that the dead body does to the living spirit . There is no soul in them. The author is stripped of all the grace and beauty of life, of all the expression and feeling which constitute the soul of his subject, and it may admit of a doubt, whether this fashion of reading is superior to the ancient symbolic or hieroglyphic style of communicating ideas.

At all events, it is very certain, that such readers, with every conceivable grace of manner, with the most perfect melody of voice, and with all other advantages combined, can never attain the true standard of excellence in this accomplishment. The golden rule here is, that the reader must be in earnest. The sentiments and feelings of the author whose language he is reading, must be infused into his own breast, and then, and not till then, is he qualified to express them.

Unfairness to hieroglyphics aside, this strikes me as a somewhat florid version of an obviously valid idea, namely that a reader's prosody gives evidence of their understanding, or lack of it. In U-GAIN discussions, Ran Liu of Amira Learning has suggested that a computational analysis of prosodic features could be an effective way to evaluate how well grade-school students understand what they're reading.

In the service of teaching effective expression of a text's intent, the various McGuffey readers add exercises on topics like emphasis, melody, pausing, and so on, to their exercises on phonic decoding and sentential word combination. Thus the section "Suggestions to Teachers" in the Fourth Reader starts this way:

To read with an appropriate tone, to pronounce every syllable properly and distinctly, and to observe the pauses, are the three most difficult points to be gained in making good readers. These points will require constant attention throughout the whole course of instruction upon this subject. Such other directions for reading, and such general rules as are considered of practical utility, will be found in the Introductory Article, and preceding the several lessons.

The section on Emphasis in the Third Reader starts like this:

If the pupil has received proper oral instruction, he has been taught to understand what he has read, and has already acquired the habit of emphasizing words. He is now prepared for a more formal introduction to the SUBJECT of emphasis, and for more particular attention to its first PRINCIPLES. This lesson, and the examples given, should be repeatedly practiced.

In reading and in talking, we always speak some words with more force than others. We do this, because the meaning of what we say depends most upon these words.

If I wish to know whether it is George or his brother who is sick, I speak the words George and brother with more force than the other words. I say, Is it George or his brother who is sick?

This greater force with which we speak the words is called EMPHASIS.

The words upon which emphasis is put, are sometimes printed in slanting letters, called Italics, and sometimes in CAPITALS.

The words printed in Italics in the following questions and answers, should be read with more force than the other words, that is, with emphasis.

Did you ride to town yesterday? No, my brother did.

Did you ride to town yesterday? No, I walked.

I don't know to what extent this level of attention to elocutionary rhetoric will help students learn to read with understanding. At a minimum, it suggests a route towards Ran's idea of a way to evaluate their understanding — but it might also develop into lessons aimed at helping them learn to express themselves more effectively.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=70512&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=reading-instruction-in-1853

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=70512