1. Children’s Reading

2. Stages acc. to Perera (after Kroll)
Preparation – readers learn to recognise letters & words.
Consolidation – reading ability catches up with oral language ability.
Differentiation – reading comprehension outstrips auditory comprehension.
Oaken et al (1971) – subjects aged 9;10-11;3. 53% on comprehension questions after having heard a story; 73% after reading story. Reader is in active control of language – rereading.

3. General difficulties with reading
Nothing to support the child’s interpretation of the language.
Written language lacks prosodic features.
Difficult grammatical structures.
‘I find the noise of that pneumatic drill intolerable’
Writers are often told to avoid complex sentences, but Pearson (1975) found that children often prefer longer sentences if more explicit, e.g. ‘John slept all day. He was lazy’ not as good as ‘Because he was lazy, John slept all day.’

4. Difficulties (cont.) Writing may be hard to read for physical reasons.
Subject matter may be outside of reader’s knowledge and experience.
Unfamiliar vocabulary.
NB. Unfamiliar vocab is sometimes useful. Compare ‘A boat was approaching the island’ with ‘A submarine was approaching the island.’ Latter enable readers to predict more easily context/content. Pictures will help. Makes text more interesting.

5. Miscues
PREDICTION
When we read, we naturally predict what will come next, e.g.
Peter sat on the stool.
This may be misread as:
Peter sat on the chair.
Errors usually make sense. Unlikely to read this as ‘Peter sat on the stood’ even though ‘stood’ is physically and phonologically similar to stool. (Clay 1969 & Weber 1970)

6. Miscues (cont.) SEGMENTATION DIFFICULTIES They went for a ride
on a pony. The next day…
Children will strive to complete a sentence at the end of the line.
They will read across punctuation in the middle of a line.

7. Grammatical difficulties
Concealed negatives
Interrupted constructions
Ellipsis
Concealed negatives, e.g rarely, seldom
Interrupted constructions, e.g. The waiter quickly sent back the order.
Ellipsis: A camel is well equipped to survive in the desert, and a polar bear in the Arctic.
Transitive verbs which can take by a number of different objects.
Transitives (monotransitives/di-transitives (direct and indirect object)/complex (object and object complement):

8. Visually odd constructions
Repetition of words, e.g.
Sarah said that a bike she had had had had its tyres slashed.

9. Constructions without function words
The dentist had frightened patients in his waiting room.
Adding a determiner helps the sentence make sense:
The dentist had some frightened patients in his waiting room. (noun phrase)
The dentist had frightened some patients in his waiting room. (verb phrase)

10. Ambiguous function words
He read her poetry
He read poetry to her.
He read the poetry she had written.

11. Discourse Children will find it easier to follow:
Stories with a chronological order.
Stories which fit into a ‘story grammar’ or frame
setting, character(s), theme, episode(s), outcome, evaluation

12. Story Grammar – Stein & Glenn (1979)
Setting: introduction of main characters, as well as the time and place for the story action.
Once upon a time there were three bears, the mummy bear, the daddy bear and the baby bear. They all lived in a tiny house in a great big forest.
Initiating Event: An action or happening that sets up a problem or dilemma for the story.
One day a little girl named Goldilocks came by.
Internal Response: The protagonist's reactions to the initiating event.
She was surprised to see the house and noticed it was empty.
Attempt: An action or plan of the protagonist to solve the problem
She went inside to find the three bears and ate the baby bear's porridge, broke the baby bear's chair, and fell asleep in the baby bear's bed.
Consequence: The result of the protagonist's actions.
The bears return to find things eaten and broken and to find Goldilocks in the baby's bed.
Reaction: A response by the protagonist to the consequence.
Goldilocks ran away.

13. Stories written for children
Features may be borrowed from oral tradition:
Alliteration
Assonance
Epithets
Balanced sentences
Repetition/parallelism/repeated formulae
Use of ‘and’
Proverbs

14. Avoiding problems in reading
When writing a children’s story…
Keep language informal by
Using phrasal verbs e.g. ‘to put up with’ instead of ‘to tolerate.’
Using concrete nouns.
Make the story easy to predict by
Using pictures to complement vocabulary

15. Avoiding problems (cont.)
Create rhythm by
Using a mixture of monosyllabic and polysyllabic words.
Be careful with repetition and/or replacing nouns with pronouns.

16. Avoiding problems (cont.)
Be careful when constructing sentences…
Do not separate subject from verb.
Avoid the passive voice.
Avoid ellipsis.
Make relationships explicit.
Consider position of line breaks .