Lindsey Arnold

ENG 3550
12-1-2021

Parallel Teaching

Many people think that the ability to ‘read’ is the same as having ‘reading literacy’ but, in

reality, the two are very different. While they are both incredibly important to learn and to teach,

they are completely different skills. While learning, the important thing to remember is that there

is no end point nor order of operations. Knowing the difference between the two is vital in

ensuring that, as a teacher, you continue to instruct students on both reading and reading literacy

intentionally and regularly. Possessing the ability to read is very different from possessing

reading literacy and, therefore, the two should be taught hand in hand in order for students to

gain the most in both areas.

In The English Teacher’s Companion, Burke discusses the difference between reading

and reading literacy, giving a wonderful window into the conversation of the distinction between

them. He references another writer, quoting him saying, “Afflerbach advocates adopting this

notion of “reading literacy,” instead of simply “reading,” which ‘is often understood as simply

decoding, or even reading aloud… Reading literacy includes a wide range of cognitive

competencies, from basic decoding, to knowledge of words, grammar and larger linguistic and

textual structures and features, to knowledge about the world. It also includes metacognitive

competencies: the awareness of and ability to use a variety of appropriate strategies when

processing texts’” (193). While this description incorporates many aspects of the differences

between the two terms, it gives a good overview of the kinds of skills that fit into each category.

While reading itself has more to do with the ability to decode the actual words on the page and

read out loud fluently, reading literacy deals more with the comprehension of the narrative.
Someone can have the ability to read the words wonderfully well without having the ability to

dig into the content and look at the intricacies of the writing. As can be understood from Burke’s

reference to Afflerbach, reading literacy deals with the next step of reading in which the reader

can analyze the grammatical aspects of how the author puts the piece of literature together,

thinking about how it connects to the way the world functions, and even understanding one’s

own thought processes and how one is using their reading skills to understand the text. With this

deeper understanding, one can see the necessity of being able to work with both the tasks of

reading and those of reading literacy.

One problem we face in schools is that once students reach a certain age, we expect that

they have mastered the task of reading. They graduate elementary school and suddenly we are

convinced that they should now be able to read and decode words, sound words out, use context

clues for meaning, and read aloud fluently. This is a misguided thought that causes many

teachers to discontinue the direct instruction of reading skills after the fifth grade. I think back to

the story of John Corcoran, the teacher who did not learn to read until he was an adult and

suffered great difficulties trying to hide his inability. Corcoran writes of his experiences, “I can’t

say that I was an unhappy person, but certainly I lived on the edge of anxiety. Would my mask

be yanked off? Would I be humiliated and degraded before my family and peers? Every day I

walked that tightrope, believing there was no net to keep me from certain destruction. When the

white literate society talks about illiteracy, it usually refers to the economically and culturally

disadvantaged, or to ethnic and racial minorities” (80). Corcoran points out here that he was not

necessarily the profile of what we think of as people who grow up illiterate. He had loving

parents who cared and had good schooling, yet still grew up without being able to read. This

goes to show that we cannot assume a child’s or an adult’s ability to read and must continue
reading education throughout life. Corcoran also comments on the constant anxiety he felt

constantly wondering if he would be found out. If we discontinue teaching reading when

students reach a certain age, we risk putting more children through this type of discomfort. There

is no finish line to reading education.

Another problem, perhaps the other enc of the spectrum, is that we fail to begin teaching

reading literacy at the younger ages. We focus solely on the skills of reading and many times we

ignore reading comprehension and big-picture thought processes. It is easy to think that a five-

year-old who is working to grasp the ability to read words on a page is incapable of moving to

the next step and making meaning out of what they read but this could not be farther from the

truth. While children may not yet be able to read the words and use metacognitive skills to

decipher meaning and message on their own, they are quite able, when given aid and guided, to

make meaning. Steven Pinker writes about language acquisition in The Language Instinct and

the order in which children acquire abilities related to word meanings. He writes, “Experimental

studies of baby cognition have shown that infants have the concept of an object before they learn

any words for objects… Laboratory studies confirm the young children assume that certain kinds

of concepts get certain types of words, and other kinds of concepts cannot be the meaning of a

word at all” (150-151). With language acquisition tied very closely to the acquisition of reading

abilities, it makes sense that students can understand some meaning of a story before they may

even be able to read any of the words it is composed of. Yet we are still trying to teach children

to read before we tackle any reading literacy. Words fall into the category of reading while

concepts fall into that of reading literacy. Therefore, children have abilities in the department of

reading literacy before they have them in the department of simply reading words on the page.

This suggests the necessity to continually instruct children in both categories. They learn
concepts and then attach words to them and then learn new concepts and attach more words.

They get older and hear a new word but have no idea what it means. They go to the dictionary

and attach the concept. This never ends even when one is grown. Learning is fluid and therefore

must be taught as such.

David Crystal writes about the experiences that children have early on with reading

books in A Little Book of Language. He talks about the experience as follows: “They… notice

the little black squiggles that fill a lot of the page. As they get older, they realize that these are

the important bits. If a story is really exciting, it dawns on them that this is because the reader is

somehow managing to extract the excitement out of these black marks. The squiggles are

organized in lines, and these have to be read… from top to bottom, and from left to right” (46).

There are multiple important aspects of reading and reading literacy discussed in this passage

that are equally as important for students to master in order to participate as effective students.

The basic reading skill that pops up is the necessity of reading the marks on the page from left to

right and from top to bottom. This is something that students must master early on to read a book

and we would assume that this no longer needs to be taught once students pass the first year or so

of schooling. What happens, however, when later on in their schooling students are presented

with something like a graphic novel? In some cases, this trips students up and they need more

direct instruction on how to read the words and which order to follow them in. This might be an

instance in which, if students are reading the bubbles in the wrong order, the entire meaning of

the work could change. If we look back at Crystal’s quote, we can also see references to skills

related to reading literacy. He mentions the skill of connecting the words on the page to the

pictures the child sees as he or she reads. This is a surprisingly advanced skill at times that can

even trip older readers up if an author is not direct. This relates in the older grades to symbolism.
The image may be in the literal sense unrelated to the words, but instruction allows the reader to

think at a higher level and make a connection that, without direction, may not be reached. Crystal

also mentions metacognitive skills related to reading. He comments how a child will begin to

realize that the reader gets his or her excitement from finding it in the squiggles on the page. This

portrays the thought about thought that we expect young minds are incapable of. A reader must

be able to think about what they are thinking in order to have reading literacy, and evidently, this

begins earlier than we begin to teach it. These complex processes of both developing reading

skills and reading literacy skills are learned in a parallel manner, yet we teach them as steps on a

staircase, one before the next, never returning to the previous stairs.

So how do we accomplish the continued education of both reading and reading literacy in

schools? Christopher Coro wrote a dissertation on a study and series of interviews done with

working teachers K-12 and a wonderful summing up of their collected beliefs about adult

literacy is as follows: “The teacher participants in this study… view literacy as an essential form

of communication that needed to be embedded in students’ lives rather than treated as a series of

disconnected skills and abilities… that literacy had to serve a variety of purposes—both in-

school and out-of-school. Literacy was, therefore, a social and cultural practice. Thus… there

were multiple literacies to consider in planning literacy instruction. Literacy needed to be viewed

as personal and needed to include elements of both feelings and individual creativity” (31-32).

With this summing up of what other teachers believe to be vital in teaching lasting literacy, we

can understand the ways in which we might continue teaching reading and reading literacy alike

through the grades. Coro references the teachers’ beliefs that literacy serves many purposes,

which indeed it does, because we are required to read in many settings other than school. We are

confronted with language everywhere we go and not only must we read but we also must
communicate with others. The better readers we are, the better writers we are, and therefore, the

better communicators we are. We can help students gain skills related to reading by giving them

opportunities to communicate with others and read together. Reading is an extremely social

activity and we should take advantage of that fact. We must ask our students to read and discuss

the content of their reading both individually, as small groups, and as full classes. Diversity is

key to boosting students in their skills and interest. We must relate our instruction to the students

because when instruction is personal it becomes relevant and students have more of an interest

and investment in the content. Every student brings their own interests and experiences to the

classroom, and we can aid them in their skills relating to reading and literacy by working within

their personalities. As Coro also discusses, reading instruction should include elements based on

the student’s creativity. Therefore, I suggest allowing students to write freely and construct

narratives or poems about their own experiences and use what they brainstorm. Strict guidelines

allow students an easy out; they do not have to think but only follow instruction. Instead,

requiring students to use their creativity to come up with a project and create unique work opens

their minds and gets them using reading literacy skills to think about concepts and using

metacognitive strategies in order to understand why they are doing what they are. Lastly, I want

to touch on the idea Coro mentions of reading instruction including feelings. This seems

unrelated to teaching reading but there is nothing more human than the experience of reading a

piece of literature that truly connects with you. We have removed this aspect in many ways by

teaching reading as a skill rather than an experience and this limits students in their ability to

progress. The most important aspect of reading literacy is recognizing and evolving from the

feelings that one lives through because of their reading journey. Acknowledging the experience

allows students to take leaps and bounds in developing their skills and their lives.
 The importance of teaching reading and reading literacy continually and in conjunction

with each other is something I will take into my classroom with me when I begin student

teaching next semester and as I go into my own classroom later on. Teachers should never

assume students already know how to do something or assume a lack of capability either. It is

our duty to our students not to limit their education and to pass along all we can as often as

possible. Students will not always advocate for themselves so we must advocate for them.

Reading and reading literacy skills alike are constantly developing and the learning process

never ends. Teaching them in a parallel fashion is not only beneficial but vital.
 Works Cited

Burke, Jim. The English Teacher’s Companion. Heinemann, 2013.

Corcoran, John. The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read. Brehon Publishing, 2018.

Coro, Christopher M. Learning to Read Versus Reading to Learn: A Naturalistic Inquiry into

Adult Literacy Teachers' Beliefs about Literacy, Capella University, Ann Arbor, 2004.

ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/learning-read-versus-reading-

learn-naturalistic/docview/305041834/se-2?accountid=26354.

Crystal, David. A Little Book of Language. Yale University Press, 2010.

Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. HarperPerennial, 1994.