Whether teaching reading skills should preceede writing or vice versa has been a controversial issue among teachers and educators. To what extent do you think that either skill should be taught before the other, and why?
In Montessori classrooms across the globe, you'll find that children are learning to write before they are learning to read. The probables reasons are:
1. Understanding comes before memorization:
Montessori schools introduce children to the sounds of the letters before the names of the letters. The reason why this approach is taken is because children can hear the sounds without having to memorize the names.
Growing up, many of us actually learned the exact opposite way. We were first introduced to reading and then writing, starting by memorizing the letters:
a, b, c.
When this approach is taken it becomes easier to learn how to read, before you learn how to write, because you have trained yourself to memorize letters and their combinations, words.
Reading before writing is based on memorization.
Montessori believed, however, in a different way. She believed that understanding should come before memorization, and that if one was to fully develop an appreciation for language, we must first start with letter sounds:
ah, buh, cuh…
There’s a lovely quote from Montessori that goes something like this, “Everyone can read Shakespeare, but how many people truly understand it?”
2. Learning to write is learning to read: Ironically, as a child learns how to write, they are also learning how to read. By working to put letter sounds together, sounding out the letters as they go along, children are starting to write.
cu-ah-tuh.
Cat.
As they compose these letter sounds, what starts as a few sounds put together turns into a few words, which becomes a sentence and then a paragraph and pretty soon you have a story.
Why does this process work so effectively? Well, because as Montessori says, it’s a natural extension of how children learn, first understanding sounds and later memorization their names. They are not looking at words trying to remember what they are, let alone what mean, they are coupling sounds together in their head to create
https://montessorium.com/community-post/montessori-teaches-writing-before-reading
Why should one of these activities be learned first? Learning to write, and particulalry when handwriting, helps decoding letters (Longcamp et al.). Reciprocally, learning to read helps acquiring vocabulary, grammatical structures, discourse structure which then can be used when composing.
From a maturation point of view, however, reading may develop earlier than writing, which requires very complex but fine motor coordination. The brain structures that allow such a motor coordination are functional later than the brain structures for decoding letters.
Nevertheless, training children to write and read also contributes to development of these brain structures. So, again, one solid arguments to defend the idea that one of these activity has to be taught first could be that one serves to ground the other. I am not sure about this. I think both interacts when learning to write and to read.
These are interesting questions. What should be taught first, what is best practice etc.; these kinds of questions, their ideas and arguments are ubiquitous. They are concerned with what makes good education. The only thing I am certain about is that there is no universal answer. Education takes place in different contexts with different people. Decisions of what to do first, second, third, not at all etc should be embedded in the education context and the particular classrooms that we teachers have at one time. What works one semester with one group of students, may not work for the next. What works in the UAE might not work in Qatar.
Is this question being asked in an elementary school context, or for adults learning a second language, of adults who lack literacy skills? Is it for EFL in Japan or Chuk Island? We could continue to focus these questions on finer details: class size, school expectations, teachers' capacity to cope with their circumstances, student age, background, culture: all play a part. Questions of which is better are reductive. Either to begin with reading or begin with writing as a general principle is to ignore the realities of the context and the individuals within.
Perhaps instead of asking for arguments about what 'should' be, ask for details of what teachers do in the contexts in which they do work and why they think their ideas work in that situation. Capture teachers' own sense of authority (knowledge) and authorship (creativity) of their work to build a bigger picture of what can be done, rather than argue what should be done. Leave others with a sense of new discoveries to be tried and tested rather than 'correct' answers that might not work in different circumstances. In my view, there is no definitive answer.
Rhetoric - Writing - Reading - Grammar etc.,
Appreciation of the art of writing into the commonplace tradition evolved while rhetoric continued to emphasize grammar, diction, word choice, etc., there was a new focus on the functions of discourse and the study of literary models. Toward the end of these traditional notions of writing were challenged by practical, functional views of writing and by the progressive movement.
http://www.albany.edu/cela/publication/article/writeread.htm
I always say reading should take precedence for two reasons. The first is based on the natural argument that sound is the primary form of language. Therefore, it is natural to teach the skill that is most related to the primary form of language and that is reading. The second is pedagogical. To teach writing, it is important that learners have an anchor through which they can either look at existing pieces of writing or indeed generate their own authentic material. Either way, a measdure of reading ability is required. the key question though is, how much of reading must a learner have before we introduce writing? I think that is the key issue. A base in reading can and perhaps should be followed by writing instructions. That way, the two can continue to develop together although there is no doubt that you need to have reading in place to some extent before moving into writing.
Yahya -- I teach writing to native speakers of English. I have not done statistical research, but informally and anecdotally, I always find that the best writers are those who read for pleasure extensively, or at least did before their college years.
I think that this kind of reading reading provides good examples of strong writing -- descriptive vocabulary, excellent grammar, etc.
So I think that basic writing can certainly be learned along with the other language skills. To become an excellent, advanced writer, requires the benefit of having a lot of reading experience, I believe.
Thanks for your comments. What I am pointing to is that why do we always as teachers try to emphasize on reading for learning and not writing? Why do we always focus on input and not output? Why should input preceed output? For example, before we start teaching something to our students whether or not they have a background knowledge about that, why shouldn't we ask learners to write down for no more than 5 minutes about what they think of the new topic. Why do we have to force them to be receivers of information and not deliverers? Perhabs they might think differently or they might have some new ideas about a certain topic, priore to knowing new ideas that they will learn.
Using such a technique might give us the chance to build students critical thinking or creative thinking. It migh sounds weird. But what I want to say is that instead of using the input method of teaching, why not shifting to the output method. This will demonstrate that students will learn faster and try to show their ideas for others instead of reading others ideas. If we don't allow our students to write from early ages they will find writing a bit challenging at later ages. One of my students once said to me "why can't we be like those authors who write books and articles that we read every now and then; why can't we learn to write instead of learn to read." That actually kept me in a pose for a moment to search for an appropriate answer. Meanwhile I was thinking how did people start to write; did they realy learned to read first; and if there were no written texts already have been existed before, what would they have to read?
Keiran Egan (1990) states, on p. 238 of his book "Romantic Understanding" :
"The writing of literate but largely unschooled people very often has an emotional power that we find only in the major writers of our tradition of schooled high literacy. One sees it now in old people in the West, who learned the alphabet and how to write, but then went out to work before they were fully schooled in how to write "properly". One sees it also more frequently in the third world countries today, where people are taught simple literacy and no more. What frequently happens is that these people use literacy to "talk" with. Their spelling, syntax, grammatical constuctions are not at all like those of this book. But their writing has a directness and force that we high literates have largely lost the ability to achieve.
Relating specifically to your question, Yahya, Egan has more recently developed an 'output' method of teaching education: (www.ierg.net/LiD)
Thanks David for adding such a valuable comment to this thread and for sharing Egan’s output method, can’t wait to look it up. Highly appreciated.
to make an analogy with oral language development: children start producing sounds (but not words or sentences) before they unterstand language (words & sentences). however, receptive language skills develop ahead of productive skills. for the reading - writing that might mean to "babble" and draw/write letters at very early stages, then focus on reading and let children start writing whenever they feel like it?
What do you think should be taught first: reading or writing? Why?
Personally I think reading should be taught first before writing - reason being reading is an input process whereas writing is an output process. Young children / students need input before they can output.
In Montessori classrooms across the globe, you'll find that children are learning to write before they are learning to read. The probables reasons are:
1. Understanding comes before memorization:
Montessori schools introduce children to the sounds of the letters before the names of the letters. The reason why this approach is taken is because children can hear the sounds without having to memorize the names.
Growing up, many of us actually learned the exact opposite way. We were first introduced to reading and then writing, starting by memorizing the letters:
a, b, c.
When this approach is taken it becomes easier to learn how to read, before you learn how to write, because you have trained yourself to memorize letters and their combinations, words.
Reading before writing is based on memorization.
Montessori believed, however, in a different way. She believed that understanding should come before memorization, and that if one was to fully develop an appreciation for language, we must first start with letter sounds:
ah, buh, cuh…
There’s a lovely quote from Montessori that goes something like this, “Everyone can read Shakespeare, but how many people truly understand it?”
2. Learning to write is learning to read: Ironically, as a child learns how to write, they are also learning how to read. By working to put letter sounds together, sounding out the letters as they go along, children are starting to write.
cu-ah-tuh.
Cat.
As they compose these letter sounds, what starts as a few sounds put together turns into a few words, which becomes a sentence and then a paragraph and pretty soon you have a story.
Why does this process work so effectively? Well, because as Montessori says, it’s a natural extension of how children learn, first understanding sounds and later memorization their names. They are not looking at words trying to remember what they are, let alone what mean, they are coupling sounds together in their head to create
https://montessorium.com/community-post/montessori-teaches-writing-before-reading
Reading should proceed writing because the former fans the interest in the latter
5 Reasons Why Writing Helps Early Reading
By Richard Gentry and Steve Peha
Early writing is of great benefit for learning to read. Yet this methodology seems not to be used to its best advantage. While it might seem novel it also has a powerful precedent: Maria Montessori (1870-1952) observed that children as young as two years of age were interested in tracing sandpaper letters and that many learned to write before reading.
Even though learning to read English with its complex and “opaque” spelling system is harder than learning to read Montessori’s native Italian, both research and practice reveal that many English speaking 3- to 6-year-olds write first and read later. [1] [2]
Here are five reasons why you want to show your beginning reader how to pick up a pencil or crayon and write.
1. Early writing helps children crack the reading code.
Because our language is a sound-symbol system, attempting to write the sounds kids hear is great phonics practice. It also combines segmenting and blending, the two fundamental early reading skills, in one purposeful activity.
Writing is great phonics practice because it requires kids to apply the Alphabetic Principle, the central concept of printed language: “Words are made of sounds that are written with letters.” To write a word, kids have to “hear” it. Then they have to associate the sound they hear with a letter symbol. Literacy is easier to acquire when kids work the way their language does. In the case of alphabetic language, that’s “sound to symbol.”
In a recent article, “Sounding Out Words” [3], we demonstrated techniques that make it easy for beginners to turn sounds into letters. Research now supports writing to read: brain scan studies show that early manuscript lessons help activate and coordinate reading circuitry. [4]
2. The first words kids read are often the first ones they write; early writing builds reading confidence.
The first words and sentences kids can read are often the first words and sentences they write. Writing gives them early and much needed confidence with literacy.
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Writing first helps kids get the meaning connection because they are conveying their own thoughts. Often, the first words kids write will use unconventional spelling and even unconventional drawing of some letters. However, if we ask kids to read what they have written, and especially if we point to each “word” as kids read along, they can often remember their ideas and read them back.
3. Writing gives kids a head start on handwriting, spelling, punctuation, and other concepts of print.
Learning to write early on means kids get more chances to learn to practice handwriting, to learn to spell, to learn to punctuate, and to think about many of the conventions of printed text that are required to become successful readers.
Though we’re not aware of it as adults, there are many “concepts of print” (as psychologist and Reading Recovery inventor Dr. Marie Clay termed them) that kids have to learn. These include things like writing words left-to-right and lines top-to-bottom, putting spaces between words, understandingthe relationship between words and pictures, and so on. Early writing then becomes a form of self-testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice of concepts of print and conventions—learning techniques that psychologists have found to be effective. [5]
4. Writing is a brainpower workout.
At a time when kids’ brainpower is growing extremely rapidly, writing may be the single best brain workout they can get: it requires all the skills of reading, some of the logical skills of math and science, small motor coordination, and even some emotional intelligence as well when they begin to consider writing for an audience.
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This means that writing is very hard for little kids. But doing hard things is very good for learning. As long as kids aren’t pushed past the point of frustration, writing will naturally push them to the edge of their literate abilities—and move them past that edge very quickly.
Unlike basic reading books, and phonics programs, which introduce new words and letters in gradual and very controlled ways, kids wanting to communicate through print will want to write whatever words they want to write. As long as they have some basic techniques for doing this (sufficient handwriting practice, basic knowledge of letter sounds, a strategy for sounding out words, etc.), they’ll push themselves hard because they’re so invested in their own success.
Writing also conveys an interesting sense of ownership to many kids. Reading involves working with the words and ideas of others. While kids can and do take great pride in reading their favorite stories, the sense of agency and satisfaction they take in writing their own words can be even greater.
5. Writing is a useful assessment of reading ability.
Research shows that beginning reading and writing “are one and the same, almost.” [6 ] You can assess a kid’s early reading development and monitor progress by looking at their writing. [7]
Observing what kids do and how they are thinking when they write provides information that can guide instruction. Performance samples of written work are representations of activated reading circuitry and reveal a child’s reading skills. Unlike trying to guess what a kid can comprehend or determine a kid’s degree of fluency as they read aloud, teachers and parents can study kids’ writing carefully and learn a lot about which letters and sounds they know, how they spell, how they’re doing with handwriting, how they make sense of text, and many other important things that guide instruction.
reference/https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/raising-readers-writers-and-spellers/201309/5-reasons-why-writing-helps-early-reading
regards
The first word of Quran (word of God) is Read so reading before writing
Mankind first learned to talk before inventing writing. Thus, I suggest reading first.
Actually both are important, but first you must read in order to be able to write.
Dear all,
I appreciate all your insights. Most of the comments that advocate writing over reading in early childhood brought up very interesting points.
Thanks for your interactions,
Writing is a more complex event, but with much training, as normal in Montessori's method children learn first to write; that reading after this process ot asccompanying is no problem wenn the written word and the spoken word are identical, this is in German otr Spanish mostly the case, not in French or English; vice versa, children of Steiner Schools childeren learn reading and writing relatively late, and Eurytmy of spoken words and letters play a role. Both processes are interlinked. - But see the situation in Japan: Children learn at first hiragana, (also the special katagana, but late the Kanji-Symbols. This goes over years.
hi. in my opinion, there should be a lot of comprehensible input before they can produce comprehensible output especially in EFL context. they cannot start with the most complicated and rule-governed part of linguistic skills, writing. writing as a productive skill requires a lot of skills and arts. foreign learners will be demotivated by the complicated task. reading can provide these pre-requisites by giving vocabulary, structure or grammatical competence. best
Both goes hand in hand. Both are parallel process. So both is to be taught simultaneously.
I. in the initial stages of language learning, it is advisable to expose learners to comprehensible input before production because production is more demanding than comprehension . learners do not have enough linguistic resources to produce ; they prefer to listen and read to experience the pleasure of achievements. in the next stages, both can happen together resulting in more achievements. best
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