Unspeakable Acts, Unnatural Practices: Flaws and Fallacies in Scientific Reading Instruction

by Frank Smith

At last, noted language researcher and educator Frank Smith weighs in Using his razor-sharp analytical skills in linguistics and intimate understanding of professional teaching, Smith dismantles the shoddy science undergirding direct, intensive, and early phonics training. His book title is to be taken literally. The very reading instruction that claims to be "scientific," "research based," and "evidence based"--imposed on teachers and enforced...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0325006199
• ISBN13: 9780325006192
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.8" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Teaching phonics is good, "intensively" is bad

There are three theories to teaching phonics. Intensively, with systematic, direct instruction. "Basic Phonics" which is not intensively systematic but covers all the most important rules we all remember from first grade "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking," and zero phonics instruction. Some people equate "whole language" with zero phonics, but Smith shows that this is not true. In this excellent book, he stands up for Basic Phonics and against the ridiculously intensive method proposed by some. Such as Johnson (2001): "the a-e combination is pronounced with the long vowel and the final e silent (except when the final syllable is unaccented - then the vowel is pronounced with a short-i sound, as in "palace," or the combination is "are," with words such as "have" and "dance" as exceptions). Get real and read Frank Smith. He's always right.

Food for thought

This book provides food for thought and a different perspective on issues that many educators take for granted. The author questions the basic assumptions underlying the concept of teaching reading through phonics, providing logical and intelligent reasons for his position. He argues that systematic phonics instruction makes reading more difficult for many students. Phonics, he explains, is simply too complicated a system, pointing out that even a small vocabulary of 6,000 common English words requires over 200 rules to account for all the ways that individual letters are related to individual sounds. Thus, he says, "Being required to master phonics before one can read is the wrong intervention at the wrong time." The author appears to favor a more natural approach to reading instruction; one reason I gave the book 4 rather than 5 stars is that he really doesn't outline a specific program or alternative. He raises some excellent questions, but readers will have to go elsewhere for specific answers.