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Reading for Life: High Quality Literacy Instruction for All
Why is it that more people can’t read and write? Why are there still so many vastly different methods of teaching literacy? Why do people still argue about it? Reading for Life examines these three questions, addressing the less evidence supported ideas about teaching reading and writing which are still alive and well in schools all over the world. This accessible guide bridges the gap between research and practice, translating academic findings into practical suggestions and ready-to-use techniques. Written in an approachable style and with informative graphics, vignettes and interviews woven throughout, this book Reading for Life helps educational practitioners make informed decisions about which teaching methods to reject and select, and empowers parents to ask the right questions of professionals and policy makers. This book is a timely exploration of poor teaching methods and is an innovative, fresh assessment of how high quality literacy teaching can be provided for all.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published December 13, 2018
26 people are currently reading
219 people want to read
About the author
Lyn Stone
1 book3 followersLyn Stone is a linguist and runs Lifelong Literacy, a specialist tutoring practice for children and adults with learning difficulties, on the Mornington Peninsula in Australia. She also writes courses, trains teachers and acts as a consultant for schools on matters of literacy and language.
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August 9, 2023
“Most teacher training institutes in the country promote whole language and equip their graduate teachers with very poor tools for literacy teaching” (p.76).
This is a strikingly odd book. Nonetheless, direct instruction of synthetic phonetics has become a major means of teaching children to read across much of the English speaking world, and so, odd or not, I’m going to review it. The major thing I find odd about this book is its complete rejection of all methods of reading instruction that the author does not believe are based on the ‘science of reading’. This book asserts that any objective observer would accept her approach – what she refers to as ‘structured literacy’ – which is based upon six key skills: oral language development, phonological (including phonemic) awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. In fact, she repeatedly makes it clear that to continue to assert the value of any other method of literacy instruction is likely to be based on a lack of understanding (p.3), being held captive of flawed principles (p.4), belonging to a cult (Chapter 16) or having an inability to understand or apply logic in a way that would make clear one’s own intrinsic biases (Chapter 17). She literally provides an entire chapter detailing what she believes are the logical fallacies of those who disagree with her. I felt like I was reading The Scout Mindset all over again.
The quote I began this review with refers to initial teacher education courses in tertiary institutions in Australia. The vast majority of these are held in Australian universities. I want you to understand the full enormity of the claim she is making here. She is claiming that the almost 40 universities in Australia that provide teacher education degrees (both under and post-graduate), staffed by many thousands of academics, most of whom have PhDs, continue to churn out poorly equipped teachers mostly because they are dupes or ageing hippies incapable of seeing the benefits of direct instruction in phonetic awareness due to their being held captive by the failed ideology of social constructivism. (Her glossary defines constructivism as “A theory of learning that states the obvious, i.e. that people learn by experiencing things.” (p.193) – seriously?)
From the start of this book my warning bells were ringing. She mentions the Matthew Effect and then says this, “The name refers to the Bible passage in Matthew stating something to the effect of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”. She didn’t even look up the passage in the Bible to see what it said? Needless to say it has nothing at all to do with the rich getting richer. And look, I know this looks like I’m nit-picking, but actually, this is a pattern of behaviour she displays throughout her book. She never seems to check anything. She will make up something and then use her mischaracterisation as if it was something said by one of her enemies.
Sometimes there are extra-ordinary claims that literally stopped me reading. For instance, she quotes Moats, a fellow traveller in the phonics instruction world, and says:
“Despite anti-phonics claims that English is not a phonetic language, the truth is that over 85% of words can be phonically read and written using the alphabetic code. A further 10% can be spelled correctly using morphology and etymology and fewer than 4% could be classed as truly irregular (Moats 2010). Those who wish to argue against this, bring in small, common words as an example (was, said, other). This is a straw man” (p.168).
So, effectively 96% of all words in English can be spelt using more or less simple rules. How is it possible that so many people have gotten this one wrong about English? I went to Moat 2010 to see where this 4% figure came from. It is unattributed in her article. But I persisted, and it turns out it was taken from a paper by Hanna et al from 1966 called ‘Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement”. I’m not sure that if I was pushing for phonics to be taught as the major method of teaching children to read, that I would be relying on this paper. Basically, the paper was concerned with writing a computer program that would, using American English pronunciation given in the Webster’s new International Dictionary of the English Language, spell 17,000 (odd) words correctly. And so, how did the program go? Did it spell 96% of the words right? To quote the paper: “About half (49+ percent) of all the words in the 17,000+ corpus can be spelled correctly on phonological bases alone” (p.133).
I wasn’t able to find the 4% figure in the paper itself, but apparently this is something discussed in another paper from 2001 by Kessler & Treiman ‘Relationships between sounds and letters in English monosyllables’. I don’t think either of these papers support her strong claim that English is a phonetic language that has been mischaracterised as non-phonetic. I can see why such a claim fits her argument – I just can see how it fits the English language.
I want to stress that the Hanna et al paper is in favour of teaching children the alphabetic principle, as it says it would help them learn to spell – it isn’t clear to me that they are saying anything about using this to teach children to read – however, I have not read the entire paper. What they do say, however, is “Whether or not the full range of generalizations used in the production of the algorithm is capable of being learned by the elementary school pupil has yet to be determined. No member of the research teach would advocate that these rules be memorized and used in a deductive manner by elementary school children” (p.134). Which seems to be close to the opposite of what Stone is saying.
Since she brought it up, I want to say something about straw men. She variously defines Whole Language throughout this book – and even while defining it, she can’t resist having digs. To quote:
“Whole language is more of a force, a set of ideas and a suite of related methodologies. It is based on two flawed principles:
1. That children learn to read in much the same way that they learn to talk (they don’t), because learning to read is a natural process (it’s not).
2. That immersing children in a literacy-rich environment will lead them to discover the structure of the written code by themselves (it won’t). (p.4) (all interjections – other than this one – are Stone’s)
I don’t like simple classifications and labels, they generally hide more than they reveal, but I’ve never met anyone who believes either of these things. She says at one point that Frank Smith is the “Founder of the modern whole language approach to reading instruction” (in Table 10.1). As such, you might think that rather than providing her own principles, she might quote Smith. She references alternative methods of teaching reading throughout, but rarely quotes anyone who supports these methods – much preferring to provide her own characterisations – often with asides undermining these methods as she characterises. I’ve read many of Frank Smith’s books. Rather than him saying reading is natural and can be learnt in the same way we learn to talk, he says it is difficult and requires an openness to teaching by multiple strategies. If his vision of whole language could be encapsulated in a sentence, that would be that children learn best when what is being taught to them makes sense – that meaningfulness is central to all learning. I feel this is harder to brush aside as the rantings of a mad-man than the two flawed principles she creates above.
My problem with teaching phonics is that I struggle to see how it can be done in a way that is not likely to bore a child to death. She dismisses the criticism that teaching students nonsense syllables and providing texts that do violence to English as a meaningful language so as to teach an alphabetic principle is ‘drill and kill’ as “cute, but ultimately empty catchphrases that whole language proponents use to try and discredit structured literacy, especially systemic synthetic phonics” (p.4). But I struggle to see how it could not be.
She also provides many fixes to problems, but I’m not sure if these problems actually exist. For example, she makes the valid point that to not know your alphabet is a serious handicap in our world. She then provides interesting ways to teach children the alphabet. But I’ve been unable to find any statistics that tells me the proportion of adults who do not know their alphabet. Perhaps it is shockingly large, I really have no idea and I’m not sure how to find out. I can’t help wondering if this is a solution in search of a problem?
I’m going to end now – but I want to end by stressing something I think is very important – the ‘science’ here is anything but settled. On Page 110 she provides figure 17.8 labelled Reliability Scale. This provides an increasing scale of reliability of evidence from anecdotes and expert opinion through to single case-studies to randomized-controlled trials up to the pinnacle of reliability in a meta-analysis. I’m an education researcher – I have nothing against this scale per se. However, can you guess how many meta-analyses she quotes in this book? In fact, it barely matters, since a recent review of 12 meta-analyses casts doubt on the use of those used to support phonics by its followers. A recent paper by Bowers (2020) in Educational Psychology Review doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09515-y is called ‘Reconsidering the evidence that systemic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction’ and concludes that:
“Despite the widespread support for systematic phonics within the research literature, there is little or no evidence that this approach is more effective than many of the most common alternative methods used in school, including whole language. This does not mean that learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences is unimportant, but it does mean that there is little or no empirical evidence that systematic phonics leads to better reading outcomes.” (p.703)
He also finds that “The improving performance on the phonics screening check in England provides little or no evidence that systemic phonics improves literacy” (p.700) and that most of the meta-analyses relied upon to prove the superiority of synthetic phonics simply did not compare it to other common alternatives at all. To quote again:
“A total of 12 meta-analyses have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics for individuals of different ages and abilities. In most cases (although not all), the meta-analyses are taken to support the conclusion that systematic phonics is an essential component of initial reading instruction and more effective than common alternatives such as whole language. As detailed below, this conclusion is not justified by any of the meta-analyses. The results have been mischaracterized by the authors themselves (summarizing the results in ways that mislead the reader), and in most cases, the design of the meta-analyses was not even designed to test the conclusions that were drawn by the authors” (P. 685)
As Bowers makes clear, whole language teachers do teach phonics, it being a tool they use when they feel they need to, but they use it when it is seen to enhance the meaning of text, when the child is likely to gain meaning from being shown the relationship. Meaning in instruction is central, not something that students will eventually get to once they have mastered ‘the basics’.
I was disappointed with this book. She makes a number of worthwhile suggestions for teaching reading, but her total rejection of everything to do with alternatives is a red-flag Routledge ought to have noted before publishing this one.
This is a strikingly odd book. Nonetheless, direct instruction of synthetic phonetics has become a major means of teaching children to read across much of the English speaking world, and so, odd or not, I’m going to review it. The major thing I find odd about this book is its complete rejection of all methods of reading instruction that the author does not believe are based on the ‘science of reading’. This book asserts that any objective observer would accept her approach – what she refers to as ‘structured literacy’ – which is based upon six key skills: oral language development, phonological (including phonemic) awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. In fact, she repeatedly makes it clear that to continue to assert the value of any other method of literacy instruction is likely to be based on a lack of understanding (p.3), being held captive of flawed principles (p.4), belonging to a cult (Chapter 16) or having an inability to understand or apply logic in a way that would make clear one’s own intrinsic biases (Chapter 17). She literally provides an entire chapter detailing what she believes are the logical fallacies of those who disagree with her. I felt like I was reading The Scout Mindset all over again.
The quote I began this review with refers to initial teacher education courses in tertiary institutions in Australia. The vast majority of these are held in Australian universities. I want you to understand the full enormity of the claim she is making here. She is claiming that the almost 40 universities in Australia that provide teacher education degrees (both under and post-graduate), staffed by many thousands of academics, most of whom have PhDs, continue to churn out poorly equipped teachers mostly because they are dupes or ageing hippies incapable of seeing the benefits of direct instruction in phonetic awareness due to their being held captive by the failed ideology of social constructivism. (Her glossary defines constructivism as “A theory of learning that states the obvious, i.e. that people learn by experiencing things.” (p.193) – seriously?)
From the start of this book my warning bells were ringing. She mentions the Matthew Effect and then says this, “The name refers to the Bible passage in Matthew stating something to the effect of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”. She didn’t even look up the passage in the Bible to see what it said? Needless to say it has nothing at all to do with the rich getting richer. And look, I know this looks like I’m nit-picking, but actually, this is a pattern of behaviour she displays throughout her book. She never seems to check anything. She will make up something and then use her mischaracterisation as if it was something said by one of her enemies.
Sometimes there are extra-ordinary claims that literally stopped me reading. For instance, she quotes Moats, a fellow traveller in the phonics instruction world, and says:
“Despite anti-phonics claims that English is not a phonetic language, the truth is that over 85% of words can be phonically read and written using the alphabetic code. A further 10% can be spelled correctly using morphology and etymology and fewer than 4% could be classed as truly irregular (Moats 2010). Those who wish to argue against this, bring in small, common words as an example (was, said, other). This is a straw man” (p.168).
So, effectively 96% of all words in English can be spelt using more or less simple rules. How is it possible that so many people have gotten this one wrong about English? I went to Moat 2010 to see where this 4% figure came from. It is unattributed in her article. But I persisted, and it turns out it was taken from a paper by Hanna et al from 1966 called ‘Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement”. I’m not sure that if I was pushing for phonics to be taught as the major method of teaching children to read, that I would be relying on this paper. Basically, the paper was concerned with writing a computer program that would, using American English pronunciation given in the Webster’s new International Dictionary of the English Language, spell 17,000 (odd) words correctly. And so, how did the program go? Did it spell 96% of the words right? To quote the paper: “About half (49+ percent) of all the words in the 17,000+ corpus can be spelled correctly on phonological bases alone” (p.133).
I wasn’t able to find the 4% figure in the paper itself, but apparently this is something discussed in another paper from 2001 by Kessler & Treiman ‘Relationships between sounds and letters in English monosyllables’. I don’t think either of these papers support her strong claim that English is a phonetic language that has been mischaracterised as non-phonetic. I can see why such a claim fits her argument – I just can see how it fits the English language.
I want to stress that the Hanna et al paper is in favour of teaching children the alphabetic principle, as it says it would help them learn to spell – it isn’t clear to me that they are saying anything about using this to teach children to read – however, I have not read the entire paper. What they do say, however, is “Whether or not the full range of generalizations used in the production of the algorithm is capable of being learned by the elementary school pupil has yet to be determined. No member of the research teach would advocate that these rules be memorized and used in a deductive manner by elementary school children” (p.134). Which seems to be close to the opposite of what Stone is saying.
Since she brought it up, I want to say something about straw men. She variously defines Whole Language throughout this book – and even while defining it, she can’t resist having digs. To quote:
“Whole language is more of a force, a set of ideas and a suite of related methodologies. It is based on two flawed principles:
1. That children learn to read in much the same way that they learn to talk (they don’t), because learning to read is a natural process (it’s not).
2. That immersing children in a literacy-rich environment will lead them to discover the structure of the written code by themselves (it won’t). (p.4) (all interjections – other than this one – are Stone’s)
I don’t like simple classifications and labels, they generally hide more than they reveal, but I’ve never met anyone who believes either of these things. She says at one point that Frank Smith is the “Founder of the modern whole language approach to reading instruction” (in Table 10.1). As such, you might think that rather than providing her own principles, she might quote Smith. She references alternative methods of teaching reading throughout, but rarely quotes anyone who supports these methods – much preferring to provide her own characterisations – often with asides undermining these methods as she characterises. I’ve read many of Frank Smith’s books. Rather than him saying reading is natural and can be learnt in the same way we learn to talk, he says it is difficult and requires an openness to teaching by multiple strategies. If his vision of whole language could be encapsulated in a sentence, that would be that children learn best when what is being taught to them makes sense – that meaningfulness is central to all learning. I feel this is harder to brush aside as the rantings of a mad-man than the two flawed principles she creates above.
My problem with teaching phonics is that I struggle to see how it can be done in a way that is not likely to bore a child to death. She dismisses the criticism that teaching students nonsense syllables and providing texts that do violence to English as a meaningful language so as to teach an alphabetic principle is ‘drill and kill’ as “cute, but ultimately empty catchphrases that whole language proponents use to try and discredit structured literacy, especially systemic synthetic phonics” (p.4). But I struggle to see how it could not be.
She also provides many fixes to problems, but I’m not sure if these problems actually exist. For example, she makes the valid point that to not know your alphabet is a serious handicap in our world. She then provides interesting ways to teach children the alphabet. But I’ve been unable to find any statistics that tells me the proportion of adults who do not know their alphabet. Perhaps it is shockingly large, I really have no idea and I’m not sure how to find out. I can’t help wondering if this is a solution in search of a problem?
I’m going to end now – but I want to end by stressing something I think is very important – the ‘science’ here is anything but settled. On Page 110 she provides figure 17.8 labelled Reliability Scale. This provides an increasing scale of reliability of evidence from anecdotes and expert opinion through to single case-studies to randomized-controlled trials up to the pinnacle of reliability in a meta-analysis. I’m an education researcher – I have nothing against this scale per se. However, can you guess how many meta-analyses she quotes in this book? In fact, it barely matters, since a recent review of 12 meta-analyses casts doubt on the use of those used to support phonics by its followers. A recent paper by Bowers (2020) in Educational Psychology Review doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09515-y is called ‘Reconsidering the evidence that systemic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction’ and concludes that:
“Despite the widespread support for systematic phonics within the research literature, there is little or no evidence that this approach is more effective than many of the most common alternative methods used in school, including whole language. This does not mean that learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences is unimportant, but it does mean that there is little or no empirical evidence that systematic phonics leads to better reading outcomes.” (p.703)
He also finds that “The improving performance on the phonics screening check in England provides little or no evidence that systemic phonics improves literacy” (p.700) and that most of the meta-analyses relied upon to prove the superiority of synthetic phonics simply did not compare it to other common alternatives at all. To quote again:
“A total of 12 meta-analyses have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics for individuals of different ages and abilities. In most cases (although not all), the meta-analyses are taken to support the conclusion that systematic phonics is an essential component of initial reading instruction and more effective than common alternatives such as whole language. As detailed below, this conclusion is not justified by any of the meta-analyses. The results have been mischaracterized by the authors themselves (summarizing the results in ways that mislead the reader), and in most cases, the design of the meta-analyses was not even designed to test the conclusions that were drawn by the authors” (P. 685)
As Bowers makes clear, whole language teachers do teach phonics, it being a tool they use when they feel they need to, but they use it when it is seen to enhance the meaning of text, when the child is likely to gain meaning from being shown the relationship. Meaning in instruction is central, not something that students will eventually get to once they have mastered ‘the basics’.
I was disappointed with this book. She makes a number of worthwhile suggestions for teaching reading, but her total rejection of everything to do with alternatives is a red-flag Routledge ought to have noted before publishing this one.
August 13, 2022
I think this book was just okay. As a Science of Reading advocate, I felt this book fell short. She definitely had some humorous comparisons to highlight the fallacies and misconceptions about the Science of Reading. However, the cartoons were really bizarre and her specific strategies were very specific and different than most other programs. Definitely not a great read for someone new to The Science of Reading.
October 21, 2024
This book is excellent. It’s so valuable, and I learned so much. It will help me to be a more effective reading teacher.
April 9, 2024
As a middle school teacher, very few of the strategies were applicable to my classroom. I have a greater appreciation for the Science of Reading; however, this book fell short in providing real, applicable strategies beyond primary school. It felt as though a majority of the book was spent complaining about whole-word instruction, rather than providing meaningful ways to remedy gaps in phonics and fluency.
June 25, 2025
This first half of this book was informative (although if you’ve been keeping up with current literacy research you already know about whole world/balanced literacy and the need for phonics, etc). Had I read this book when it first came out, that might have struck me as even more informative but that information has been regurgitated by every reading specialist left, right, and sideways.
There’s a chunk in the middle that spends too long talking about how we even got to whole word teaching the first place.
Followed by tiny sections labeled “teaching ___” that were ideas for small group.
So, not really a book discussing how one can provide “high quality literacy instruction for all” which was the information I was hoping to receive from this book.
There’s a chunk in the middle that spends too long talking about how we even got to whole word teaching the first place.
Followed by tiny sections labeled “teaching ___” that were ideas for small group.
So, not really a book discussing how one can provide “high quality literacy instruction for all” which was the information I was hoping to receive from this book.
February 2, 2019
An engaging book that provides an overview of the position of literacy teaching/ provision in the 21st century. It should be a required text for ALL teachers and suggested reading for all parents and others with an interest in education. It not only provides insight into how and why we have arrived at such a muddled place on the road which should have been clearly signposted 'literacy this way', but also offers solutions and directions for a way forward.
December 31, 2023
This book contains an overview of all aspects of reading and the brain. There are a variety of topics, but many lack the necessary details to impact my teaching and implement change. It was informative, but I would love even more specific insights.
March 16, 2019
Recommend for all teachers working with young or struggling readers.
March 26, 2021
The table of "Major Players" and the chapter called Snake Oil are two highlights for me!
January 28, 2023
A fantastic resource and inspiration for me as a teacher. “Illiteracy is everyone’s problem.”
July 24, 2024
A great quick read with lots of no-nonsense approaches to help students be better readers.
December 18, 2024
Excellent overview of effective literacy programs and frank discussion of the ones that are not. Written in simple English with a touch of sarcasm, which made it a surprisingly enjoyable read.
October 3, 2020
Fantastic overview of literacy practice in lower primary school. Very practical advice with supporting research. Highly recommend this text to parents and teachers interested in improving their practice.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews