Reading Literacy: Interview with Ondřej Hausenblas

From the international comparison we have learnt that our children can read, but do not understand what they are reading much. Where to look for the cause of the lack of analytical reading skills with the Czech children?

To understand the read is not only a thing of analytical reading abilities. There certainly are several causes, some of which are quite hidden. On top of that, we are not used to thinking about them much. A lot of people think that to read means to decipher letters and know words. Many think that it means to read a random text aloud. However, there is a long journey to understanding, both intellectual and affective. At its beginning, there stands the reader’s relationship to what he/she is reading. Now, while reading each of the following paragraphs, try reflecting how you are helping your children with this reading, or what you experienced at school yourself.

At the beginning of understanding there may stand the relationship of the reader to what he/she is reading. If one really wants to read the text, they are probably looking for something: an experience (e.g. getting goose pimples from a horror, being thrilled by an adventure, feeling touched by love or satisfied by being better informed). If one does not want to understand, then they are not looking for much in fact, and therefore are not going to arrive at much understanding. Contemporary children tend to lose the appetite for reading and learning by doing so at quite an early age.

Many are vexed by simple text decoding already in the first school year: they cannot connect the letters on the paper with the sounds in their mouth for too long. Apart from that, it is hard for them to identify particular sounds, also in those words they have already learnt, which are written down as letters. This was maybe easier for Egyptians or American Natives – they drew a whole word by one picture. But then they had too many words. We are able to get by with about 40 letters to express absolutely all words (it could be even 300,000). A Czech child needs a long time for learning to read fluently, painlessly enough to be able to enjoy reading – and moreover, today the adults, quite unwisely, stop reading to children after the age of six.

To understand the read also requires perseverance, even if you are quite fluent with letters. Today’s children are probably also less used to waiting for “getting” the message of the written. Foreign researches suggest that while reading on the Internet, children do not wait for anything, but click on the next picture or information straight away. They must learn to wait a moment, go through the whole page, look for the specific information and then study it by reading. This procedure is completely new to them!

What is also very important is how children are taught to deal with difficulties with the understanding a particular part of the text – a word, whole sentence, a situation. Texts for children are usually written in order to minimize these difficulties – however, we must not give children only simple texts such as Pussy Bear magazine for children. Children need to draw on the experience of coping with difficulties and receive adequate assistance at the same time. Only some are able to do that: not to ask the child “probing” and in fact quite silly questions about such elements of the content that are obvious to everyone.

It is essential for children to be able to immediately use what they have read – to be able to talk about the experience with a friend or a parent so that the piece of knowledge can serve the purpose, i. e. why they looked for that specific information in that specific book.

However, there may be many other causes. We should be also careful not to overestimate the reports on various tests results – to create and subsequently evaluate a really good test for reading comprehension is neither easy nor cheap and cannot be knocked up in a year by some central authority and its institute while being paid for from quickly channelled European funds. Test authors, such those of PISA, are specially trained and very intelligent. Moreover, the verification of whether a test really corroborates what we wanted to find out is multiple. Yet, PISA’s findings are only partial. However, in our country we still do not have such tests. Computer testing will only make the level of our reading comprehension skills poorer.

You mentioned that reading is above all connected with children´s interest in reading. How can school and teachers support children´s interest in reading?

First, they should help children in creating distinct perception of whole stories or poems. The advantage of the genetic method is that children get to independent reading often around Christmas in the first year, though they still have to learn to decipher letters. So why not decipher the first three or four sentences and then get the rest of the lovely story read well by the teacher? Hopefully, the pleasant experience may overcome the pain and suffering from reading letters and give hope that even us, the beginners in reading will soon read on our own.

Slightly older children need time to learn how to share their reading with others. For that, it is really essential to be able to write. First, it is important to make personal notes of reading (not just mechanically compile a list of assigned reading, just retelling the plot and names of characters) and also to write about one’s reading to the other people around, even to really write – your own little writing attempts, to understand better that a text of a renowned author hides many secrets and sophisticated techniques. Fiction reading goes hand in hand with discussing it with the people who are close to us – not only after finishing the reading, but already before or sometimes during the process. However, reading classes usually do not allow this because only few teachers have learnt to lead them that way. How many of them allow children to read the text silently through and let them “imagine it” before they are asked to read blocks of text aloud to the others? Then, the children feel bothered with both themselves stammering out the text and also by the slower ones stammering even worse. To read aloud to the whole class is not a part of the reader’s development at all, but just a threatening cane in the teacher’s hands. Who wants the children to read well and aloud can let them read to each other in chunks. Then, all of them can get through the reading during the lesson time.

Further information on myriad ways of support a teacher could provide the children at school with can be found in ‘Kritické listy’ magazine or in the courses of Critical Thinking.

What is most alarming and interesting are poorer and poorer results of boys - are boys perhaps less ‘gifted’ for reading than girls?

Nowadays, this is a global phenomenon. Boys simply have a different starting point - I suppose we are originally the hunters – the trackers. It is in our genes to follow the trail - the storyline, quite quickly make decisions which direction to go next and experience the thrill and satisfaction from the victory over the prey. Reading can be quite boring, if the female author of a short story does not know this fact or is not able to write accordingly, or has only girl readers in mind: their looking around, considering options, parallel attention to many subtle details and complex relations. A ‘noir’ story flowing swiftly does not capture many girls, it rather scares them. Maybe, it is not that certain and it is definitely not hundred per cent. I know an Australian author who, after years of teaching at technical schools attended mostly by boys, started writing books for them. There are large pictures illustrating relatively short blocks of the narrated text with secret and nail-biting suspense, while the illustrations are closely related to the topic and mood of the story. But remember Petr Sís’s books – they are read by girls as well.

Maybe, the boys are also less compatible with “the obedient”, unimaginative way of tuition at many of our schools. Teachers need to enforce discipline, which girls usually follow more devotedly, whereas boys would rather devastate the class. Therefore, they are forced into orderliness so strongly that they rebel (at least inside) and loathe the activities requiring quiet and concentration such as reading.

What do you think the future of the book is? Is it going to be replaced by e-readers, new electronic formats? Will we ‘go’ to virtual shops and rental shops for books instead of libraries?

It is quite possible that e-readers will win and then again will be replaced by a next thing later. A bound book made of paper has one characteristic important for fiction – it goes from hand to hand, not via a wire or a wave. One of the parts of culture is that people talk about the read texts, that they know other people have read the text as well, and that they ask each other further questions, discuss experiences and opinions on what the author presented to their inner sight during the reading. And that is exactly why readers’ contacts are so valuable; they pass a book from hand to hand – you must be close enough for that; otherwise you would not be able to reach it. And this personal closeness creates shared experience, thinking over and sharing new or traditional values which literature stirs or creates anew. It probably works differently with non-fiction. There, the informed community can exist within a social network as well, or one can be a completely isolated reader. However, fiction is not written for an individual, but for a whole crowd of individuals.

How can libraries accommodate the readers of the electronic age and keep the affection of the ‘paper’ book readers at the same time?

This question might be better answered by the librarians themselves; they have knowledge of different techniques and organize many events. It is definitely good when they give people an opportunity to meet, stay and interact in a place with a lot of books, which can be easily grabbed. And thus lead meetings, debates and readings. Nowadays, some people at an adult age realize that they have never learned to plunge into the depths of reading; that books do not ‘speak’ to them. If they want to learn that, it is the library that can show them the way. To invite someone, who is not only an expert on the history or forms of literature, but who can also talk about how he/she understands the depths of text and who knows how to give others a hand while exploring those depths. Writers are usually still able to do it, but it is necessary to look for (and educate) others too. There are never enough of them.

How and where do you share books and stories you have been moved by? Have you got your own way how to tell the others about the important things you have read?

We talk to each other at home when we have time. If I come across a book, which is good in my opinion, I do not hesitate to let my students, colleagues, sometimes the general public know about it on the Internet. I recommend, I suggest using it for teaching or just reading it for an enjoyable experience. However, there are times when I do not read much and, as many of us, I do not even have time. Fortunately, there are Christmas and birthdays when new and new books emerge and shout: “Read me!” And as they are read in a close circle, there are always people to talk to about them.

Ondřej Hausenblas was born in 1954, studied at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, majoring in Czech and English. He teaches the Czech language and literature, especially didactics; now at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague. Last eleven years he has been working as a lecturer within the ‘Reading and Writing as a Way to Critical Thinking’ programme (www.kritickemysleni.cz); he mainly focuses on reading literacy and reading.

Questions prepared by Pavel Kosák (the Variants Programme). The interview was published 31^st October 2012 on a blog on Aktualne.cz website. The abridged version was published in the November issue of the Variants Bulletin.