Reading and Listening (Tutorial Paper)

Abstract

Reading text and listening to speech involve a sequence of processing stages that take the language user from the spoken or written message to meaning. This paper describes each stage in an information processing model. At each stage of the model there are storage and process components: the storage component defines the type of information available at the stage of processing; the process component specifies the procedures that operate on the information held in the corresponding storage component. The model is used heuristically to incorporate data and theory from a variety of approaches to reading and speech perception. Some relevant issues are the properties of the various storage structures, the dynamics of the functional processes, and the active utilization of the various sources of knowledge available to the language receiver. One central assumption is that analogous structures and processes occur in speech perception and reading. It is valuable, therefore, to ask similar experimental questions in both areas, and to attempt to develop a unitary model of both reading and speech perception. A session on Reading and Listening must be motivated by the belief that these two skills are not unrelated. And, in fact, it has been commonly believed by many that reading is somehow a skill parasitic to listening: that is, all that is necessary in order to read is to translate the written word into its spoken counterpart, and then to listen to the message. Since most literate people learn to listen long before they learn to read, it seems natural that reading instruction should exploit what the child knows about listening. Faced with a new word in written text, the child is encouraged to decode it (sound it out) on the assumption that the spoken rendering will more likely be recognized. The primacy of speech has been one motivating influence on theories of reading that view reading as a process of going from print to some speech code enroute to the meaning (Gough, 1972). Since it is a common belief that man spoke and listened long before he wrote and read, one could also argue that language learning recapitulates the development of spoken and written language. However Wrolstad (1976), in a stimulating and fascinating manifesto, argues the reverse.