Holistic Language Instruction: Addressing Literacy in Standard and Non-Standard Populations

HOLISTIC LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

Dr Jaime Hoerricks

HOLISTIC LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

Addressing Literacy in Standard and Non-Standard Populations

The Education Studies Collection

Collection Editor

Dr Janise Hurtig

First published in 2024 by Lived Places Publishing

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Copyright © 2024 Jaime Hoerricks

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ISBN: 9781916704466 (pbk)

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ISBN: 9781916704473 (ePUB)

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Abstract

Guided by a lived experience point of view, Holistic Language Instruction reveals a flaw in an assumption that underpins many of the world’s educational systems: that there is only one way that humans learn language. The data show that this flaw has left about 40 per cent of the world’s English language learners behind in the development of their language skills. Are these students disabled? Or does the system disable them when it does not address the way in which their brains acquire and process language? When these learners begin to fall behind their peers in their educational journey, they may be placed in a special education program, assigned to a speech and language professional, or simply ignored. Given that language processing differences have no connection with intellect, what if these learners could be easily accommodated within the general population of students and progress through school with their peers? This book first informs the reader of the issue, explains why the current paradigm fails so many learners, presents the different language processing models, then charts a path forward for current and future educators, parents, and caregivers to support the growth of English language literacy in all learners.

Key words

English Language Instruction; English Language Learner; Science of Reading; Natural Language Acquisition; Gestalt Language Processing; Non-Verbal Autism; Disability Studies; Special Education & Teaching Studies.

Contents

Chapter 1Introduction

Learning objective

Chapter 2Deconstructing the Science of Reading

Learning objective

Chapter 3Early childhood literacy

Learning objective

Exercises and activities for analytic language processors

Exercises and activities for gestalt language processors

Chapter 4Young adult literacy

Learning objective

Chapter 5Adult literacy

Learning objective

Chapter 6Cross-curricular literacy

Learning objective

Chapter 7Summary

References

Index

1

Introduction

Learning objective

Students will be able to synthesize the elements of the Natural Language Acquisition model and its relation to learning English in standard and non-standard learner populations.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. – Kong Fuzi (孔夫子).

Rationale

The learning goal requires students to synthesize information about the Natural Language Acquisition model from multiple sources and contexts (standard and non-standard learner populations). Students must integrate this information to demonstrate understanding of how the model relates to teaching and learning the English language across different groups.

This aligns well to the Common Core standards (e.g., CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.7) which require integrating information from multiple formats / media to address a question or problem. Students must pull together information about the model itself as well as examples from different populations to synthesize how the model applies in various contexts. This demonstrates the ability to integrate and evaluate multiple sources to address the underlying question.

When designing the chapters of this book, I have intentionally incorporated instructional approaches encouraged by the Common Core standards. These include emphasizing nonfiction texts, analytical writing, cross-curricular skills, and utilizing technology / media. In essence, university instruction can be partially shaped by the approaches championed by the Common Core as academics bring aspects of those pedagogical shifts into their own teaching and course design even without formal adoption of the standards in a particular setting. The Common Core has rippled into higher education by influencing the instructional materials, activities, and structural decisions made by instructional designers seeking to build key transferable skills.

Meet the author

Hello and welcome to Holistic Language Instruction. My name is Dr Jaime Hoerricks, the author of this text and your guide through this journey. By way of introductions, many professional cultures ask participants to share a fun fact about themselves. I’ll begin. I happen to be autistic, a gestalt language processor (aka, non-verbal), and was functionally illiterate when I graduated from high school in Southern California in 1988. These elements of my identity have a lot to do with the fact that I am the proud owner of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) diagnostic code 6A02.2, Autism Spectrum Disorder without disorder of tellectual development and with impaired functional language (WHO, 2021a, 2021b), information that wasn’t available to me when I was going through school as a child. Back then, I was just different, perhaps a bit odd.

To me, this isn’t some random or trivial point. It is an important factor in this text. You see, for many years various communities have asked that future work focus on those areas that improve their members’ day-to-day lives. Also, that there needs to be more involvement from members of the targeted communities in research as well as in the creation and publication of materials that are offered to or for them. This work is an attempt to do just that, to feature someone who was failed by the traditional educational system yet found a path to a sustainable and happy life. In doing so, it features the work of a now special education teacher with a diverse range of lived experiences. These experiences reinforce the central premise of this text: that how, when, and where one learns language, particularly the English language, depends entirely upon how one’s language acquisition and processing centers function. This implies, of course, that there is more than one way in which humans can learn the English language. I’ll get to that shortly. But first, a bit more about me and what brought me to write this book.

My educational background

In my almost six decades on this planet, I’ve managed to earn both a Bachelor and a Master degree in Organizational Leadership from Woodbury University, a Master of Education – Instructional Design, from Western Governors University, a Master of Education – Special Education, from Loyola Marymount University, and a PhD in Education from Trident University. I’ve earned a 150-hour certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. I’ve earned a 40-hour certificate from my school district’s training and development division in the Orton-Gillingham method. I’ve also earned a 90-hour Early Literacy certificate from Atlanta’s Rollins Center for Language and Literacy. I did all of this, beginning when I was 36 years old and was supporting my rather large family working as a forensic scientist for the City of Los Angeles.

How I got there, or how I came to be in the employ of the City of Los Angeles as a functionally illiterate adult, and how it is that I am now a special education teacher and literacy specialist is an interesting story. The path, and the lessons learned, will be woven throughout this text. I will use them to illustrate the points of what holistic language instruction can look like at various stages of one’s life. I thus offer myself as the exemplar, as well as a few of my willing former students, to provide the mass of the item under study. In this way, topics become less abstract and more practical.

What does it mean to be illiterate?

First, let’s dive into the difference between illiterate and functionally illiterate. Illiterate generally refers to someone who lacks basic reading and writing skills and is unable to understand written text or write coherently. They may struggle with recognizing letters, forming words, or comprehending written information. Illiteracy, in this sense, is often associated with a lack of formal education or limited access to quality education (Vágvölgyi et al., 2016), though it can find its roots in language deficits in the brain.

Functionally illiterate, on the other hand, usually describes people who have some basic reading and writing skills but still struggle to use these skills effectively. While they may be able to read simple texts or even write basic sentences, they may have difficulty comprehending complex instructions, filling out forms, or engaging in tasks that require advanced literacy skills often found in adult life. The functionally illiterate often have wide gaps in their reading and writing abilities that hinder their overall literacy proficiency (Semingson and Kerns, 2021).

My having been functionally illiterate is separate from my being a gestalt language processor, also known in the autistic community as being non-verbal. Non-verbal is not the same as non-vocal or non-speaking, though many confuse these two concepts. The term non-verbal speaks to the way the human brain acquires, learns, and / or processes language. Gestalt language processing (GLP) is the big technical term for the way the non-verbal brain processes language (Prizant, 1982; Blanc, 2012). This language processing style is not unique to autistic people, though many of us use GLP. The other way humans process language is called analytic language processing (ALP). We’ll cover both in more detail later. Here, I just wanted to introduce the terms.

With these ideas in mind, how does one graduate from school functionally illiterate? It’s easier than you might think. Let me explain.

Taking a step back – traditional language instruction in elementary schools in the US

I attended elementary school in the 1970s in the United States. Then and there, schools favored the traditional approach to language instruction. The traditional, grammar-based approach featured vocabulary building and the development of the four main skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It was, and still is, a teacher-centered instructional approach that relies heavily upon lectures (also called modeling), memorization, and drills. Assessments are given and scores received. Then, students move on (Lightbown and Spada, 2021). Students moved on, not because they were necessarily ready to move on, but because the schedule dictated the pace. I saw the results of this practice in my own life manifest in gaps in my language skills, one that built gap upon gap (Mason and Sinha, 1992) over the course of my schooling.

We would say today that those teachers taught to the center of the room. Assessment data really didn’t inform instruction in any way that I can remember. There was a certain plan and pace that teachers meant to keep, and we kept it (Juel, 1988). A student like me could easily hide in a large classroom, relying upon eager peers to provide cover when a teacher would ask for a student to demonstrate their proficiency to the class (Davidson, 2021).

When I would occasionally get called upon, I would panic. This time was long before the world would come into an awareness of the traits, strengths, and limitations that now place me on the autism spectrum. I didn’t have free-flowing conversational skills like my peers. I didn’t have the decoding skills needed to decipher what was on the page. I would wait, then the teacher would prompt, and then I would improvise using my mental bank of language scripts (gestalts) – a behavior known as delayed echolalia (Prizant and Rydell, 1984), which is common among autistic people (Fay, 1969).

My improvisation relied upon a mind that processed chunks of language scripts, gestalts. It didn’t do so letter by letter, understanding all the rules of the English language. Rather, it absorbed how the chunks of language sounded and felt, as well as the contexts in which they were discovered. My alexithymia assisted, unconsciously, in gathering the emotions of the speaker as they spoke their words (Taylor, 1984), and the feelings within the room as they were spoken (Kinnaird, Stewart, and Tchanturia, 2019). In my panic at a request to read aloud or respond to a question, my brain would assemble a reply that it believed would satisfy the request. Early on, I was comically inept. My replies tended toward the nonsensical, never seeming to correlate with the requests. Later, with practice and as my storehouse of sounds, words, and feelings developed, they became more coherent. In short, as I grew up, I become more adept at using my delayed and immediate echolalia to communicate (Prizant, 1982, 1983; Prizant and Duchan, 1981; Prizant and Rydell, 1984; Stiegler, 2015).

Early echolalia

Much of what was known in the West about autism and communication then was guided by the works of Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. A few generations ago, only the most profound cases of communication deficits were referred to specialists. Unknown in the West were the works of the early Soviets; Sukhareva, Vygotsky, and their compatriots (Smagorinsky, 2013; Vasileva and Balyasnikova, 2019; Vygotsky, 2012). Sadly, the western countries would only learn of their work after the fall of the Iron Curtain. I say sadly because their work seems to my mind more humane, more holistic. While Asperger, for example, studied autism to determine the functioning levels of autistic children and adults as part of Nazi scientific racism, and thus who would live and who would be relieved of their suffering for the good of the family and the Volk (Hoerricks, 2023), the work of the Soviet scientists seemed to look for root causes so appropriate supports could be given (New and Kyuchukov, 2022; Simmonds, 2019).

These early Soviet doctors looked at autism in a systemic fashion. They noted that autistic children often displayed motor disorders, including problems with muscle tone and coordination. They wondered if there was a connection between the severity of motor disorders and the child’s emotional state. They studied how language and speech were also affected in autism, with prosody (pace, rhythm, and voice modulation) often being disrupted. In severe cases, they observed, children may experience either selective or total mutism. However, they observed, when the child’s emotional condition improved, there was often a transition from repeating words and phrases (echolalia) to more meaningful communication (New and Kyuchukov, 2022). The later, and seemingly unconnected, work of Prizant (1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985) and Blanc (2012) would show them to be completely spot-on.

For me, echolalia combined with alexithymia meant that I was pretty good at mimicry. When I ingested language from others, it came with the emotional content, tone, tenor, and intonation. In my multi-ethnic and multilingual melting pot of city and schools, I had built an assortment of phrases in English, Spanish, German, Russian, and Armenian. Some of these languages seemed to go better together, like English and German, with similar sounds and meanings. Others seemed light years away from what I knew of English, like Russian and Armenian (Bodmer, 1944). I worked hard at sounding correct in each language and dialect that I repeated in response to questions and requests, trying to match what was coming out of my mouth with how the words sounded and felt in the theater of my mind. Sometimes, the languages got confused in delivery, a German response to a Spanish prompt or the wrong word / phrase returned, much to the endless delight of my peers.

Middle school years

In the US, it’s assumed that by the time one leaves the primary grades and heads off to middle school that one knows how to read and comprehend the English language. I didn’t. I knew some sight words and could string some words together when asked to read aloud, but I had no comprehension skills. When I would be tasked with reading a passage aloud, I would struggle mightily if I had never encountered the words before. Often, the teachers would get impatient and move on to a student who could keep pace with their schedule for the day. At no time did any of my teachers attempt to intervene to find out if I could read or try to teach me the fundamentals of reading.

Middle school, for me, was a rough time. It’s embarrassing when you have severe gaps in your skills. I was the butt of jokes and received a ton of teasing and bullying. Puberty was hitting. The last thing that I wanted to do was to stay at school and work on my reading. In fact, I couldn’t wait to get out each day.

California had seemingly invested a lot of money in its schools and reading programs. In 1965, its governor signed the Miller-Unruh Act into law. According to the Act, the intent and purpose of the law was the prevention of reading disabilities and the correction of reading disabilities at the earliest possible time in the educational career of the pupil. (Sparks, 1968) The Act was directed toward what it called reading success for students in the primary grades. It provided funds for the salaries of reading specialists, as well as for scholarships to develop new specialists and librarians (Sparks, 1968). I saw no evidence that any of the programs funded by the Act were present at my school in suburban Los Angeles County.

Diving into reports from that time frame, 1982–1984, one finds that the situation in public schools mirrors what we see today. There were teacher shortages. There were funding shortages. There was a disconnect between what the state aspired to and the results that it managed to deliver. The data showed that California students were average readers in primary school but slipped below the national average in middle and high school. Not much can be found in the literature about what was meant to be done about this. So many of us slipped through the cracks (Guthrie and Kirst, 1985).

In a general sense, we were presented with a range of literature, including novels, short stories, poems, and plays. Through lecture, we were instructed on how to analyze the literary elements, such as plot, character development, theme, and figurative language. The curriculum aspired to foster a love for reading and develop critical thinking skills in us. It was long on aspiration and short on results.

Thinking back, I can recall a time when we were going to analyze Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the eighth grade. I panicked at the thought of having to read that twisted English aloud. A few days and nights of panic gave way to a ray of sunshine. I remembered that there were lots of these classic stories on the local public broadcasting channel. I wondered if the local library had copies of these films. I managed to string together a query to the library staff. Somehow, they arranged to have the 1953 Marlon Brando version of the film made available at the library for me to watch. The film was amazing. The dialogue, thankfully, was very close to the original play. I was able to absorb some of it as I sat and watched, building what I thought might be helpful scripts for later use in the classroom. I tried to focus on those scenes that felt very impactful. If only I could know ahead of time which parts I would have to read.

Alas, it didn’t matter. The teacher, perhaps sensing that I wouldn’t do well, never called upon me to participate in the table reads. But I learned a valuable lesson. The library staff would be vital to my ability to move through school. That, and in the days before plagiarism checking software, I had my own William Forester (Davis-McElligatt and Roth, 2012). There, I had a whole building full of sentence and paragraph starters. As a hint towards my later work with mentor texts, the writings of the world’s best authors were there for me to sample and build any paper that might be required (Chidiac, 2019). All I had to do was ask the staff where to find books on the subject at hand.

High school years

The teachers at my high school were a mix of those nearing retirement, and young, eager, and passionate 20-somethings. Class sizes were quite large. In most of my classes, it was easy to sit in the back of the room and not participate. There were no checks for understanding. There were very few lively discussions on topics of our choosing. There were the texts and the assignments. There were monologues from our teachers and quiet time for work. There was no such thing as student voice or windows and mirrors in the 1980s in Southern California’s public schools.

When I entered high school, I was 13 years old. I was also 6’2" and quite athletic. I was encouraged to join the