Reading for what purpose

Goodman's conception of reading commits the fallacy of hasty generalization, or converse accident.

Goodman’s paper implies that his new conception embraces all of reading. He does not say that only certain elements of reading, at some times, for some readers are part of a

guessing game. Rather, "(R)eading is a psycholinguistic guessing game." It is for all readers a process of selecting cues, and then guessing, confirming, rejecting, or refining

tentative decisions about what sounds letters make, what a word says and means, what a period and comma imply, how words are spelled. However, such guessing, cue selecting,

and decision making arguably apply only to (1) beginning readers; (2) older readers who have not been taught to read and understand text based on solid knowledge (and the

automatic application) of sound/symbol correspondence, punctuation, spelling, subject/predicate, cause/effect, and so forth; or (3) skilled readers who have run into a new and

difficult word. Consider propositions 13-21. Is it reasonable to assert that these activities apply to all readers? Is there any evidence that skilled readers guess at every word--as if

reading (fluent reading) were a series of tentative choices?

Another example of hasty generalization Goodman's use of reading errors--called "miscues"--as the only evidence that all reading is guessing. Goodman’s paper does not provide

samples of fluent reading to substantiate his propositions about selecting and guessing. This may be because fluent reading provides no evidence of guessing. In summary, it is

likely that Goodman's guessing game conception of reading applies only to poor readers, beginning readers, or good readers who are decoding unfamiliar words. In other words, all

that is new in Goodman’s new conception is the unwarranted generalization that all readers guess all the time.

The massive irony, here, is that Goodman's followers created a method of reading instruction--whole language--that reversed the polarity of guessing. Rather than something to be

overcome because it signified lack of skill, guessing was now considered a natural and good thing, and therefore was to be encouraged. Systematic instruction on phonemic

awareness, sound/symbol relationships (m says mmm), word attack, and spelling was now unnatural--a bad thing to be discouraged. Whole language teachers therefore explicitly

and systematically taught new readers the guessing strategy used by poor readers for making errors, and called it fine.

Goodman's conception of reading as a guessing game commits the fallacy of reification, or hypostatization.

In other words, Goodman treats abstract terms ("reconcile the anamolous [sic] situation," assimilation, accommodation) and metaphoric fictions ("searches his memory for

cues," "he checks the recalled perceptual input") as if they were concrete objects or events (Thompson, 1995). Recall that Goodman's new formulation hinges on rejection of the

"common sense" notions that (1) reading involves an almost instantaneous recognition of whole words, or (2) reading involves an almost automatic "perception and identification of

letters, words..." Note that whole word and phonic processes are ordinary, readily observable, mundane actions. The reader sees and properly or improperly identifies letters and

words. Most observable identification errors have straightforward, ordinary, mundane implications for instruction; e.g., at sounding out words. But Goodman will offer nothing

attractive to potential followers unless he conjures a radical shift of reading from the mundane to the esoteric. Something as commonsensical as mere skill instruction will not do.

Henceforth, reading processes and reading instruction will no longer be easily seeable and teachable. Instead, reading processes will be located in the mind: reading will involve

"an interaction between thought and language." Goodman now invents a mental apparatus to account for reading skill and error--the psycholinguistic guessing game--and it

consists of selecting, deciding, guessing, confirming, rejecting, and refining.