Five Talking Points Arguments Against Legislative Bans on “Three-cueing” in Reading
Massachusetts Senate Bill S338

Jill Kerper Mora, Ed.D.
San Diego State University

The five talking points below address the language from the Massachusetts Senate Bill S338:

Lines 46-50: The instruction may not include implicit and incidental instruction in word reading, visual memorization of whole words, guessing from context, and picture cues, which may also be known as MSV or three-cueing. Evidence-based literacy instruction should align with scientifically-based reading research standards set forth in 20 USC 6368 (3)(4)(5)(6)(7).

Talking Points

Talking Point #1: There is no empirical scientific research evidence to support the notion that comprehension of written language requires the reader’s use of fewer or different cues than are required for comprehension of oral language.

Elaboration

To ban “three-cueing” and “contextual clues” in decoding and reading comprehension through a legislative mandate in decoding is not supported by scientific empirical or observational research evidence. The purpose of decoding is not just to arrive at a pronunciation of a written word, but to derive its meaning (semantics). Once a word appears in a phrase or sentence surrounded by other words, syntax (grammar) comes into play in meaning. In fact, the semantics of verbs cannot be derived when they are out of the context of a phrase or sentence. The proponents of bans on “three-cueing” cannot support their claims against it with any research that demonstrates that phonologically recoded language through decoding in meaning-making of written text does not require the reader to understand every feature of language that is required to understand oral language.

Research Evidence

Traxler, M. J. (2023). Introduction to psycholinguistics (Second ed.). Wiley Blackwell.

“Lexical access refers to the set of mental representations and processes that are involved in identifying which specific words we are hearing (during spoken word processing) or seeing (during visual word processing). Recognizing words leads to the activation of semantic information, but models of lexical access typically deal specifically with the activation of word form information (stored representations of how words sound or what they look like), with the activation of semantic information being treated as a consequence of the activation of form. The recognition of familiar words during spoken language processing is so automatic and seemingly effortless, that many people think that there is really nothing there to explain. For many people, but certainly not all, reading seems similarly effortless. This apparent ease and automaticity obscures the fact that lexical access involves complex mental operations and, despite its apparent simplicity, considerable debate continues among language scientists about which exact properties of words are involved in lexical access, what exact mental mechanisms take part, and how the entire process is organized.” (p. 101)

A Bibliography: Cues, Cueing and Miscues

Talking Point #2: The terms “cueing” and the “three-cueing approach” are not clearly or consistently defined in the Science of Reading research. Therefore, teachers cannot determine what these bans mean in deciding what instructional tools to use or not use in their literacy classrooms so as to not run afoul of the legislative mandate.

Elaboration

The terms “cues” and “cueing” are common terms that are used in reading research with several different meanings and connotations. However, these terms must be clearly defined in any research study, when they are used to describe any number of processes or strategies. There are three different meanings for “cues” and “cueing” used by its attackers. One of these is what language does to convey meaning. Language cues meaning through its multiple subsystems, including phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. Frequently, phonology, morphology and syntax and their relationship to “cueing” meaning (semantics) are lumped together under the term “grammar.” So, as you can see there are not just three “cueing systems,” which makes the attack on “three-cueing” even more invalid. The term “Three-cueing Approach” to describe an approach to instruction with related instructional strategies is not clearly defined in the scientific research. This is because “cueing systems” refers to the subsystems of language identified in linguistics and psycholinguistics research. There are more than just three. Consequently,  to ban three of them must require a teacher to decide which language subsystems to NOT teach: Vocabulary (semantics)? Grammar (morphology, syntax)? Context (pragmatics)? Bans on teaching any of the forms and features of language will not increase literacy achievement.

Research Evidence

Hanna, P.R., Hanna, S., Hodges, R.E., & Rudolf, E.H. (1966). Phoneme-grapheme correspondences as cues to spelling improvement. Washington, D.C. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

“Classifying the different structures of the many language systems in an effort to make explicit what language users know implicitly is one of the central undertakings of linguistic science. …these structural components of oral language include: 1) the phonetic reservoir from which a phonemic code is selected, 2) the phonemic base 3) the morphological base, that is the arrangement of phonemes into speech units which minimally express meaning, 4) the syntactic and grammatical base, that is, the arrangement of morphemes into syntactic patterns, and 5) the semantic base, which conveys meanings in terms of the conceptual system of a language community.” (p. 13)

Perfetti, C. A., & Stafura, J. (2014). Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 22-37.

“The Reading Systems Framework. The components of reading within a language-cognitive architecture from visual processing through higher level comprehension. The key elements are knowledge sources, basic cognitive and language processes, and interactions among them. The framework allows the development of specific models (e.g., word identification models, models of inferences) and allows hypotheses about both the development of reading expertise and reading weaknesses. A particular point of focus is the lexicon, which is a central connection point between the word identification system and the comprehension system.”  (p. 24)

A Bibliography: Theoretical Models of Reading

Talking Point #3: The claim that different cueing systems (language subsystems) are in competition with each other when a reader is decoding or that attention to different cues detracts from readers’ learning to attach spellings to words is not supported by evidence from psycholinguistic and neuroscience research on reading in the brain.

Elaboration

Neuroscience research on reading in the brain is often portrayed through theoretical models. One frequently referenced theoretical model is called the “dual route” model. The extensive research on the dual route model confirms that there are two pathways to word recognition in the brain of the reader. One is the “sounding out” pathway and the other is the “sight word” recognition pathway. It is the brain of the reader, not the teacher, that decides which pathway the visual image of a word in a text takes for the reader to determine the meaning (semantics) of the word. Therefore, teachers should not be mandated to assume that one route for determining the meaning of a word has priority over the other because this depends on the reader’s level of development in learning to read. The subsystems of language are not in competition with each other in processing written language. The reader orchestrates the subsystems of language naturally to comprehend the language through decoding written text.

Research Evidence

Sheriston, L., Critten, S., & Jones, E. (2016). Routes to reading and spelling: Testing the predictions of dual-route theory. Reading Research Quarterly, 51(4), 403-417.

According to dual-route theory, reading and spelling are facilitated by a reliance on two largely independent routes. The first, the lexical route, requires adults and children to derive correct word identifications from print to speech using the mental lexicon and activating word-specific orthographic and phonological memory representations. The second, the nonlexical route, requires them to decode items using a set of sublexical spelling-sound and grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. Based on the distinction made within dual- route theory, the acquisition of the lexical route is best assessed by irregular reading ability, as irregular words can only be pronounced or spelled correctly if they are already stored in the individual’s mental lexicon (in- cluding connections to the correct pronunciation). Nonlexical skills, in comparison, are best assessed by nonword reading ability, as these items will only be correctly pronounced or spelled if the individual is able to successfully apply grapheme-to-phoneme rules as a de- coding strategy. In contrast, regular words can be read or spelled via either approach, and therefore scores would be expected to be much higher for regular items than for irregular or nonword types (Castles, Bates, & Coltheart, 2006; Coltheart, 2006).

A Bibliography: The Neuroscience of Reading

A Bibliography: Reading in the Bilingual Brain

Talking Point #4: The ban on “implicit and incidental instruction” is contrary to research in what is termed metalinguistic awareness, which is instruction that makes emergent readers aware of how oral and written language works and how a specific language works according to its particular forms and features. Anywhere the term “awareness” is used for instruction (phonemic awareness instruction, for example), it refers to metalinguistic knowledge development, which is to build on students’ implicit knowledge of oral language as it applies to reading and writing.

Elaboration

Many researcher and advocates for the Science of Reading emphasize the importance of metalinguistic awareness development, which can be, and must be achieved through implicit and incidental instruction as well as through direct and explicit instruction of how the multiple subsystems of language work together in an interactive, integrated process for readers to construct meaning from written text. This is not an either/or choice of instructional tools for teachers.

Research Evidence

Moats, L. C. (2000). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Paul H. Brookes.

Dr. Louisa Cook Moats states the following: “Seldom has language study been required for teachers… Literacy is an achievement that rests on all levels of linguistic processing, from the elemental sounds to the most overarching structures of text. … To help the teacher deliver successful instruction, this book of necessity contains a great deal of information about the lower levels of language (units smaller than the word, such as sounds, syllables, letters, and some morphemes) from which the higher levels (units larger than the word, such as phrases sentences, and paragraphs) are constructed. Language itself is the substance of instruction. Students without awareness of language systems will be less able to sound out a new word when they encounter it, less able to spell, less able to interpret punctuation and sentence meaning, and less able to learn new vocabulary words from context.” (p. 1-2)

Apel, K. (2022). A different view on the Simple View of Reading. Remedial and Special Education, 43(6), 434-447.

The SVR model adequately represents the process of reading comprehension. In this article, I propose a common thread that links those diverse measurement tasks: all the tasks measured students’ metalinguistic skills. In fact, the findings from these studies mirror those found from investigations directly measuring the influence of language awareness abilities on reading comprehension. (p. 434) The different lines of research also may occur because there is confusion between language and metalinguistic skills. Language use and comprehension entails a focus on communication, with minimal to no active thought to language itself. Speakers and listeners are producing and comprehending communications that are spontaneous and involve the interaction of all components of language: phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. (p. 437) Adopting the viewpoint of the importance of metalinguistic skills for reading comprehension also is important for researchers interested in studying effective instructions that help students with poor reading comprehension abilities improve those skills. Given the evidence from two different lines of research that demonstrates the important contributions of multiple metalinguistic skills (e.g., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness) to reading comprehension, then instruction that includes a focus on these multiple language awareness skills seems a suitable target. (p. 442)

A Bibliography: Metalinguistics

A Bibliography: Lexical Inferencing

Talking Point #5: A ban on the use of “picture cues” in literacy instruction makes no sense because the alphabet itself is a system of pictorial cues. Furthermore, pictorial cues to meaning are used to provide language and literacy learners with comprehensible input, which is necessary for bonding both oral and written language to meaning. This is especially important for second-language learners who are learning to read and write in a language in which they are not yet proficient. To ban picture cues is to deny access for multilingual learners to essential language learning opportunities.

Elaboration

The alphabet is based on a principle called acrophony, defined as the application in the evolution of an alphabet of a pictorial symbol or hieroglyph for the name of an object to the initial sound alone of that name. This legislative ban on “picture cues” implies that learners must be deprived of comprehensible input through all types of visual images that enable them to make connections between oral and written linguistic input and the concepts and meanings that language transmits through visual and non-visual modalities. This ban is contrary to the comprehensible input hypothesis that is supported by extensive research, mostly from research on bilingualism and second-language acquisition.

Research Evidence

Lichtman, K., & VanPatten, B. (2021). Was Krashen right? Forty years later. Foreign Language Annals, 54, 283-305.

“The term implicit learning was first used by Arthur Reber (1967) to describe a process during which subjects acquire knowledge about a complex, rule-governed stimulus environment without intending to and without becoming aware of the knowledge they have acquired. In contrast, the term explicit learning refers to a process during which participants acquire conscious (explicit) knowledge; this is generally associated with intentional learning conditions, e.g., when participants are instructed to look for rules or patterns.(p. 187) … The complex and abstract mental representation of language is mainly built up through implicit learning processes as learners attempt to comprehend messages directed to them in the language. Explicit learning plays a more minor role in the language acquisition process, contributing to metalinguistic knowledge rather than mental representation of language (p. 288) A variety of approaches incorporate the insights described in this paper, including immersion, content-based instruction, nontargeted CI (nontargeted means that no specific vocabulary or grammar structures/forms are the focus of instruction; rather, a new language to be used in communication is drawn from looking at pictures, movie clips, novellas, and other sources),Total Physical Response (TPR) strategies and input-task-driven classes, among others.” (p. 299)

A Bibliography: Content-based L2 and Academic Language Instruction