The Association of Professionals in Learning Disabilities (APLD) is concerned about the lack of scientific accuracy in the reasons provided in the answer to a recent parliamentary question in connection with the use of a reader and the 10-year reading benchmark.

As outlined by the Aċċess board, for 16-year-olds to apply for a reader as an examination arrangement, they need to obtain a reading age that is less than that of a 10-year-old as scored from an untimed single-word reading test carried out by a reading specialist or a warranted psychologist.

The APLD, as a professional association representing “esperti fid-diffikulatijiet tal-qari” (experts in reading difficulties), feels compelled to address two major related issues: the definition of reading and the language of testing.

Our arguments are based on expertise, academic and professional background and published scientific evidence-based peer-reviewed research.

The first issue we would like to address is that of reading. Reading is gleaning meaning from print (DuBois, 1979; Adams, 1990). This involves a number of automatic skills such that readers are able to concentrate on the message conveyed by the printed text (Moats, 1999).

The ability to decode a word accurately is not synonymous with the ability to read a paragraph with the correct speed and ease such that one can comprehend the text (Hall 2008/2009; Aro, 2004).

An analogy can be made with someone who has just learnt the skills involved in driving and someone who has been driving for a long time. The former will concentrate on the mechanics of driving and the latter will focus on his destination.

If one were to examine the beginner driver on whether he can start the car, change the gears, manoeuvre the steering, he would pass, but what about his performance on the road?

Being able to decode may be a process that is not automatic. For example, if it takes a reader five seconds to read the word ‘influence’ and nine seconds to read the word symmetry, how can one equate that with the ability to read at normal speed (100 to 200 words per minute for functional reading expected by SEC–aged adolescents) in order to glean meaning for the text?

Single word reading demonstrates a different ability to prose reading. In fact, the term single-word ‘reading’ is a fallacy, as the correct reflection of this process is single-word ‘recognition’ (Besner and Humphreys, 1991) which can occur either by recognising the word (sight/whole word identification) or translating symbols (letters or groups of letters) to their corresponding sounds.

Effective prose reading involves automatic recognition of words. As you are reading this text, you may want to reflect on how many words you are actually decoding or recognising as a visual unit.

Given that you are an efficient reader with a lot of practice you are now beyond the decoding stage due to practice and automaticity – unless you encounter an unfamiliar word (machairophyllum brevifolium) or a made-up word (floutinish).

Fluent prose reading involves making predictions, which is why when you think you have misread a word, you have actually made a wrong prediction and the chances are you would go back a few words and realise why you had ‘misread’ it.

The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) holds that reading is made up of decoding and linguistic comprehension. These two components are of equal importance and both are necessary for skilled reading. Neither is sufficient on its own.

With this in mind, therefore, it seems logical that in order to assess reading ability, one must be able to identify strengths and weaknesses in decoding and reading comprehension because children who cannot recognise the words on a page will have difficulties comprehending the text.

Even when children can recognise and understand the words on a page, this is no guarantee that the text will be understood (Hoover and Gough, 1990) and it is not sufficient for identifying children with literacy difficulties (Xuereb, 2009).

Poor reading skill is the result of weak decoding, comprehension or both. So how is the provision of examination arrangements based on results obtained on a single-word recognition test alone?

Furthermore the ‘10 year reading age’ is a score obtained on an English word recognition task. This brings us to the second issue of concern: that of bilingualism and the language in which these children are being tested.

In countries such as Malta, where children are exposed to both Maltese and English (to varying degrees) from a very young age, it is absolutely necessary to conduct assessments, and especially oracy and literacy assessments, in both languages.

For a student whose strongest language is a language other than English, the reliability and validity of any assessment is better if conducted through the first language, because these assessments must utilise a different set of evaluative criteria than that used for speakers whose first and only language is English (Westby, 1985; Armour-Thomas, 1992; Hamayan and Damico, 1991).

At present, because of lack of normative data and the availability of standardised assessments, Maltese first language speakers are being administered assessments in their second language, English.

Research shows that dyslexia in different languages has different underlying difficulties, and assessment and intervention should be sufficiently sensitive to the language in question (Nikolopoulos et al, 2003; Xuereb, 2009).

Given this scientific background, how can a University body fail to understand such a well-recognised concept within the field of reading difficulties?

This decision is unjust to a number of children who are accurate but slow decoders and, as a result, non-fluent and ineffective readers whose lack of speed and automaticity affects their reading comprehension and their access to print.

Now add to this the hurdle of reading in your second language.

Due to the above arguments, we implore the minister to refer back to the “esperti fid-diffikulatijiet tal-qari” to re-evaluate this difference between single word recognition and gleaning meaning from print.

Ms Falzon is president of the Association of Professionals in Learning Disabilities.

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