set 1986: no. 2

Is classroom interaction research worth the effort involved? Up till recently the main result of decades of work seemed to be that 'time on task' was the only thing you could be sure about: the more time a subject got the more learning took place. But time is a precious and finite commodity in a classroom, and new ways are needed of exploring its use. Is time itself of the essence, or are other (less easily quantifiable) factors also involved? Unfortunately researchers seem to assume that… Read more

When we look at recent research on reading acquisition, there has only been one exciting show to watch, and that has been the debate between Ken Goodman and Phil Gough. Ken Goodman's (1967) paper, 'Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game', made him the person most clearly associated with the view that reading is a 'top down' process. But Goodman became the target of debate in Phil Gough's (1972) paper, 'One Second of Reading', which took the opposite view, that reading is a 'bottom up',… Read more

Decoding has always been controversial. Rather than an ally, it has often been seen as the enemy of comprehension. The problem is that poor comprehenders are usually poor decoders as welt which implies that decoding is the culprit. This leads to the strange argument that we should give less attention to decoding, and more attention to comprehension. Which brings me to Gough's multiplicative hypothesis. The hypothesis is not new, but is it straightforward. It says that . problems in reading… Read more