An Engraved Invitation

Recently, I’ve been under some pressure to engage in a dialogue about the value of etymological study. The question was posed by Jan Wasowicz, the owner of a commercial list-serve from which I was booted a few years ago. Several people who are on the listserv contacted me to ask me to weigh in. Over the past 10 days or so, I’ve decided that I prefer to study etymology than to defend the study of etymology, but out of respect for those who asked me to respond, I will.

Jan Wasowicz asks, “What recent research do we have to support etymology instruction, the teaching of declarative knowledge about the history and origins of words to students, as an effective method for improving reading and spelling performance? Has there been a direct comparison of that approach with approaches that use multi-linguistic, connectionist word study methods, phonology + orthography + meaning and morphology without etymology? Has the effectiveness of teaching etymology been studied with students who have language-based reading and writing problems?”

So, I’m going to let Jan do her own literature review; real scholars who have questions like this do the research themselves, pretty easily, rather than posing it as a challenge to a bunch of other people who mostly do not study etymology themselves. A quick Google Scholar search reveals several articles addressing the role of etymology in literacy instruction — I’d encourage Jan to have a look at the work of Victoria Devonshire and Michael Fluck especially.

Of course, many, many scholars encourage the study of etymology in literacy classrooms, even with learning-disabled students: Barbara Foorman, Louisa Moats, Jack Fletcher, Malt Joshi, Rebecca Treiman, Suzanne Carreker, and Marcia Henry, who’s on the listserv herself and who, when asked to weigh in, deflected and asked me to weigh in. But what Jan wants is not the opinion of experts who have taught thousands of teachers and thousands of children; she wants “a direct comparison of that approach with approaches that use multi-linguistic, connectionist word study methods, phonology + orthography + meaning and morphology without etymology” — as though it is possible to study phonology, orthography, meaning and morphology in an etymologyless vacuum. It’s not. That’s like trying to study lava without involving volcanoes.

Jan goes on, “I have to evaluate this method [sic] based on everything I know – from the published research and my clinical training – about how students with language-learning deficits process information and learn most effectively.” It’s really interesting to me that she starts the dialogue by asking for “recent research … to support etymology instruction, and ends it with her own opinion, uninformed by the actual emergent research that is, in fact, out there on etymological study.

I’m a researcher, but not the kind of researcher, apparently, whose researched opinion might be valued in this exchange. My research does not seek funding to pit groups of schoolchildren in unwitting competition against each other, some in the intervention group with etymology, and some in the control group without etymology, to prove the exact alchemical mix of “multilinguistic, connectionist word study methods” [sic] that might render them literate. Rather, I prefer to do the necessary research to address the very real, non-hypothetical questions that very real, non-hypothetical children and teachers actually have about language. This kind of research — studying words themselves rather than which specific ways of studying words win — is unconstrained by the standard reading-science shackles. Rather than reading science, it’s just science. You know, where you have a hypothesis, investigate it, and deepen your understanding of the system you are studying. And anyone can do it, including dyslexic children and non-native speakers. No one needs a PhD, a lab, government funding, or a control group to study the rich relationships between words.

While there’s no control group to hear from, here’s what people say to Doug Harper and me in response to etymological study:

  • “I hope to be able to attend next year with reports of etymology alive in my teaching. Thank you!”
  • “So engaging — both Doug, with humor and intellect, and Gina — WOW!!”
  • “It was another revelatory weekend of learning!”
  • “Excellent, wildly informative seminar.”
  • “The workshop was outstanding!”
  • “This was fabulous.”
  • “Five stars!”

When was the last time most teachers felt that way about their professional development opportunities? Here’s my personal favorite:

  • “Can’t wait for Etymology III!”

Well, the wait is over. Etymology III is almost here.

So, I’d like to invite Jan Wasowicz, the owner of the SpelTalk listserv, to attend the Etymology weekend in March as my guest, free of charge, so that she can conduct her own research. I invite her to learn what etymology actually is, how it informs the writing system, and how teachers, tutors, and clinicians all over the world are using etymology to bring words alive and to make sense of written language for thousands of scholars of all ages, including many who have “language-based reading and writing problems” (as opposed to literacy problems that are somehow not language-based?). Jan is very concerned because, in her estimation, people who are teaching etymology are doing so “without any research to support this as an effective instructional method for struggling readers and writers” [sic]. But etymology is not an “instructional method.”

Here’s the thing that’s critical for Jan and anyone else who claims to rely on science to understand: while there may be a limited number of double-blind studies on the benefits of studying etymology specifically for children with learning disabilities, there’s exactly no research proving that it is not beneficial. So at this point, if I had a dog in this race, he’d be winning.

Jan, we’ll save you a seat.

12 Comments

  1. Deb Geise says:

    Well done, Gina. When I find myself lost in the study of words versus drill, I realize the value for my own students. Additionally, when I see my students’ rapt interest in etymology and asking provocative questions about words, that’s all the research I need. Never has my instruction been so meaningful!

  2. lynnheasley says:

    Well spoken! Our language is rich and meaningful and so our learning must be also. There is room for many aspects of literacy. I used a multi linguistic approach with my son who is dyslexic , as I am trained in Wilson, but I also used a modified guided reading approach when he was ready, and read interest level texts to him while he tracked the text. Very unconventional, but it worked, and where the school failed, we found resounding success with intensive work (thank goodness for the Magic Tree House series!). Later I stumbled upon your and Pete Bowers work on etemology and feel strongely that this was the link that helped improve my son’s spelling! Thanks for all you do. Closing our minds to new ways of reaching/teaching/helping our children is so very counter productive and negligent at best.

    • Hi Lynn. Thanks for writing. Your last sentence speaks volumes.

      I’m not sure what anyone means when they say “multilinguistic” — to me, that word means “many languages” — if you are bilingual, you speak two languages. If you are multilingual, you are using many languages. This is how this word is used across very broad contexts — look it up on wordnik.com, for example. Jan uses that word as well, but I don’t think it means what she thinks it means. I’d love it if you could clarify what that word means to you.

      Multilinguistic does *not* mean “involving multiple structures within a given language,” which is how I think Jan uses it, and perhaps also how you’re using it as well. Etymology is not a linguistic component or an aspect of literacy; that’s like calling evolution a biological component or an aspect of biology. It’s not. Etymology is simply a fact of the writing system.

      I’m so glad to hear from you and so many who find so much more meaning in their work once the history of the language is something they can engage with.

  3. Kim says:

    Hi Gina , in the seminar I attended in Maine, you mentioned that you were writing an article about brain research (cognitive studies?) and spelling . I may have the exact idea ails incorrect. Have you written the article and if so where can I find it.
    Also I was challenged by your class and loved your class –and wonder if etymology 1 is available online. Thank you

    • Hi Kim, the manuscript you refer to will not have me as an author on it, but the other authors, I believe, have submitted it. It’s not out yet — these things take a long time. So glad you enjoyed the class. The Etymology weekends are not cumulative nor sequential. They are *all* intended for veterans and neophytes alike.

      The first two Etymology weekends are not available online. There’s really no way I’d be able to host — or interested in hosting — a 2-day seminar online. It’s not a movie to watch; it’s an interactive seminar for people to attend in real time.

      There may be an option to join this one via Zoom, but again, in real time, not recorded and watched after the fact. I can’t imagine how long it would take me to upload all that video.

  4. Peg says:

    Gina,
    I have enjoyed, learned volumes, and benefited immeasurably from the collegial sharing of ideas and the quest for a broader, deeper knowledge (the “a-ha” moments) of the language at every LEXinar. But most importantly are the “whoo-hoo” moments from my struggling readers when they begin to see the structure of our exceptional (no “exceptions” allowed ) language, understand that there are explanations and histories behind the words that they are now able to decode and encode.
    I always have a tangerine in my office that is graffitied with “Big Word” in black marker. When my students are challenged by a word, I point to it. They know that they wouldn’t eat a tangerine without peeling it, nor should they attempt to decode a word without peeling and looking at how it is built. Like the tangerine, I don’t believe we can teach the language without looking at all of the segments and it wouldn’t be fair to teach these kids anything less.
    Thank you for all that you do and counting the days until III!
    Peg

    • Wait, you’re supposed to peel a tangerine before you eat it? How do you know that this is the best method? I mean, do we have any empirical research proving it? Is there a direct comparison of that approach with other approaches to eating a tangerine that do not involve peeling it?

  5. Peter Bowers says:

    Sorry that this comment is so long — I just couldn’t make the time to make it shorter!

    Let me start with this…

    Instruction of the written word should accurately reflect how that writing system works.

    It seems to me that the above is a key default assumption that we should draw on in the process of refining literacy instruction. Like any assumption, it should be challenged with empirical evidence. The field of linguistics has long established that English orthography is a system is one that evolved to represent the meaning of words for native speakers, and that it is influenced by an interrelation of morphological, etymological and phonological consideration. As oft cited linguist, Richard Venezky stated “English orthography is not a failed phonetic transcription system, invented out of madness or perversity. Instead, it is a more complex system that preserves bits of history (i.e., etymology), facilitates understanding, and also translates into sound.” (Venzky, 1999, P.4).

    What logical conclusions should we draw if we accept the following assertions?

    Baring compelling evidence to the contrary, literacy instruction is that should represent how the writing system works.

    The description of English orthography as articulated by linguists such as Venezky (1967, 1970; 1999), C. Chomsky (1970) or N. Chomsky & Halle (1968) as an system for representing the meaning of words that involves the interrelation of morphology, etymology and phonology is the most coherent account we have regarding how English spelling works.

    Since I accept these two premises, one conclusion I draw is that the the burden of providing evidence is on those that hypothesize that etymology should be avoided in literacy instruction, not on those that draw on etymological understandings to inform their instruction.

    We saw a similar trajectory of research with regard to morphological instruction. In her seminal 1990 book “Beginning to Read” Adams analyzed an enormous amount of evidence supporting the finding that instruction that explicitly targeted phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondence was more effective than ‘whole word’ type instruction which avoided or demphasized the phonological influences on spelling. But Adams also presented a hypothesis for instruction about morphology. “Although teaching older readers about the roots [base morphemes] and suffixes of morphologically complex words may be a worthwhile challenge, teaching beginning or less skilled readers about them may be a mistake” (Adams, 1990, p. 152).

    It is totally reasonable to propose a hypothesis to test. I don’t even argue that those who put forward a hypothesis have the responsibility of testing it. They should offer evidence for their reasoning, but the scientific community has the responsibility of not drawing strong conclusions about practice without testing hypotheses. A decade later, major reviews like the National Reading Panel and others reconfirmed Adam’s findings about whole language vs. phonics type instruction, but failed to address the lack of research on questions about morphological instruction. As far as I know, the first time that a serious test of the hypothesis posited by Adams was two decades later. We know have three meta-analyses on morphological intervention studies (Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Goodwin & Ahn, 2010; 2013) and two systematic reviews (Reed, 2008; Carlisle, 2010). When the 1990 hypothesis recommending avoiding morphological instruction with less able and younger students was finally tested, not only was their not support for that hypothesis, the opposite turned out to be the case.

    The evidence we have from those studies is that morphology instruction that has been tested benefits children in general, but in particular, the less able and younger gained the most.

    We can now see that it would have been far more productive if we took on the assumption that instruction should accurately reflect how the writing system works from the beginning. If we had, we would have had two decades of research testing and refining how best to integrate instruction of morphology, phonology and etymology.

    With this kind of history, I am very wary of the point of view that we need research evidence before it is appropriate to recommend teaching about etymology. Instead, I would argue, it is a much safer position to say we need research evidence before we have a basis to recommend avoiding etymology.

    Fortunately, the research has moved on since these meta-analysis. Gina pointed to an article by Devonshire, Morris, & Fluck, 2013). As few teachers and tutors have access to such articles, let me paste in the abstract of that study:

    “A novel intervention was developed to teach reading and spelling literacy to 5 to 7 year-old students using explicit instruction of morphology, etymology, phonology, and form rules. We examined the effects of the intervention compared to a phonics-based condition using a cross-over design with a baseline measure. One hundred and twenty children attending an English state funded primary school were randomly allocated either to a traditional phonics condition followed by the novel intervention, or to the novel intervention followed by the phonics condition. The novel intervention significantly improved the literacy skills of the children including both word reading and spelling compared with the phonics condition. We conclude that early teaching of English literacy should include instruction in morphology, etymology and rules about form in addition to traditional phonics. We suggest that the results of the study could inform future policy on the teaching of English literacy skills.”

    See the full paper here:

    https://files.realspellers.org/PetesFolder/Articles/Devonshire_Morris_Fluck_2013.pdf

    Apologies if the above theoretical arguments are a bit esoteric. The research question is important, but for teachers and tutors who sense that it might be important to teach about etymology, they might wonder how on earth such a thing could be done!

    I’ll end my overly-long comment with some very brief illustrations and links for more resources and ideas.

    Etymology (diachronic and synchronic) is essential for being able to understand countless spellings that cannot be understood if we restrict instruction to phonologically based conventions in isolation of morphological and etymological considerations.

    When we teach phonological cues to spelling in isolation of other linguistic factors, homophones become a problem. We can only assume that words that sound the same should be spelled the same. But of course any assembling of evidence of homophones shows the opposite to be the case. Thus Venezky refers to a “homophone principle” in his 1999 book. Where two words can have the same pronunciations, where possible they will be spelled differently to mark that difference in meaning. Thus with one etymological concept — the homophone principle, we can drop the false assumption that homophones are confusing because they are spelled the same.

    Then we can go farther and look at particular homophones such as ‘to’, ‘too’ and ‘two. First we see that they should be spelled differently. But why that surprising ‘w’ in ‘two’ for the number? Well, once we focus on relationships between meaning and spelling we can generate a set of words such as: twice, twenty, between, twin etc., and learn about a spelling structure called an “etymological marker letter”. The ‘w’ in ‘two’ is not there as a grapheme representing a phoneme. It is there simply because it has been successful in informing readers that this is the spelling for the number. With that concept, we might be able to make sense of the in , when a question about that letter now sparks us to think about words like popular, population and other words from this etymological family.

    Etymology in Grade 1
    If you would like to see an example of this type of instruction in a classroom, here is a video a teacher friend took when I taught about homophones and function and content (lexical) words in a Grade 1 class.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGeq05fzBUU

    For an example of the more familiar diachronic etymology — the kind about the root origin of words — here are a couple of other classroom videos for you to consider:

    Etymology in Grade 5
    a) I love this introductory lesson by Dan Allen in a Grade 5 where he just presents text and asks his students to present hypotheses about which word might be related by roots based on cues of spelling and meaning.

    https://blogs.zis.ch/dallen/category/languagespellingword-study/page/2/

    With those questions, his students begin a journey of diving into references like http://www.etymonline.com as an everyday sort of activity to develop and test hypotheses about the spellings and meanings of words.

    I had the pleasure of working in Dan Allen’s class in the fall. I use that opportunity to introduce the concept of what I think of as the “structure and meaning test”. In order to understand the nature of the spelling-meaning relationships in words, we can use this process to determine which words share just an etymological relationship, or if they also share a morphological relationship by sharing the same base element. See the video of that lesson here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC7brXsfa2I See more on this “structure and meaning test” here:

    https://www.realspellers.org/resources/lesson-plans/795-the-structure-meaning-test?highlight=WyJzdHJ1Y3R1cmUiLCJtZWFuaW5nIiwic3RydWN0dXJlIG1lYW5pbmciXQ==

    The first thing for teachers to do before they can actually draw any conclusions of their own about etymological instruction is to dive into understanding the topic themselves first. Certainly one of the best ways I can think of to do that is to take part in Gina and Doug’s Etymology lll conference. Also take their LEXinars. Working with Gina and Doug continually moves my own understanding — and therefore my practice — forward.

  6. […] « An Engraved Invitation […]

  7. Kelli says:

    As I meander in and out of that listserv I notice that those who are opposed to or suspicious of the use the etymology in reading and spelling lessons are feeling that way because they do not understand etymology or how to use it to inform understanding. From the discussions I’ve seen, all they can muster from etymology is that the student will know where the word ‘came from’. They miss the part about teaching the evolution of a word that I find so incredibly powerful when trying to actually understand my language. As you say, they’re missing the beauty of the word’s story, and one word’s story can certainly make understanding other words so much easier – and more interesting. Speaking of making it more interesting, it leads to motivation to learn and that seems to be a huge topic in the mainstream education world.

    • You make a compelling point about the general knowledge of etymology on the listserv, Kelli. In the snippets I’ve seen of the dialogues — including Jan’s own articulated understanding of it: “I interpret ‘etymology’ to mean declarative knowledge about the history and origins of words, not the knowledge of letter-meaning relationships (LMRs) although etymology and LMRs are taught together.” Etymology is a field of linguistic study not “declarative knowledge.” I have no idea what the heck Jan means by “Letter-meaning relationships” — but I can tell you that most of the folks on the listserv seem to have no idea that graphemes are etymologically driven, outside of a handful (like ‘ph’ or ‘wr’). Also, Jan’s comment about chuckling about “blam[ing] this one on the French” is a good example of the subtle ways in which well-meaning teachers undermine any trust their students might develop in the language or its stories. Blame this one on the French? How about “Ooh, if we study a little bit about these words we can learn how words from French look and act in English”? Which perspective would you rather have in play in your own child’s classroom?

  8. Dyscover Learning says:

    I completely understand the desire for research into teaching methodologies. However, this is a case of teaching what we now know (through scientific inquiry) to be wrong, versus teaching kids to engage in science to verify what is true. It is a bit like saying we have evidence that shows that teaching kids the world is flat is more effective. Well, not if what you are teaching is something you know is not true.

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