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For many elementary-school children the achievement of
reading with fluent comprehension—that is, the ability to
read quickly and accurately enough to understand and think
about text—remains an essential, but elusive goal. The most
used intervention for these children involves “repeated read-
ing” methods, where children read the same text several times
till accuracy and fluency are achieved. Proponents of repeated
reading make several important assumptions about these
implicit methods: 1) fluency represents the end result of decod-
ing instruction; 2) fluency gains on practiced texts generalize to
new texts; 3) repeated exposures teach new vocabulary words
and reinforce orthographic patterns; and 4) fluency gains
advance comprehension. Growing evidence from several
research directions indicates that these assumptions do not
hold for many struggling readers.
In this article, we present an overview of a very different
intervention for fluent comprehension, the RAVE-O program,
based on a developmental, multicomponent model of fluent
comprehension. The assumptions underlying RAVE-O share
with repeated reading methods the goals of teaching new
vocabulary and reinforcing orthographic pattern knowledge,
but have explicit emphases on these and additional major lin-
guistic systems such as syntactic knowledge and morphological
processes. Indeed, we argue that the fallacies in past assump-
tions about indirect reading instruction (i.e., it teaches basic
phonological knowledge and decoding principles through
exposure and immersion in texts) extend to instruction for flu-
ent comprehension in children with reading difficulties.
Research Background
The first body of evidence comes from research in the cog-
nitive neurosciences regarding how the brain learns to read in
typical development and fails to read in children with reading
disabilities (Pugh, Sandak, Frost, Moore, & Mencl, 2005; Wolf,
2007). An examination of the young reader’s first “reading cir-
cuit” illustrates the many components involved—from visual
pattern recognition systems to varied cognitive and linguistic
systems (Tan, Spinks, Eden, Perfetti, & Siok, 2005; Sandak,
Mencl, Frost, & Pugh, 2004). Multiple linguistic systems are
essential to understand the many dimensions contained within
a spoken or written word: phonology, morphology, syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics, with orthography necessary for
written words. Each system activates discrete areas of the brain
when we read. A leitmotiv in this research and RAVE-O is that
everything the child knows about oral language contributes to
the development of written language.
To bring the multiple emphases in the RAVE-O program to
life, we would like you, the reader, to analyze what you know
about any single word. In the process, you’ll have a bird’s eye
perch from which to view many of the different linguistic sys-
tems important to reading and oral language. Consider the word
duck. First, the reader begins to process visual features of letters
and of the word’s shape and to discern the size, shape, and
spacing of each symbol. Discerning meaningful visual symbols
is an evolutionarily adaptive ability that has developed over
thousands of years of token-based economies, hieroglyphic
drawings, and other early writing systems (Wolf, 2007). The
ability to store representations of visual patterns and connect
that information to linguistic knowledge and writing conven-
tions provides the foundation for an individual’s orthographic
knowledge (Wolf, 2007). During reading, children use their
orthographic knowledge to discriminate between letters and
recognize common letter patterns in their language. The ability
to rapidly identify visual chunks in words (e.g., vowel digraphs,
consonant blends, and morpheme units) ultimately increases
the speed of reading.
To read duck, orthographic knowledge must become auto-
matically connected to corresponding sound or phoneme-
based knowledge. The individual visual symbols, d, u, c, and k,
carry virtually no meaning until paired with their analogous
sounds. The alphabetic principle—beginning with the cognitive
understanding that each visual letter corresponds to a sound—
underlies children’s capacity to learn their language’s sound-
symbol correspondences. To read the word duck, children must
recognize each symbol, connect the corresponding sounds or
phonemes, and blend them together to form the word.
In the process, they utilize the repertoire of skills we call
phonological processes. The phonological awareness and pro-
ficiency required to segment and blend phonemes in words is
honed over hours of explicit instruction and repeated practice.
Extensive research confirms the effectiveness of direct sound-
symbol instruction on the development of phoneme awareness
and decoding skills (Adams, 1990, Lundberg, 1991; Stanovich,
1991; Torgesen et al., 1999). This evidence demonstrates that
children benefit most when common structures of sounds are
explicitly taught, particularly when special attention is paid to
distinctions between onsets, such as d, rimes, such as uck, and
syllable patterns (Goswami & East, 2000). Instruction which
provides this phonological foundation alongside multiple
exposures to common orthographic patterns results in more
efficient word recognition.
Phonological and orthographic knowledge are not the only
linguistic components key to reading fluency. Rich semantic
knowledge both plays a significant role in children’s reading
comprehension and impacts fluent word recognition. Semantic
knowledge refers both to the size of a vocabulary, and also
to the strength and depth of individual word knowledge.
Continued on page 22
Serious Word Play
How Multiple Linguistic Emphases in RAVE-O Instruction
Improve Multiple Reading Skills
by Maryanne Wolf, Stephanie Gottwald, and Melissa Orkin
The International Dyslexia Association Perspectives on Language and Literacy Fall 2009 21
(Frishkoff, Collins-Thompson, Perfetti, & Callan, 2008). Think of
the multiple meanings of the word duck. When functioning as
a noun, it represents a web-footed, swimming bird; as a verb,
it means to avoid. In fact, a great many of the most common
children’s words have more than one meaning. The more
knowledgeable children are about a word, its multiple mean-
ings, and various pragmatic and syntactic contexts of use, the
more rapidly the word is processed during reading (Locker,
Simpson & Yates, 2003). As a result, children can move into
more sophisticated text-level reading with greater fluency and
thus, have more time for understanding. In short, the semantic
system not only affects the speed of accessing the word, but
also impacts deeper comprehension of text.
The implications of this conclusion are significant.
Investigations into “word poverty” (Moats, 2000) and the
effects of impoverished word environments have demonstrated
the significant and long-term impact of a child’s vocabulary
size on his or her reading comprehension (Stanovich, 1985).
Moats (2001), for example, estimates that there is a significant
word gap between lower and higher income children who
enter first grade. The significance of this finding is brought
home by Biemiller (2005) who found that kindergarten children
with a vocabulary in the bottom 25% remain behind in vocab-
ulary and comprehension into middle school and often
beyond.
Related to both semantic and orthographic knowledge is the
least studied linguistic component of reading—morphological
awareness—which refers to the conventions that govern word
formation, and the ways in which roots and affixes create new
word meanings. For example, adding the suffix morpheme s to
the root duck, creates the plural noun ducks; adding ing creates
the present participle ducking; adding ed creates the past verb
form ducked. Such morphological knowledge also provides
disambiguating syntactic information (e.g., ed rapidly clarifies
that ducked is the verb form). In addition, because the role a
word has in sentence structure helps determine its meaning, this
collective morphosyntactic information aids comprehension.
Morphological awareness is particularly important in
English, which is a morphophonemic language that represents
both morphemes and phonemes in its spelling. Words that are
irregularly spelled no longer seem as arbitrary in their spelling
when children understand their morphemic roots. For example,
the word muscle connects this seemingly irregularly spelled
word to its basic roots. In so doing, it illumines the semantic
relationships among words like muscle, muscular, and muscu-
lature (see Chomsky & Halle, 1968). From this perspective, by
conveying semantic, syntactic, and orthographic information,
morphological knowledge contributes to the development of
spelling, faster word recognition, and fluent comprehension.
Another less emphasized component in fluency interven-
tion concerns syntactic knowledge. Knowledge of how words
are used within different grammatical or syntactic contexts is
essential for the child’s fluency and comprehension, along with
a variety of increasingly sophisticated sentence constructions
and literary conventions.
In sum, what does the young human brain learn to do when
it reads a single word? It uses an exquisitely precise visual sys-
tem to recognize letters and familiar letter patterns; it connects
this information to the stored, corresponding phonemes; and
almost simultaneously, it connects this same information to the
meaning(s) of the word, to its grammatical uses, the potential
morphemes, and how this word is used in social contexts (i.e.,
pragmatic knowledge). Most importantly, the brain must
retrieve, connect, and integrate all this information in a fraction
of a second to have time to comprehend the word in text.
RAVE-O Intervention
The RAVE-O program is an innovative reading program
whose purpose is to teach the young reading brain how to build
up and connect all these sources of visual, cognitive, and lin-
guistic information and rapidly retrieve them during reading.
Based on theoretical accounts of reading fluency and compre-
hension (Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001), the program attempts to
simulate what the brain does when it tries to read a single word
with fluency and comprehension. RAVE-O’s basic premise is
that the more the child knows about a word (i.e., phonemes,
orthographic patterns, semantic meanings, syntactic and prag-
matic uses, and morphological roots and affixes), the faster the
word is decoded, retrieved, and comprehended. RAVE-O is not
so much a wholly new program, as it is the application of some
best teaching practices and some newly-designed practices to
systematically address multiple linguistic, cognitive, and affec-
tive systems.
Each week children learn all the relevant phonological,
orthographic, semantic, and syntactic content for a small group
of core words and learn to make explicit connections across
these linguistic systems. Making these connections is key to
re-enacting what the brain’s “reading circuit” does. For exam-
ple, with the word jam, the instructor first reviews the individ-
ual phonemes, /j/ + /a/ + /m/, and then teaches the child to find
the chunks in jam. That is, the rime (the part of the syllable that
consists of the vowel and any consonants that come after the
vowel) (/am/) and the onset or beginning consonant (/j/). This
step consolidates sound-level knowledge and connects it to let-
ter patterns. In turn, this knowledge is immediately connected
to the semantic base. The word jam possesses at least three
common meanings and can be used in different syntactic con-
texts (as noun and verb). Moreover, jam can be easily changed
by the addition of different morphemes (e.g., jams, jamming,
unjammed) to show how words can change but still have their
root visible. The uniqueness of RAVE-O is that explicit attention
is given to learning and connecting each of the five major lin-
guistic components in every word, in every unit.
The overall structure of the RAVE-O curriculum emphasizes
systematic instruction with a repeating format within each unit
and each individual lesson. The general movement is from accu-
racy to speed: from the multicomponential introduction of
words, through activities that build accuracy in letter-pattern and
word recognition, to building speed and understanding in ever
increasing levels of complexity in words and connected text.
Serious Word Play continued from page 21
22 Perspectives on Language and Literacy Fall 2009 The International Dyslexia Association
The International Dyslexia Association Perspectives on Language and Literacy Fall 2009 23
Games and activities exemplify the progression from activities
that emphasize accuracy of retrieval early in the unit to speed of
retrieval by the end of the unit. For example, a variety of activities
and games are used to enhance the child’s ability to connect
multiple linguistic processes. Spelling-Pattern Cards are small
color-coded cards that are divided into starters, rimes, and
affixes and teach phoneme patterns and morphemes. Speed
Wizards is a set of computerized games designed to reinforce
these same sets of processes at different levels of complexity and
three speeds of recognition. Word Webs are a regularly recurring
semantic exercise that provides a simple, visual way of illustrat-
ing how words are interconnected and that gives visual images
to aid memory. All of these game-like activities offer whimsical
means to teach children to connect individual phonemes, to
orthographic units, to meanings, to uses. In turn, these connec-
tions facilitate rapid decoding and comprehension processes and
improve spelling along the way.
A range of metacognitive strategies (called Magic Tricks)
enables children to segment the most common orthographic
and morphological units in words. The tricks are quick, often
humorous mnemonics that teach key strategies about words.
For example, the strategy called “Ender Benders” helps children
quickly recognize common morpheme endings that “bend”
(i.e., change) the word’s meaning. The “Think Thrice” compre-
hension trick is a set of three comprehension strategies to
enhance the child’s prediction, comprehension-monitoring,
and analytical and inferential skills.
Within every unit, fluent comprehension for connected text
is addressed through metacognitive comprehension strategies
implemented with a series of specially written RAVE-O Minute
Stories. The stories’ controlled vocabulary incorporates the pho-
nemic and orthographic patterns, multiple meanings, and var-
ied syntactic contexts of core words. The Minute Stories are
multipurpose vehicles for facilitating more automatic rates
within phonological, orthographic, syntactic, and semantic
systems at the same time that they reinforce connections across
these systems. In the process, the stories build overall fluency
and comprehension skills. An important affective dimension in
these stories is that the content provides a platform for exploring
feelings struggling readers often have about learning to read.
Although these tricks and emphases on word play may
appear deceptively fun-filled, what we hope to achieve with
them is very serious. Children who are struggling readers need
to learn the interconnected nature of words, and they usually
don’t. These strategies are elaborated in the weekly lessons for
the teachers and provide a foundation for many of the most
important comprehension skills used in all later learning. The
end goal of RAVE-O, therefore, is ultimately not about how
rapidly children read, but about how well they understand and
enjoy what they read.
Summary of Results
The effects of RAVE-O with struggling readers have
now been studied for 10 years in 3 research contexts:
1) a pull-out intervention during the school day; 2) an intensive
summer-school remediation program; and 3) an after-school
intervention. In each of these studies, RAVE-O is combined
with a systematic phonological analysis and blending program
(such as SRA Reading Mastery or Orton-Gillingham) and taught
to small groups of four children.
Recent results come from a three-city, federally funded
(National Institute for Child Health and Human Development),
randomized treatment-control study. In this study, children who
represented the most impaired readers in grades 2 and 3 were
randomly assigned to four treatment conditions and were con-
trolled for socioeconomic status (SES), race, and IQ. Each group
received 70 hours of treatment throughout the school year.
Each of the sessions had one-half hour with a phonological
decoding program. RAVE-O and another theoretically multi-
dimensional treatment (PHAST; see Lovett’s extensive work in
references) went beyond a phonological approach to include
different multidimensional emphases in the second half-hour.
Specifically, PHAST employed multiple emphases on phono-
logical, orthographic, and morphological processes, as well as
distinctive metacognitive strategies for word identification and
comprehension.
We compared the effects of the four types of treatment on an
extensive battery of tests on all aspects of reading—from accu-
racy and fluency in word attack to comprehension—and on
many language measures. When compared to a control group
receiving a math treatment, the RAVE-O group and the PHAST
group outperformed the control group on every measure. When
compared to a group who received only the systematic phono-
logical analysis and blending treatment, the RAVE-O and
PHAST groups again proved better on every measure. When
compared to PHAST, RAVE-O made similar significant gains on
standardized measures of decoding, and superior gains on the
GORT-3 Oral Reading Quotient, a combined fluency and com-
prehension score, and on measures of vocabulary and semantic
flexibility (see overview in Morris, Lovett, Wolf, et al., submitted
2009). In other words, students who received instruction in
programs that emphasized multiple dimensions of linguistic
knowledge, performed equally well or better on every word
attack and word identification measure (the specific emphases
of the more unidimensional decoding treatment). RAVE-O also
outperformed all other treatments in vocabulary and the GORT
fluency-comprehension measure.
The theoretical implications of these outcome data are
critical. The premise of RAVE-O is that the plural linguistic
emphases will enhance decoding, as well as vocabulary and
comprehension. The fact that RAVE-O spent far less time on
specific decoding skills and yet made comparable or superior
gains in word attack and word identification to programs which
spent more of their instructional time on these skills is compel-
ling evidence supporting the theoretical premise of RAVE-O:
the more the child knows about a word, the faster and better
the word will be decoded and understood.
In addition, and very importantly, this NICHD study demon-
strated that impaired reading children could make significant
gains in reading regardless of initial SES, race, or IQ factors
(Morris et al., submitted 2009; Wolf et al., 2009). The latter set
of results cannot be overemphasized. It suggests that despite
these known impediments to achievement, the two multidi-
mensional interventions produced similar gains in children
from privileged and unprivileged backgrounds regardless of
Continued on page 24
IQ level or race. This result directly answers the question wheth-
er the linguistic demands in RAVE-O are too heavy for children
in poverty or for children with lower cognitive aptitudes.
In fact, these results point to the success and the importance
of explicit emphases on the multiple dimensions of language
in our interventions. They also raise the issue of assessing
and knowing the needs of each individual child before decid-
ing what type of intervention is most appropriate. There are
no silver bullets or one best program. Future analyses by our
NICHD group will examine differential treatment response
by subtype. Understanding research on different forms of
remediation—what works best for which child and when—is
like having a “toolbox” from which to create better-tailored
teaching. It is not that many of our children can’t learn to read;
it is that we haven’t found the right ways to teach them. The
onus is upon us, their teachers, not the children, to find ways
that work. Within that context, our collective findings under-
score that explicit teaching of multiple linguistic systems
propels our teachers and our students.
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Maryanne Wolf, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Reading
and Language Research at Tufts University and Professor of
Child Development in the Eliot-Pearson Department of
Child Development. She has received many awards includ-
ing the Norman Geschwind Lecture Award for neuroscience
research in dyslexia. She is the author of many articles and
books, including Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science
of the Reading Brain, which recently received the Marek
Award from the New York International Dyslexia
Association.
RAVE-O is a program designed by the first author, with assis-
tance from the Center for Reading and Language Research
and many teachers. Although it is not at this moment a com-
mercially available program, it may be in the future.
Stephanie Gottwald, M.A., is the Research Coordinator at
the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts
University, where she is also pursuing a Ph.D. in literacy and
language development. She received her master’s degree in
linguistics from Boston College, where she began her work
studying child language acquisition and syntax. She is the
recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany. She is cur-
rently the primary RAVE-O trainer and an international
speaker on reading development and disabilities.
Melissa Orkin is a doctoral student studying under Dr.
Maryanne Wolf and Dr. Fred Rothbaum. Her research inter-
ests focus on how emotions affect learning. More specifi-
cally, she is investigating the ways in which the beliefs and
goals of children with reading disabilities relate to their
ability to handle academic challenges. Melissa received a
B.A. in Psychology from Arizona State University and an
M.A. in Applied Child Development from Tufts University.
24 Perspectives on Language and Literacy Fall 2009 The International Dyslexia Association
Serious Word Play continued from page 23
