Sumerians, Lists, and Learning

"Thousands of years ago, the Sumerians already understood that the teaching of reading should include explicite attention to multiple aspects of language."

This sentence stood out to me as I read Wolf's article on her response to Strauss' article. As I continued reading I became more and more intrigued by the way ancient civilizations emphasized the need to correctly learn and use a language through reading and writing.

Wolf uses several studies to point out how the Sumerians emphasized reading. They were extremely analytical, and left little to played around with, in regards to language. When a new scholar was learning to read, they were given lists of words that had commonalities amongst them.These were mostly semantic and visual. The reader would spend a lot of time learning these lists and the ties between all of the words. Once those lists were mastered, a second set of lists was given out. These words were interconnected mostly through phonetics. 

Teachers focused on teaching reading nowadays will recognize similarities in instructional methods between current practices and the Sumerian manner of teaching reading. Lists of words that sound the same, that mean similar things, or that have common patterns have been used for thousands of years, and prove the necessity of learning words in connection with other words so as to create meaning, understanding, and word-memory.

A Sumerian cuneiform lexical list.

After mastering the basic lists, more lexical lists were given to young learners with words that represented a visual picture of the morphology of the language, or grammatical lists that focused on syntactical uses of different words and phrases. In this way, readers were instructed in the multifaceted construction of language, thus enabling them to better understand what they were reading and why those words existed. I imagine this also helped comprehend the nuances of the language, something that is difficult to learn.

When I was in high school, I created my “word list.” This was simply a list of words I liked, words I wanted to know, words I thought sounded good. When I learned a new word, I put it on the list, and from time to time I would review the list and make mental connections. I would consider the roots of the word, the implications of it, and its aesthetic pleasantness. I learned lots of new words and was able to use them effectively in my writing.

I feel like my list, like the lists used in Sumeria, was a great help in becoming more literate and able to communicate my intentions in my writing, because not only was I learning distinct words, but how they connected with other words and ideas. Writing down the words in one place made them easy to find and refer to when I needed them, and also helped me remember them for use at a later time.

This article as a whole, I found, was a good example of an answer to the course question of “How do people become literate?” The article focused on the micro-aspects of becoming literate. That is, the more we understand the intentions and constructs of the language, we understand how to use it better. In my opinion, that’s what literacy is—not simply being able to read or understand the language, but being able to use it effectively, in a way that allows the user to express his feelings, thoughts,  and ideas.

Maryanne Wolf tends to focus on the process of reading and its implications within the arena of disorders and other reading issues. I am quite interested in learning more about what she has to say about teaching reading, especially when the odds are stacked against the teacher and student.

References:

Wolf, M., Kennedy, R., (2003). How the Origins of Written Language Instruct Us to Teach: A Response to Steven Strauss. Educational Researcher. 32(2), 26-30.