By Keith Rayncr a Barbara R Foorman

A Learning to speak is automatic for almost all children, but learning to read requires elaborate instruction and conscious effort. Well aware of the difficulties, educators have given a great deal of thought to how they can best help children learn to read. No single method has triumphed. Indeed, heated arguments about the most appropriate form of reading instruction continue to polarize the teaching community.

B Three general approaches have been tried. In one, called whole-word instruction, children learn by rote how to recognise at a glance a vocabulary of 50 to 100 words. Then they gradually acquire other words, often through seeing them used over and over again in the context of a story. Speakers of most languages learn the relationship between letters and the sounds associated with them (phonemes). That is, children are taught how to use their knowledge of the alphabet to sound out words. This procedure constitutes a second approach to teaching reading – phonics. Many schools have adopted a different approach: the whole-language method. The strategy here relies on the child’s experience with the language. For example, students are offered engaging books and are encouraged to guess the words that they do not know by considering the context of the sentence or by looking for clues in the storyline and illustrations, rather than trying to sound them out. Many teachers adopted the whole-language approach because of its intuitive appeal. Making reading fun promises to keep children motivated, and learning to read depends more on what the student does than on what the teacher does. The presumed benefits of whole-language instruction – and the contrast to the perceived dullness of phonics – led to its growing acceptance across American during the 1990s and a movement away from phonics.

C However, many linguists and psychologists objected strongly to the abandonment of phonics in American schools. Why was this so? In short, because research had clearly demonstrated that understanding how letters related to the component sounds in words is critically important in reading. This conclusion rests, in part, on knowledge of how experienced readers make sense of words on a page. Advocates of whole-language instruction have argued forcefully that people often derive meanings directly from print without ever determining the sound of the word. Some psychologists today accept this view, but most believe that reading is typically a process of rapidly sounding out words mentally. Compelling evidence for this comes from experiments which show that subjects often confuse homophones (words that sound the same, such as Jrose and ‘rows5). This supports the idea that readers convert strings of letters to sounds.

D In order to evaluate different approaches to teaching reading, a number of experiments have been carried out, firstly with college students, then with school pupils. Investigators trained English-speaking college students to read using unfamiliar symbols such as Arabic letters (the phonics approach), while another group learned entire words associated with certain strings of Arabic letters (whole-word). Then both groups were required to read a new set of words constructed from the original characters. In general, readers who were taught the rules of phonics could read many more new words than those trained with a whole-word procedure. Classroom studies comparing phonics with either whole-word or whole-language instruction are also quite illuminating. One particularly persuasive study compared two programmes used in 20 first-grade classrooms. Half the students were offered traditional reading instruction, which included the use of phonics drills and applications. The other half were taught using an individualised method that drew from their experiences with languages; these children produce their own booklets of stories and developed sets of words to be recognised (common components of the whole-language approach). This study found that the first group scored higher at year’s end on tests of reading and comprehension.

E If researchers are so convinced about the need for phonics instruction, why does the debate continue? Because the controversy is enmeshed in the philosophical differences between traditional and progressive (or new) approaches, differences that have divided educators for years. The progressive challenge the results of laboratory tests and classroom studies on the basis of a broad philosophical skepticism about the values of such research. They champion student-centred learned and teacher empowerment. Sadly, they fail to realise that these very admirable educational values are equally consistent with the teaching of phonics.

F If schools of education insisted that would-be reading teachers learned something about the vast research in linguistics and psychology that bears on reading, their graduates would be more eager to use phonics and would be prepared to do so effectively. They could allow their pupils to apply the principles of phonics while reading for pleasure. Using whole-language activities to supplement phonics instruction certainly helps to make reading fun and meaningful for children, so no one would want to see such tools discarded. Indeed, recent work has indicated that the combination of literature-based instruction and phonics is more powerful than either method used alone.

Teachers need to strike a balance. But in doing so, we urge them to remember that reading must be grounded in a firm understanding of the connections between letters and sounds. Educators who deny this reality are neglecting decades of research. They are also neglecting the needs of their students.

Fishbourne Roman Palace is in the village of Fishbourne in West Sussex, England. This large palace was built in the 1st century AD, around thirty years after the Roman conquest of Britain ,on the site of Roman army grain stores which had been established after the invasion, in the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius in 43 AD. The rectangular palace was built around formal gardens, the northern half of which have been reconstructed. There were extensive alterations in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, with many of the original black and white mosaic floors being overlaid with more sophisticated coloured ones , including a perfectly preserved mosaic of a dolphin in the north wing. More alterations were in progress when the palace burnt down in around 270AD,after which it was abandoned.

Local people had long believed that a Roman palace once existed in the area .However, it was not until 1960 that the archaeologist Barry Cunliffe, of Oxford University, first systematically excavated the site, after workmen had accidentally uncovered a wall while they were laying a water main .The Roman villa excavated by Cunliffe's team was so grand that it became known as Fishbourne Roman Palace ,and a museum was erected to preserve some of the remains .This is administered by the Sussex Archaeological Society.

In its day, the completed palace would have comprised four large wings with colonnaded fronts. The north and east wings consisted of suites of private rooms built around courtyards, with a monumental entrance in the middle of the east wing. In the north-east corner there was an assembly hall. The west wing contained state rooms, a large ceremonial reception room, and a gallery. The south wing contained the owner’s private apartments. The palace included as many as 50 mosaic floors, under-floor central heating and a bathhouse. In size, Fishbourne Palace would have been approximately equivalent to some of the great Roman palaces of Italy, and was by far the largest known Roman residence north of the European Alps, at about 500 feet (150m)square. A team of volunteers and professional archaeologists are involved in an ongoing archaeological excavation on the site of nearby, possibly military, buildings.

The first buildings to be erected on the site were constructed in the early part of the conquest in 43 AD. Later, two timber buildings were constructed, one with clay and mortar floors and plaster walls, which appears to have been a house of some comfort. These buildings were demolished in the 60s AD and replaced by a substantial stone house, which included colonnades, and a bath suite. It has been suggested that the palaces itself, incorporating the previous house in its south-east corner, was constructed around 73-75 AD. However, Dr Miles Russell, of Bournemouth University, reinterpreted the ground plan and the collection of objects found and has suggested that, given the extremely close parallels with the imperial palace of Domitian in Rome, its construction may more plausibly date to after 92 AD.

With regard to who lived in Fishbourne Palace, there are a number of theories; for example ,one proposed by Professor Cunliffe is that ,in its early phase, the palace was the residence of Tiberius

Claudius Cogidubnus ,a local chieftain who supported the Romans ,and who may have been installed as king of a number of territories following the first stage of the conquest. Cogidubnus is known from a reference to his loyalty in Agricola, a work by the Roman writer Tacitus, and from an inscription commemorating a temple dedicated to the gods Neptune and Minerva found in the nearby city of Chichester. Another theory is that it was built for Sallustius Lucullus, a Roman governor of Britain of the late 1st century, who may have been the son of the British prince Adminius. Two inscriptions recording the presence of Lucullus have been found in Chichester, and the redating by Miles Russell of the palace was designed for Lucullus, then it may have only been in use for a few years, as the Roman historian Suetonius records that Lucullus was executed by the Emperor Domitian in or shortly after 93 AD.

Additional theories suggest that either Verica, a British king of the Roman Empire in the years preceding the Claudian invasion, was owner of the palace, or Tiberius Claudius Catuarus , following the recent discovery of a gold ring belonging to him. The palace outlasted the original owner, whoever he was, and was extensively re-planned early in the 2nd century AD, and subdivided into a series of lesser apartments. Further redevelopment was begun in the late 3rd century AD, but these alterations were incomplete when the north wing was destroyed in a fire in around 270 AD. The damage was too great repair, and the palace was abandoned and later dismantled.

A modern museum had been built by the Sussex Archaeological Society, incorporating most of the visible remains , including one wing of the palace. The gardens have been re-planted using authentic plants from the Roman period.

It has long been held that decision made collectively by large groups of people are more likely to turn out to be accurate than decisions made by individuals. The idea goes back to the 'jury theorem’ of Nicolas de Condorcet, an 18th-century French philosopher who was one of the first to apply mathematics to the social sciences. Condorcet’s theory describes collective decisions, outlining how democratic decisions tend to outperform dictatorial ones. If, for example, each member of a jury has only partial information ,the majority decision is more likely to be correct than a decision arrived at by a single juror. Moreover, the probability of a correct decision increases with the size of the jury.

Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants ,bees .birds and dolphins .Bees make collective decisions ,and they do it rather well, according to Christian List of the London School of Economics ,who has studied group decision-making in humans and animals. Researchers led by Dr List looked at colonies once the original colony reaches a certain size. The queen goes off with about two-thirds of the worker bees to live in a new home or nest, leaving a daughter queen in the old nest with the remaining workers. Among the bees that depart are some that have searched for and found some new nest sites, and reported back using a characteristic body movement known as a 'waggle dance' to indicate to the other bees the suitable places they have located. The longer the dance, the better the site. After a while, other bees start to visit the sites signaled by their companions to see for themselves and, on their return, also perform more waggle dances. The process eventually leads to a consensus on the best site and the breakaway swarm migrates. The decision is remarkably reliable ,with the bees choosing the best site even when there are only small difference between alternative sites.

But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out ,Dr List and his colleagues used a computer generated model of the decision-making process. By experimenting with it they found that, when bees in the model were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information, this dramatically slowed down the migration .leaving the swarm homelss and vulnerable .Conversely .bees in the model blindly following the waggle dances of others without first checking. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify successfully and quickly the best site depends on both the bees ‘interdependence in communicating the whereabouts of the bees site, and their independence in confirming this information for themselves.

Another situation in which collective decisions are taken occurs when animals are either isolated from crucial sources of information or dominated by other members of the group. José Halloy of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium used robotic cockroaches to subvert the behaviour of living cockroaches and control their decision-making process. In his experiment, the artificial bugs were introduced to the live ones and soon became sufficiently socially integrated that they were perceived by the real cockroaches as equals. By manipulating the robots, which were in the minority, Halloy was able to persuade the living cockroaches to choose an inappropriate shelter-even one which they had rejected before being infiltrated by the robots.

The way insects put into effect collective decisions can be complex and as important as the decisions themselves .At the University of Bristol, in the UK, Nigel Franks and his colleagues studied how a species of ant establishes a new nest. Franks and his associates reported how the insects reduce the problems associated with making a necessarily swift choice. If the ants’ existing nest become suddenly threatened, the insects choose certain ants to act as scouts to find a new nest.

How quickly they accomplish the transfer to a new home depends not only on how soon the best available site is found, but also on how quickly the migration there can be achieved.

Once the suitable new nest is identified , the chosen ants begin to lead others , which have made it to the new site or which may simply be in the vicinity, back to the original threatened nest. In this way, those ants which are familiar with the route can help transport ,for example ,the queen and young ants to the new site, and simultaneously show the way to those ants which have been left behind to guard the old nest. In this way moving processes are accomplished faster and more efficiently. Thus the dynamics of collective decision-making are closely related to the efficient implementation of those decisions .How this might apply to choices that humans make is , as yet,unclear. But it does suggest, even for humans ,the importance of recruiting dynamic leaders to a cause,because the most important thing about collective decision-making ,as shown by these insect experiments, is to get others to follow.