History of Reading News. Vol.XVIII No.1 (1994:Fall)
by Rose-Marie Weber

David Perkins Page was selected in 1844 to head the Albany Normal School, the first in New York State to have as its primary goal the preparation of teachers for the common schools of the state. 1 He developed a rigorous curriculum that demanded a high level of knowledge from the prospective teachers. In his Theory and Practice of Teaching (1847), based on his lectures at the Normal School, Page laid out the dimensions of knowledge that he considered essential for teachers, ranging over moral philosophy, human physiology, vocal music, and of course orthography and reading. He referred explicitly to the "Normal Chart of Elementary Sounds," which he had prepared for use in the schools, as representing his point of view on teaching these two subjects. 2

Page's Normal Chart of the Elementary Sounds of the English Language is dated January 1, 1845. Designed to be hung in a classroom and used for the pronunciation of sounds, syllables, and words, it included not only material for practice, but also instructions to the teacher as to how and why to conduct it.

The chart is of interest in the history of reading and writing instruction in several respects. It exemplifies an early teaching aid designed for teachers in an era when common schools brought together, into the same room, children of different ages and abilities for basic literacy instruction. It offers a view on the sounds of English embedded in the elocutionary tradition, yet resonating with current notions about the relations between phonological sensitivity and the development of reading ability. Beyond this, the chart reflects Page's progressive thinking about teaching and learning as he articulated it for prospective teachers in the normal school through his lectures and book.

The Chart. The Normal Chart of the Elementary Sounds of the English Language was published in 1845, by L. W. Hall of Syracuse. Measuring 56 inches long by 45 inches wide, it was "got up in superior style," as the advertisements maintained. It had a cloth back, was mounted on rollers, and cost two dollars.

Notably, the chart is arranged in the form of a stylized temple of learning. The pediment announces the title and author and the facade lists the symbols for the "vocals, sub-vocals, and aspirates" with corresponding key words in large type chosen to be "distinctly legible" from fifty feet. The frieze divides into six sections of remarks and definitions, the columns give examples of items for practice and reflection, and the base provides directions for how to conduct lessons -- all in smaller type that cannot be read from a distance.

In the small print Page offers an essay on the purpose and organization of the chart, elaborating on the production of speech, the categories of the forty elementary sounds -- the elements -- and their distinctiveness from the letters used in written language. He presents details about less common sound-spelling connections; examples of syllables "to im-prove articulation"; words to be analyzed into their elements; and examples of sound clusters, words, and brief sentences that are difficult to articulate. In the small print of the base he gives specific directions to the teacher for conducting the exercises and the purposes for doing so.

Page explains that activities were to strengthen pupils' voices and improve their articulation, to improve their ear so that they would recognize the characteristics that distinguish the sounds from one another, and would aid in correcting "prevailing faults of articulation," a perennial concern. He declares that the knowledge of the elementary sounds is most useful for the teaching of reading and suggests analyzing words into sounds so as to distinguish sounds from spelling. But he stops short of providing more detail on how to put the information into play during reading instruction.

The Phonology. Much of the scholarly and entre-preneurial activity on American varieties of speech and the teaching of reading of the period was based on the orthoepic and elocutionary traditions that flourished in England in the late nineteenth century. Page derived his chart from the Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language of John Walker, which first appeared in London in 1791. 3 Specifically, Page adopted the set of elementary vowel sounds and their representation by the letter most commonly used to spell it. He continued Walker's convention of distinguishing a particular vowel sound by a number above the letter, using the same numbers. He listed the vowel sounds in the same alphabetical and numerical order as Walker. In this respect Page was conservative, sidestepping novel American efforts such as the use of diacritics for distinguishing vowel sounds that Noah Webster had deve-loped by this time. 4

Page seems to have had a good ear and understanding of speech sound production. On the chart he clearly dis-tinguished sounds from letters and offered a passable description of sound production. He also seems to have had an appreciation of the coherence of the phonological system, drawing connections, such as the "correlatives," as he called the voiceless-voiced pairs of consonants such as f/v and ch/j. He chose well from the well-established knowledge of the period. 5

The Chart as Instructional Aid. In the classroom, the teacher was to hang the chart in front of the class or whole school and, using a pointing stick, to pronounce a small set of the sounds forcefully and rhythmically, to have students accompany the teacher, and to have students repeat the model individually or in groups. Then more sounds were to be added. In accord with the principles in his book, where he called for highly focused but brief experiences, Page says on the chart, "Let no Class be exercised more than ten minutes at once, perhaps not more than five." The theory of speech production sketched in the frieze was not to be learned by the student seeing the chart, but to be understood by the practicing teacher.

With reference to the teaching of reading, Page explicitly offered opportunities for two specific activities. The first was combining sounds into syllables, following the teacher's model. The second was analyzing words into their elements, the words being "spelled" out by their sounds (e.g., pause -- p-a3-z), which can "distinguish silent letters from the real elements."

Such exercises on the elemental sounds based on the chart might have contributed to learning to read. In current terms, they would have fostered phonological awareness or sensitivity, to borrow Stanovich's term, the side of sound-letter correspondence that has made a difference to children's learning. 6 Contemporary research has offered converging evidence that sensitivity to the sounds of speech among young children is a solid predictor of their early reading acquisition for good reason, showing up as a significant contributor to learning in methodologically different correlational, longitudinal, and training studies. On the other hand, children and adults who have difficulty with reading are often weak in hearing and analyzing the stream of speech and drawing the sound-letter connections. Building learners' phonological sensitivity through intense exercises such as those proposed in Page's chart may have served reading by bringing speech sounds to their attention.

Conclusion. Like others of his time, Page considered the attention to the speech stream to serve reading, to teach reading "philosophically," that is, based on knowledge rather than just "mechanically." Through the proposed activities, he applied the principle stated in his book that whatever is taught should be learned so thoroughly that the next steps are easy. Teachers were to lead students to practice sounds rhythmically and intensely, singly and in groups, but in brief spurts that might well serve automaticity. These exercises were to launch pupils into an appreciation of the sounds of English and their connections to letters and to letters in words and sentences.

Page suffered from delicate health all his life. After only three successful years as principal at the Normal School, he died of pneumonia before he turned forty. Nevertheless, the Normal Chart is listed as part of the curriculum devoted to reading and writing instruction in the two-year program of the Albany Normal School for more than twenty years after his death.

Notes

1. Ellwood P. Cubberly, Public Education in the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 377.

2. David P. Page, Theory and Practice of Teaching: Or, the Motives and Methods of Good School-Keeping (Syracuse: Hall and Dickson, 1847).

3. Ralph H. Emerson, "The Distribution of Eighteenth-Century Prerhotic o-Phonemes in Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary," American Speech 68 (1993), 115-138.

4. E. Jennifer Monaghan, A Common Heritage: Noah Webster's Blue-Back Speller (Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1983), 126-127.

5. Arthur J. Bronstein, "The Vowels and Diphthongs of the Nineteenth Century," Speech Monographs 16 (1949), 272-342.

6. Keith Stanovich, "The Language Code: Issues in Word Recognition," in Reading Across the Life Span, ed. S.R. Yussen and A. C. Smith (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993), 111-135.