posted
Have any of you heard about trying to teach children to "sight read"? It's where instead of knowing that the K makes a certain sound and the T makes a certain sound etc., children are taught how certain words are pronounced, so that when they see the word "cat" for instance, they have to pull from memory how the word sounds and what it means instead of being able to sound it out. so that in theory they have to memorize every word in english language. Does this sound like a good Idea to any of you? I was recently visiting my aunts pre-school, where they were starting children on sight reading and it just got me to thinking about having to memorize every english word and what happens when children who are tought like this attempt to learn another language, its a whole new dictionary to memorize. I wonder if sight reading has any advantages besides not having to remember some of the pronounciation rules like the whole "tion" thing... would there be any other benefits from such a system?
Posts: 73 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
That's how I learned to read, thirty years ago. I don't know that it had any particular advantages or disadvantages as far as learning to read, but I read a lot, and always had a much bigger reading than speaking vocabulary. It would occaisionally get me into trouble when reading out loud -- I'd come across a word I knew very well but had no idea how to pronounce.
(Come to think of it, I still have this problem.)
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
They also call it the "whole language" method, and truthfully, the more I study it, the more I realize that whole language is great for some children while phonics is great for others.
posted
I learned to read this way as well, and it still messes me up when I'm speaking. I can't pronounce words I know by sight but haven't heard outloud.
It was a tad bit embarressing at dinner last night, but ah well...
Edit to add: I wish I know phonics, at least better than I do. This happens relatively frequently. If you are thinking about teaching a kid to read, unless you can find compelling reason to go with ight reading I'm strongly suggest you teach them phonics.
posted
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say. Anyway, the way I learned to read was when I was theree, from people reading to me. As my father tells me, I would hear a story several times and then I would look at the book and match up each word with the word in the book. Thus learning the leters in different words and how they correlate with sounds. My teachers in elementary school where outstanded by my ability to read, especially since I was a year younger than any other student in my grade.
I have never had a problem pronouncing any word I've encountered, even in foreign languages. However it is very difficult me to learn how to speak a foreign language.
Posts: 2489 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
I could always be completely wrong and sight reading could be much simpler than phonics. I was tought to read with the whole hooked on phonics game (completely inadvertantly really, there was no plan to teach me to read, at the time I was maybe 5 or so, which makes it seem to me that phonics would be a much simpley method.) I figure that when you read you are connecting sounds to definitions, instead of words to definitions which makes it seem easier not to have to memorize every word by the sight of it but to memorize how certain leters sound when paired together.
posted
Whereas I would find it much harder to memorize a bunch of rules as to how letters sound when they're paired together when I can just memorize what a word looks and sounds like and what it means.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
but what about words you haven't heard spoken aloud? There were many times i've stumbled through one of OSC's sentances and had to sound one of his rather long words (ex. unobstreperousness ) and even if you could use the context clues to figure out what a word means one would have no idea how to pronounce a word they have never seen before
Posts: 73 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Just do a search on Google for "phonics" and "whole language". Tons of stuff.
-Bok
EDIT: The system I learned on was called "Open Court" (that might be the publisher). All first grade was learning the various sounds a letter could make, in the context of this weird modern day fairy tale type of story. Any letter not yet discovered was hidden, and we did 1-2 letters per week.
posted
Words I haven't heard before = where the embarrassment comes in, and why I said I'd encourage phonics. Mostly I just take a guess at them. I've picked up enough that I'm usually right or close. It's the times not covered by that usually that I hate.
Bok, I really can't remember what I did in first grade, but my mom tells me I knew how to read befoe I started kindergarten. And I do remember being sent to a different classroom (grade level) for reading lessons because the ones in my class weren't advanced enough.
I also can't spell. Spellcheck is a fabulous thing, and I have a little spelling dictionary next to my computer for when I'm posting here, because I'm too lazy to type it somewhere else and cut and paste.
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posted
You guys make me feel like an underachiever, I thought I was special for being able to read at a 3rd grade level halfway through first grade Posts: 73 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
How would one both sight read and read by phonics?one would always dominate the other based upon your preferance.
Posts: 73 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
the only thing really creepy about phonics is listening to someone try and sound a word out loud, and it comes out as sort of a low deep drone thats incoherant to everyone but the one sounding it out. ( especially since i'm the one usually sounding things out )
quote: I'd come across a word I knew very well but had no idea how to pronounce.
(Come to think of it, I still have this problem.)
I do this ALL THE TIME!
Just ask Jennik, my wife.....she speaks 5 languages, and so has a great grasp of pronuncation. Poor her, stuck in a relationship with a man who was taught to read by my mom and dad....and my dad still, to this day, pronounces chimney as "chimliny".... Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Speaking of languages, I bet people who are tough to sight read would have an easier time reading japanese kanji.
Posts: 73 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I learned by the whole language method, mainly by recognizing sight words, I suppose. My mom just read to me, and eventually I picked it up, without being overtly taught. I was reading novels by myself before I started school, without anyone ever telling me the difference between long and short vowels.
Then I started first grade and they started teaching me phonics, and I was totally baffled! It was incredibly difficult for me, and over the next four years I never did get the hang of it. I still break out in a cold sweat when I remember the trauma of trying in vain to understand the schwa sound. *shudders* I didn't really see what doing worksheets where you had to underline all the words with a short i sound had to do with reading anyway. "Reading" and "Phonics" seemed like two completely different subjects. The first involved actually reading and understanding stories. The second involved trying to tease out minute differences in vowels that I had a hard time hearing any difference in.
I know phonics works great for alot of kids. But I'm convinced that if phonics was the only method of reading I had ever been taught, I would have grown up illiterate. What works for some people does not work for others.
Incidently, I don't have that much trouble sounding out unfamiliar words. I just compare them to words that I already know. I do, however, have a horrible problem with spelling, and I'm completely incapable of doing word searches or jumbles as a result of a slight learning disability (a visual discrimination disability, they called it). I don't know if that has anything to do with my inability to understand phonics or not.
So, to sum up, yeah I think learning to recognize sight words is a great idea for kids. Isn't that how adults read anyway? We certainly don't sound out every word.
Posts: 96 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
From my experience those who are taught with phonetics do a much better job of reading unfamiliar material. Also, they eventually progress to "whole language" reading because their brain recognizes the words immediately. It's the natural outcome of a lot of reading. But to skip the tool set, in my opinion, is very unhelpful. (I was going to ridiculous, but maybe that's too strong, but it's the way I really feel Of course you have to teach exceptions along the way with phonetics, but so what. Your new reader will have a tool set that will help them read everything from now on. Without the tool set -- running into new words is much more challenging.
And in the same vein -- I'm now tutoring an adult who went through school during the days when they quit teaching grammar. She has no tools to understand the rules of her own language. She can read -- but her speaking grammar is terrible and she doesn't know how to fix it because she wasn't taught the rules. Now she is going to college as an older adult and basic english is so difficult -- she'd never heard of adverbs before. I think we cripple our children when we don't give them the basic tool set that is vital to really understanding the language.
Posts: 780 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
Amen, Mrs. Card - that's exactly right. Good luck with the tutoring - I tutored in college and was amazed (and appalled) by the lack of basic knowledge . . . not that my posts would always show that . . .
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Perhaps students should be given a choice. I realise that certain teachers might have difficulty understanding that some students know what works for them and how they themselves learn but sometimes they are able to make such a distinction. I think that the reason it seems like adults who were taught by phonics can sight read is simply that they have seen the words and been reading for long enough the the words are just there in there head.
Posts: 73 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Of course I agree that kids should be taught phonics, and I think they are, pretty much everywhere. My mom is a first grade teacher, and even when they adopted a whole language reading series, they still taught phonics.
I just think that punishing kids that can't learn phonics but could learn to read just fine by other methods is just as huge a mistake as not teaching phonics at all would be.
Edit: I didn't actually mean physically punishing kids that don't understand phonics. I meant punishing them by letting them remain frustrated and illiterate, instead of using an alternate method that could help them. I'm just trying to advocate that both methods should be used, and that people should not get so hung up on phonics that it becomes an end in itself rather than a step along the way to reading.
[ September 09, 2004, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Vera ]
Posts: 96 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I never did understand the idea of being punished because you just don't understand the concept the way the teacher was presenting it. I can't quite bring myself to figure out when to end one of my paragraphs, I know that you're supposed to end it when you're thought process ends, but my entire thought process kind of ties together and I wind up stringing things together and my paragraphs go on for ever. and the idea of placing a comma where it sounds like there should be a pause throws me for a complete loop. Perhaps instead of trying to make students conform to the explenations of how things work, one needs to fiddle with the explenation. Instead of trying to teach phonics to people who just don't get phonics but get whole language reading, you could attempt to break up words into large chunge and instead of have them read the 7 letters of a word you have them sight read the 2 sounds
posted
The best way to understand grammar is to learn a foreign language, in my opinion. I think we tend to use one mode or the other interchangeably. That email about how if you have all the letters of a word, and the first and last are in place, you can read the word no matter how the middle is messed up, attests to the sight reading theory. I think anyone who is "functionally literate" sight reads.
But when I am going through paper or laundry, I've noticed that my brain works in two modes: Picking and sorting. If I'm looking for a particular thing, picking is faster. But sorting is more productive. I guess sight reading would be like the picking mode and phonics would be like the sorting mode.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
For me, sight reading applies to music. And that makes sense. I can't even wrap my mind around sight reading spoken/written language. At least not ones with letters. I learned through phonics, but I read like a fiend from an early age, so I can spell almost anything, especially after I've seen it in print. There are a few words I have to hear before I pronounce them correctly, but I usually don't have much problem with that, either.
I'm not sure any one way should be used exclusively. Someone brought up the fact that different methods work for different people. I think that needs to be taken into consideration before inflicting a "more effective" method solely when some of the kids may not benefit from it. But that's just me.
Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
My daughter's kindergarten class uses both phonics and sight reading, as did my son's. They learn all the letter sounds, but also work on lists of "high frequency" words, such as and, the, etc. Combining methods seems to be working rather well as far as I can see.
posted
The problem with sight reading and learning new languages is that many languages are completely phonetic. Italian and Spanish, for example-- you almost always spell the word how it sounds.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I should add, I think I actually had whole language in my "readiness" year. Basically, I wasn't quite 5 yet when I went to kindergarten, and was generally a bit immature for my age, so my school recommended readiness, sort of like grade .5, even though I was academically solid. It was probably the best choice my parents ever made in my education. I learned to read through a 40-booklet system, that was very much like Dick and Jane. I'm sure there was some phonics, in that we had to prove we could read the booklets back to the teacher, and if we messed up, we had to try again later... I only had to read a booklet twice once
I feel that phonics is a lot more useful, in the same vein as what Kristine said, but I certainly think each student's strengths/weaknesses ought to be taken into account.
posted
Yeah, I'm with kacard on this one. Sight reading comes naturally as a person becomes more adept at reading, but phonetics seems to me like a good place to start. I mean...the beauty of an alphabetic system over an ideographic one is that the words are comprised of symbols that represent individual phonemes. If kids aren't taught that, and how to interpret those phonemes and use them to figure out words they don't already know, it seems to me as thought they're being robbed of a tool.
Of course, Annie is also right in saying that different kids repsond to different methods better than others. I'm sure that there are some for whom sight reading is the perfect method to learn. I'm glad, though, that I was taught phonetics when I was a kid.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I actually learned to read using a combination of both methods. My mother (who is a teacher) went to school at a time when the trend was shifting from one to the other.
There are some words that don't follow the "easy" phonics rules. I realize that a lot of times you can resolve the phonics difficulties via etymology but that's a little much for a beginning reader. So while she taught us how to sound out words, she also taught us the words that "break" the rules. She taught us phonics using a "sight" reading text. (There is a different word for "sight" reading but I can't remember what it is at the moment.) This is because the "sight" reading texts incorporate the everyday words that break the phonics "rules."
How often do I actually sound out words now? Rarely. I read pretty fast and do recognize "whole words" now, but that comes with practice. Also I still can massively mispronounce uncommon words even though I did learn phonics, so there is no guarantee either way. Especially when you do pronounce something phonetically correct and then find out the word breaks the "rules". It's caused much hilarity, like the time I produced something with a flourish and went "Vi-o-la!"
posted
Pronunciation - eeeck. My parents have never gotten over my attempts to say such words as "hypocrisy" as a young reader.
I also have to confess that when I first opened the thread, I thought someone was bringing up ear training -
which brings up another memory - that of arguing with my family until I finally grabbed the dictionary and proved it to them: aural not oral theory . . . . when I was taking music theory and sight reading classes.
posted
As a former English teacher and as a parent, I agree strongly with KACard. I think there are a lot of misconceptions in this thread. Just because you learn to read with phonics does not mean that this is how you continue to read. When I was taught to read phonics was still the preferred approach. I most assuredly do not "sound out" words to recognize them now. I recognize them as whole words. A phonics approach assumes that eventually you will progress to recognition, but you have the tools, as KACard said, to sound out new words.
Phonics versus whole language also has nothing to do with the phenomenon of mispronouncing words you have only seen in print--which I do too! These words are typically exceptions to the phonics rules. Nothing will teach you to pronounce these words correctly, until you actually hear them used--and recognize them as words you know from print.
An analogy for this learning process is that of learning to play Minesweeper. At first, you figure out where mines are and where they are not through deduction. Eventually, though, you start to recognize patterns because you have seen them so many times, and you play much more quickly.
I don't doubt that there are people who don't fit the mold, but people who naturally learn to read through word recognition instead of learning letter sounds are, imnsho, exceedingly rare.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Ha, I thought this thread would be about sight-reading music... which incidentally, I do all the time! Singing, mainly, with occasional piano.
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I'm fairly sure I learned to read via phonics, from the description of my practice of picking out letters from signs..."S T O P stop" and so forth. Though it's hard to tell, what with having started at two. All I know is that phonics sounds like the only sensible way of going about it, unless you run into some kid who just can't manage it.
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