Effective Decoding Instruction for Diverse
Learners
A Study Group Series
Skillful Word Recognition
1. How do skilled readers recognize words so quickly?
Researchers have determined that skilled readers recognize words
at such a swift pace and expend so little effort on basic word
identification that the reader's attention can primarily be focused on
extracting meaning from the passage. There are several things skilled
readers do that increase the efficiency of their reading:
- recognize letters in groups, or chunks
- break words into syllables with little conscious analysis
- use their knowledge of how words are spelled to read by analogy
(recognize words because they look like known words)
- employ their knowledge of how a written text is structured
- activate their extensive vocabulary
2. How can teachers help students become efficient at
recognizing words quickly? (What knowledge
and skills do teachers need to provide instruction?)
- Teach phonemic awareness at an early age.
- Teach sound-spelling correspondences explicitly.
- Teach frequent, highly regular sound spelling relationships
systematically.
- Model how to read through a word sound-by-sound.
- Provide opportunities for students to practice
in readers that have a high percentage of words that can be
sounded out using the skills that have been taught.
- Read aloud to students to develop vocabulary, background
knowledge, and more complex language of books.
The above information is excerpted from: Straight Talk About Reading, Hall & Moats, 1998.
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Last modified: Sun Apr 4 15:54:24 EDT 1999