[senco-forum] all of the grapheme/phonemes

I don't specifically teach any of the grapheme/phoneme correspondences. I simply try to fill the virtually empty sight vocabularies of older poor readers by proactive priming.   Sight vocab is believed to be able to contain a few thousand words so even the most conservative estimates of its capacity would permit all of the grapheme/phoneme correspondences with a few thousand spaces to spare.   Sight vocab capacity is not a problem. The problem would appear to be gaining admittance to sight vocabulary.

I am simply trying to structure a set of decoding experiences in such a way as to increase the likelihood of extending a poor readers sight vocabulary where this is not happening spontaneously, possibly because of poor short term memory function. I do not regard it as accidental that WISC or BAS subtests on poor readers invariably show poor short term memory function.

Sight vocab inevitably consists of the most frequently occuring words and these must obviously be useful in reading.  The most important outstanding unknown is what, if any, part does sight vocabulary play in decoding words not contained in sight vocabulary.  I believe that part to be very significant and although a long term enthusiast for SP for the initial teaching of reading, I depart from the fundamentalist SP view that all words are decoded grapheme by grapheme, every time they are encountered and no matter how often they are encountered. That seems to me to be an utterly bizarre idea.

I regard my researches as practical rather than academic or intellectual but I do ensure  that they always have a reasonable logical basis.

Eddie C.