[senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

Hi Eddie

Graeme

I understand a 'skill' to be a mechanical activity which becomes reflex with 
practice and therefore does not involve cognition. Given this definition I 
am far from certain that comprehension could be regarded as a skill - 
cognition is its principal vehicle. As to how you would teach it ??????

You can certainly teach skills but comprehension is the product of education 
in the widest sense of the word.

Eddie C

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "dolfrog" <dolfrog at tiscali.co.uk>
To: "'Eddie Carron'" <eddiecarron at btconnect.com>; 
<senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2007 6:26 PM
Subject: RE: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

> Hi Eddie
>
> If SP is not concerned about comprehension then it is imperative that you
> teach a comprehensive skills program at the same time otherwise the 
> children
> are going to question why they need to bother with this SP because  the
> reasons behind its being learnt in their eyes is just another fiction, and
> as you say at that level of their development fiction is difficult to
> comprehend, so may be you need a reading program based on their perceived
> reality rather than use this world of words they can read, but not
> understand, and thus give them a real reason for wanting to read.
>
> Children do have very vivid imaginations but you have to be able access 
> this
> visual learning process. As this is where they learn to picture fiction 
> and
> fantasy, so you need to find out how to unlock this potential and using 
> the
> words they want to understand.; This why the Harry Potter books sells so
> well, it engages the reader, and why it sells so well especially in the 
> USA
> where it is used to help those who have problems learning to read. May be
> the parrots belong to another forum.
>
> Best wishes
>
> dolfrog
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
> [mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Eddie Carron
> Sent: 07 February 2007 11:07
> To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
> Subject: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary
>
> Graeme
>
> Teaching SP doesn't create parrots - it creates people who are able to
> decode.  No-one has ever implied anything other than that as far as I am
> aware. This may not be of importance to you personally but it is a 
> critical
> skill for millions of poor readers.
>
>
> Comprehension of language beyond a restricted expressive code is a
> consequence of life experience and innate intellectual capacity.  It is
> generally agreed that there is no specific and separate phenomenon called
> 'reading comprehension' - there is only language comprehension. If you
> define 'reading' as the retrieval and assimilation of the intellectual
> content of text then these children have learned to 'retrieve' but not
> 'assimilate'  It is not a weakness of synthetic phonics that some children
> have limited language appreciation.  Another feature of innate 
> intellectual
> capacity is the inability of generalize information and this specifically
> limits the ability to assimilate implied meanings. Such children usually
> cope reasonably well with non-fiction reading material but generally fail
> with fiction where inferrential comprehension is required. It is important
> to appreciate that SP is about improving decoding skills and is not in any
> connected with 'comprehension'
>
>
>
>
>
> Eddie C.
> 