[senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

Graeme

You are right that it is important to have some language competence before being taught how the units of language (words) are represented in text. That is why some of us abhor the ever earlier intrustion into infancy of formal instruction.   SP fundamentalists want it taught in nursery schools before language competence has been established. They make no bones about the fact that that want formal instruction in SP to begin before infants get hold of the sound/symbol relationships inutitively. This is a fundamental belief. It is this unbelievable lunacy that is threating to undermine the very real value of SP as a remedial tool.

On 'reading and comprehension' if you start by defining reading as the 'retrieval and assimilation of the intellectual content of text' it becomes self-evident that comprehension is an integral part of the reading process. Decoding is decoding - it is not reading and I have never heard anyone claim otherwise. The real muddle arises by the use of the term 'Reading Comprehension' which has been foisted on us all by the litteratti who have convinced us of its existence, without having to provide any evidence.

I produced a resource called Reading Comprehension Course which is still widely used but I never claimed that it would enhance comprehension.

Eddie C.