[senco-forum] Re Teachng Vocabulary

Aly: you say "You cannot just assimilate the meaning of words through reading,"

Words are an audible phenomenon. They cannot be seen. They can only he heard. Reading is  sub-vocalising words  viz we hear them in our heads when we read. This is how vocabulary is acquired and extended.

I think you probably meant to say that you cannot assimilate the meaning of words just through 'decoding.'   Reading is more than decoding. The reading process requires decoding but it also, by definition,  requires the assimilation of meaning or it is not reading.

These are widely accepted facts which most people take for granted. Reading is an important skill not just because it enables us to read instructions on medicine bottles but because it extends and enriches our language experience and therefore, our lives.

There is still legitimate debate about the processes involved in reading. I take the view that learning to read means acquiring sight vocabulary because sight vocabulary gives the ability to 'read' words instantly without individlly decoding them. Sight vocabulary also serves as an instantly available decoding reference library since even quite a small number of words can encapsulate all of the 160 grapheme/phoneme correspondences. Where sight vocabulary is limited, reading is invariably laborious and hesitant and usually fails completely when low frequency words are encountered.  I also believe that poor short term memory function is the main culprit in this.

Eddie C.