[senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

Maggie wrote to Aly:

"Can you tell me what the difference is between hearing a 'whole word' and hearing a phoneme? "

I suggest that the difference is that a 'whole word' is linked subconsciously to a specific meaning and a phoneme is linked to a specific sound. Words are part of the reading process - they stimulate cognition.  Phonemes are the units of the mechanical (non-cogntive) decoding process - a world of difference!

Aly wrote to me (I think) these two statements in the same mail:

' words can be seen' and 'you cannot "read"  sounds, you can only hear them. 
 This is certainly confusing. What you are seeing in this text are not words, they are simply the textual representation of words. You seem to asserting that words can be seen and then conceding that they are sounds!

This confusion arises I believe because we are a 'profession' with no clear professional definition of our terms of reference.   I understand the term 'reading'  to mean the 'retrieval and assimilation of the intellectual content of text'  By this definition, it is not possible to HEAR someone reading - it just can't be done. You can hear them 'reading aloud'  but reading aloud is an altogether qualitatively different activity from reading. Reading is an inaudible, asocial, receptive activity. Reading aloud is an audible, socially interactive, expressive activity. The two are virtual opposites!

However, I now understand that you advocate a 'whole word' teaching strategy for those with APD.  The problem with the 'whole word' strategy is that those with short term memory deficit fail to acquire a good sight vocabulary and their reading efforts are invariably stilted, hesitant, lacking in fluency and usually also fail completely when they encounter low frequency words because they have few internalised references for the less common phoneme/grapheme correspondences. This would be likely to apply to those with APD as any other segment of the population.  

As someone concerned less with the initial teaching of reading to infants and more with resolving the reading problems of older children, I have some sympathy with the 'whole word' approach providing it is used with those for whom it is appropriate. Like SP, it is not suitable for everyone.

Eddie C.