Questions about 'sight words'...
Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 10:18 am
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an International Online Synthetic Phonics Programme
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http://www.phonicsinternational.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=939
In Module Five, Part 5, of the online course, I talk about the introduction of 'tricky and/or common words' as part of the phonics provision and include a list of example words. Many of these words may well be officially defined as 'irregular' but this is not necessarily how I would describe them to learners.Hi,
Could you please give me several examples of the words which are "not completely phonically regular"? Do you mean so called "sight words"? Could you please give me an explanation of this notion? Are there any statistics of the approximate percentage of this kind of words in the whole English vocabulary? And the main question: what are the methods and the approach to managing those words in regards of teaching and learning of reading and spelling?
Thanks in advance!
Svetlana
So, according to official definitions, the most common way of pronouncing a grapheme defines the word as 'regular'. However, I would simply teach explicitly a comprehensive range of letter/s-sound correspondences but rationalised according to their 'sounds' (mainly phonemes or a few combined phonemes creating a unit of sound such as /k+s/) and their 'spelling alternatives' - and also rationalised for reading purposes that many graphemes (letters and letter groups) can have pronunciation alternatives dependent upon the actual words.“Regular word” is a technical term in the relevant scientific literature (psychology), in exactly the same way as “electron” is a technical term in the relevant scientific literature (physics).
If you wanted to know what an electron is, you should consult a definition of that term in the relevant literature.
In just the same way, if you wanted to know whether HAVE is a regular word, you should consult a definition of that term in the relevant literature. For example, " regular words (i.e., words that follow the GPC rules, such as SPELL) and irregular words (i.e., words that do not follow the GPC rules, such as GHOST) “ from Macarthur et al. Cognitive Neuropsychology 2013). Or it is reasonable to go to such sites as http://www.sightwordsgame.com/spelling/ ... irregular/ which has a decent discussion of what this term means, and lists a number of irregular words (including HAVE and SAID as irregular).
Just as it is not a matter of opinion whether "a subatomic particle, symbol e− or β−, with a negative elementary electric charge" is an electron or a proton, it is not a matter of opinion whether HAVE is an irregular word or a regular word. By the definition of “regular word” that is standard in the relevant scientific literature, HAVE and SAID are irregular words.
“GPC” stands for “grapheme-phoneme correspondence”, so to understand the scientific definition of the technical term “regular word” one needs first to understand the scientific definition of the technical term “grapheme” and, especially to understand what the difference is between the terms “grapheme” and “letter”. A grapheme is a letter or letter group that stands for a phoneme. So THIGH, though it has 5 letters, must have only two graphemes since it has only two phonemes. Its two graphemes are TH and IGH. So two phonic rules are enough for reading THIGH phonically: a rule specifying the pronunciation of TH and another rule specifying the pronunciation of IGH. Almost all words of English beginning with TH pronounce this grapheme as it is pronounced in THIGH. So that is the rule for the grapheme TH. Any word which begins with TH but has another pronunciation for TH is therefore, by the standard definition, irregular, no matter how common a word it is. That includes words such as THIS THAT and THE, and also THAI.
[These phonemes in slash marks are defined by Diane according to a North American accent. The notation in the slash marks to denote the 'phonemes' and the examples provided are not all the same as I have used, or would use, with different pronunciations and for notating the sounds - for example, I put /yoo/ not /ue/ as the notation. The point here, however, is that there are some words which one could call 'exception' words or very rare or unusual spellings with very few words, or only one word, spelt that way.]‘…the sight word category was reserved for common words where one or more phonemes have a unique spelling that is hard to decode without direct instruction. There are almost no words where every phoneme has an unpredictable spelling. By this criterion, there are remarkably few true sight words. The following sight words and special group words did not fit a major spelling category in a large corpus of words of English/French origin. There are approximately 100 sight words.’
These words are the only words which Diane McGuinness suggests could be taught as ‘whole words’ but she says they can also be taught by their sound category as all words can be decoded:/a/ aunt, laugh, plaid
/e/ friend, leopard
/i/ been, busy, sieve, pretty, women
/o/ abroad, broad, cough, father, gone, trough, yacht
/u/ a, because, does, blood, flood, of, once, one, the, was, what
/ae/ straight, they Group: ea break, great, steak
/ee/ people, ski
/ie/ aisle, choir, I height, sleight
/oe/ sew
/ue/ beauty, feud, queue
[long] /oo/ move, prove, shoe, deuce, through Group: o do to who whom whose
[short] /oo/ Group: -oul could, would, should
/ar/ are, heart, hearth Group: orr borrow, tomorrow, sorrow, sorry
/er/ acre, glamour, journey, syrup, were Group: ure leisure, measure, pleasure, treasure
/or/ drawer, laurel Group: oor door, floor, poor
/air/ bury, heron, scare, their, there, they’re, very, where
final /k/ arc, tic, ache, stomach Group: -lk baulk, chalk, stalk, talk
/t/ Group: -bt debt, doubt, subtle
final /th/ smooth
final /v/ of
honest, honor, (honour), hour
initial /h/ who, whom, whose, whole
See these free resources that I provide which includes some of the words above where the 'code' is explained in the words:the, one, once, two, who, are, I, of, here
Teachers really don't need to worry about teaching 'high frequency' words as if it is a 'big thing'. It isn't.I need to ask you about high frequency words. I know they are included as part of the Mini posters and in many other documents, however my question is if I can find a list of all of them together and guidance about how to teach them somewhere.
As the 'Letters and Sounds' programme was mentioned with reference to research (comparing its application with EER - Early Reading Research) in Professor Anne Castles' guest-blog posting, I thought it would be interesting to provide the guidance accompanying the 'Letters and Sounds' publication.00282-2007BKT-EN
Letters and Sounds: Notes of Guidance for Practitioners and Teachers
© Crown copyright 2007 Primary National Strategy
When and how should high-frequency words be taught?
High-frequency words have often been regarded in the past as needing to be taught as ‘sight words’ – words which need to be recognised as visual wholes without much attention to the grapheme–phoneme correspondences in them, even when those correspondences are straightforward. Research has shown, however, that even when words are recognised apparently at sight, this recognition is most efficient when it is underpinned by grapheme–phoneme knowledge.
What counts as ‘decodable’ depends on the grapheme–phoneme correspondences that have been taught up to any given point. Letters and Sounds recognises this and aligns the introduction of high-frequency words as far as possible with this teaching. As shown in Appendix 1 of the Six-phase Teaching Programme, a quarter of the 100 words occurring most frequently in children’s books are decodable at Phase Two. Once children know letters and can blend VC and CVC words, by repeatedly sounding and blending words such as in, on, it and and, they begin to be able to read them without overt sounding and blending, thus starting to experience what it feels like to read some words automatically. About half of the 100 words are decodable by the end of Phase Four and the majority by the end of Phase Five.
Even the core of high frequency words which are not transparently decodable using known grapheme–phoneme correspondences usually contain at least one GPC that is familiar. Rather than approach these words as though they were unique entities, it is advisable to start from what is known and register the ‘tricky bit’ in the word. Even the word yacht, often considered one of the most irregular of English words, has two of the three phonemes represented with regular graphemes.