Do you agree with Marilyn Adams (1990, p. 108) who argued
that rather than relying on context, Skillful readers of English thoroughly
process the individual letters of words in their texts? Why or why not?
I do not agree with the idea of Marilyn Adams. I do not
think that skillful readers have to process each individual letter in order to
read. The textbook states that good
readers do not read word by word instead they use context to perceive and
identify words. Many times a word can be identified without someone looking at
each individual word. When adults and children encounter words that they are unfamiliar
with the reader decodes the word by looking at word parts, particularly
syllables and then units within them onsets and rhymes. According to Venezky if
a person attempted to scan left to right, letter by letter, pronouncing as he
goes could not correctly read most English words. The mutilated word activity
was very interesting to me. It is interesting how I could read those words with
parts of the word missing. I think that this is what proves that to be a
skillful reader you do not have to process individual letters.
Hey Mallory,
ReplyDeleteI also believe sounding out each letter in a word is unnecessary. If a student took the time to do that he/she would totally lose the meaning and the structure of the sentence in the first place. The most important part of reading is reading to comprehend. Sometimes reading every word is not always needed as proficient readers can also predict what word will be coming next from the context. For the activity you mentioned, it is interesting how our mind works and we are able to read words with missing letters or letters that are out of place.
Mallory & Megan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you both that individual letters do not need to be processed in order to read. Weaver's example in Chapter 5 on page 98 was a great example of that. Even with all of the vowels removed, I bet we were all able to "fill in the blanks" and read that sentence. It is amazing what our brains can do!
Yes Jenna it is amazing what we can do with our minds. Its very interesting. I agree with you too Megan if a student tried to sound out each letter there would be no way that they would remember what they started on.
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