Download Developing Word Recognition Skills

Developing Word
Recognition Skills
What is a proficient reader?

Can recognize words accurately and with little effort
Requires: the use of visual decoding based on familiar letter
sequences or orthographic patterns
 Decoding skills are necessary to develop proficient word
recognition but rarely used by mature fluent reader
 Proficient word recognition does not involve sounding
words out, it relies on visual, orthographic information
rather than phonological information.
Logographic Stage (Ehri, 1991; Frith, 1985)


Initial visual stage
Stage where children


construct associations between unanalyzed spoken
words and one or more salient graphic features of
the printed word or its surrounding context
Do not use knowledge of letter names or soundletter relationships to recognize words
Logographic Stage (Ehri, 1991; Frith, 1985)

Controversies


No functional value because it ignores
correspondences between print and sound at a sublexical level
No relationship between logographic reading and
later reading ability
Transition Phase (Chall, 1983; Ehri, 1991; Frith, 1985)


Is there a stage before the alphabetic stage??
When children use partial phonetic cues to
recognize words, typically the initial and final
letters
Alphabetic Stage



Characterized by the ability to use sound-letter
correspondences to decode novel words.
The child links the letters to the particular set
of phonemic sounds that comprise the spoken
language…they realize that they are the sounds
of the spoken language
This insight is a one-time occurrence
Alphabetic Stage
What is the challenge faced by children??
 Sounds or phonemes that children must
associate with letters are abstract linguistic
concepts rather than physically real entities
and, as such do not always correspond to
discrete and invariant sounds
 At the word level



Coarticulation sound segments run together in conversation
Lack of correspondence between sounds and letters in
English
Allophonic variations of many English sounds
Alphabetic Stage

Beyond word level




Effects of coarticulation are greater at the sentence level
Irregularities of English spelling (251 spellings for 44
sounds)
Grapheme letters have a number of script forms and upperlower case forms (some have as many as 4/5)
Different typewritten forms (example a)
Orthographic Stage and Automatic
Word Recognition



Characterized by the use of letter sequences and spelling
patterns to recognize words visually without phonological
conversion
One develops the ability to use a direct visual route without
phonological mediation to access semantic memory and word
meaning to be able to develop automatic word recognition
skills
Begins when children accumulate sufficient knowledge of
spelling patterns so that they are able to recognize the words
visually without phonogical conversion (Ehri, 1991; Frith,
1985)


Morphemes
Letters sequences in words
Problems with Stage Theories of Word
Recognition






No empirical support
Focus on knowledge children need to become proficient rather
than mechanisms that underlie changes in reading proficiency
Each stage associated to a different type of reading implying
that words are read with the same approach at a particular
stage
Little attention paid to the development of the knowledge, they
only stipulate beginning and end of stage
Simplify development
Omit individual differences
Self-Teaching Hypothesis (Share, 1995; Stanovich,
1995)



Alternative theory
Phonological decoding functions as a self-teaching mechanism
that enables the learner to acquire the detailed orthographic
representations necessary for fast and accurate visual word
recognition and for proficient spelling.
Problems they find


Teaching – too many words to teach, cannot help with all new words
Contextual guessing –


most times the purpose of text is to offer new information – works well
with high frequency words but not content words
Guesses are twice likely to be wrong
Self-Teaching Hypothesis (Share, 1995; Stanovich,
1995)
The self teaching hypothesis… “each successful decoding
encounter with an unfamiliar word provides an opportunity to
acquire the word-specific orthographic information that is the
foundation of skilled word recognition and spelling. In this
way, phonological recoding acts as a self-teaching mechanism
or built-in teacher enabling the child to independently develop
knowledge of specific word spellings and more general
knowledge of orthographic conventions” (Share and
Stanovich, 1995)
Children teach themselves to read.
Self-Teaching Hypothesis (Share, 1995; Stanovich,
1995)

Four features of the hypothesis
1.
2.
3.
4.
Item-as opposed to stage-based role of decoding
in development
Early onset
Progressive “lexicalization” of word recognition
Asymmetrical relationship between primary
phonological and secondary orthographic
components in the self-teaching process
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
Item versus stage-based decoding
1.
Previous theories say that all words are initially
phonologically decoded with a later development
shift access using orthographic information
But, this theory says that it is more appropriate to
ask how children gain meaning from “which”
words
•
•
•
•
How often exposed to words
Nature and success of decoding the particular word
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
•
Implication
“If the reading is at the child’s reading level or a
little above, a majority of the words will be
recognized visually, while the smaller number of
low-frequency unfamiliar words will provide
opportunities for self-teaching with minimal
disruption of ongoing comprehension processes”
(Share, 1995)
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
2.Early onset


Self-teaching found very early on
Needed:





Some sound-letter knowledge
Some phonological awareness
Ability to use contextual information to determine exact word
pronunciations based on partial decodings
Key---Children DO NOT need to have accurate decoding
skills to develop orthographic-based representations
The orthographic representations are primitive but don’t
interfere with being used for direct visual access to
meaning
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
3.Lexicalization of phonological decoding



Central aspect of self-teaching
Early sound-letter correspondences become
lexicalized--They come to be associated with particular words
As child becomes more attuned to spelling
regularities the beyond one-to-one phonemegrapheme correspondences, this orthographic info
is used to modify the initial lexicalizations children
develop
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
Final Outcome
“a skilled reader whose knowledge of the relationships
between print and sound has evolved to a degree that
makes it indistinguishable from a purely whole-word
mechanism that maintains no spelling-sound
correspondence rules at the level of individual letters
and digraphs”
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
4.Phonological skills are the primary selfteaching mechanism for the acquisition of
fluent word recognition


Visual/orthographic factors is secondary and
parasitic upon the self-teaching opportunities
provided by decoding and print exposure
Phonetic decoding leads children to look at all
letters, which leads to recognition of common
letter sequences and other orthographic patterns
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
Phonological decoding


The most straightforward type of phonological decoding
involves identifying and blending together the individual
sounds in words
Children find larger units than one-to-one sound blending
1.
2.
3.
4.
They may divide words into onsets and rimes
They start noticing morphemes in different words
They use these language-based units to decode words by making
analogies to other words they already know
When new words appear, they recognize the whole word without
having to phonetically decode them
Self-Teaching Hypothesis – Features
Phonological decoding


Is no guarantee to self-teaching
Other factors that are necessary
 Quantity and quality of exposure
 Ability or inclination to attend to and remember
orthographic detail
 Writing experiences
Reading Comprehension






Readers rely on previously stored knowledge
about language and the world
Specific knowledge about text structures and
genres
Basic reasoning skills
Analogies
Inferences
Metacognitive abilties
Metacognitive abilities



Declarative knowledge is the factual information that
one knows; it can be declared—spoken or written. An
example is knowing the formula for calculating
momentum in a physics class (momentum = mass times
velocity).
Procedural knowledge is knowledge of how to do
something, of how to perform the steps in a process; for
example, knowing the mass of an object and its rate of
speed and how to do the calculation.
Conditional knowledge is knowledge about when to
use a procedure, skill, or strategy and when not to use it;
why a procedure works and under what conditions; and
why one procedure is better than another. For example,
students need to recognize that an exam word problem
requires the calculation of momentum as part of its
solution.
Development of Reading Comprehension


Chall’s stage theory – sees development based on
Piaget and stages
Issue with defining reading comprehension
development

Difficult to relate processes to reading comprehension – ow
do you measure these and relate to reading





Linguistic
Conceptual
Reasoning
Metacognitive
Text-specific
Vocabulary
Does seem to develop in a discrete quantifiable
way
Assessment

Problems with assessing comprehension



Focus on informational types of answers
Based on the structuralist view of reading that
meaning resides in the text, not in the transaction
between the reader and the text
The way comprehension is measured does not
change as students progress through school years
Alternative views of comprehension
1.
2.
There are multiple meanings available to
readers
Texts can be processed at different levels of
meaning
There are multiple meanings
available to readers (Kamhi, 1997)






Meaning does not reside in text, but in transaction between
reader and text
Reader-response theorists
There is no independent text
Text cannot be grasped as a whole
Text is a series of changing understandings, interpretations,
envisionments
Interpretation influenced by




Sociocultural and cultural attitudes
Personality
Linguistic and conceptual skills
Social-historical context of the author and the reader
Texts can be processed at different
levels of meaning (Adler and Van Doren, 1972)
Levels
1.
First or elementary level


Understanding literal meaning of the words and
sentences
Typically assessed in standardized testing
Inspectual or systematic reading
2.



There is a set amount of time to complete assigned
reading
One gets the most they can within a given time
The art of skimming systematically
Texts can be processed at different
levels of meaning (Adler and Van Doren, 1972)
Levels
3..Analytical reading




Thorough, complete reading
Best and most complete, unlimited time
Requires deeper and more complete understanding
It is necessary to consider:






Structure of the book
Author’s intentions
Characterization
Plot
Narrator
Ect.
Texts can be processed at different
levels of meaning (Adler and Van Doren, 1972)
Levels
4.Comparative reading




Read many books
Relate books and topics to one another
Critical or novel interpretation
Uses skills acquired level 4