by E.M.Robinson

Created on: May 18, 2008

Reading decoding, or word recognition, is important and so is reading comprehension. Amazingly, there are children who can read aloud fluently and convincingly, but they understand little of what they read. Therefore, word identification and comprehension are equally important.

*Decoding or word recognition*
phonics
sight words
multiple meaning words
homonyms

Decoding or word identification is made up of being able to use sound-symbol relationships, sometimes called phonics or phonetic strategies. This is an important skill at an elementary school level and it continues to be important throughout life as we are always encountering new or unfamiliar words. This skill is also valuable in the acquisition of a foreign language as well.

Reading sight words is also an important reading strategy when teaching elementary school students. Sight words are the words that readers recognize in an instant.It is as though their eyes and brain take a snapshot and there's an instant match.

Early readers are familiar with the concept of sight words because they are words that are presented separately from other words that build on phonics or sound-letter relationships. Sight words are on a separate list of words to learn because sight words do not follow the rules of letter-sound relationships in our language.

From a different perspective, sight words can also refer to the volume of words a person with a reading disability can recognize but cannot decode using phonics. There are a surprising number of people, adults and children, whose reading vocabulary is build strictly on the acquisition of sight words. For one reason or another they did not master the rules of phonics that present ways to "sound out" words as readers come across them.

Children will learn to recognize common sight words early in their learning process. A good example of a sight word is the word "love". It does not follow the rules of vowel-consonant-silent e that would ordinarily give the o a long vowel sound. Therefore love has a different sound than words like cove, drove, stove. If love followed the rules of phonics, it would rhyme with cove, drove, and stove. It is an exception to the rules. Therefore, the word love is a sight word.

We learn some sight words incidentally or in the course of everyday life. Certain words are just recognized by their appearance which explains why young children or people from foreign countries who know little English can recognize and appear to "read" signs and advertisements.

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