Why We Should Not Teach Sight Words to English Learners and English Speakers
Educators may need to re-evaluate the common use of sight-memorization of words that are frequently found in reading passages, high frequency words. Now, while we must know the meanings of these words, most of these words are decodable.
Once students have been taught explicitly, systematically, and directly to decode and synthetically blend the 43-44 phonics concepts, they will be able to decode most of these words that many reading programs teach as words that must be memorized “by sight” or by their configuration.
How Can High-Frequency Words or Highly-Irregular Words be Taught?
It is possible to teach that some of these words –or parts of them – are troublemakers! For example, the is a troublemaker! It says, “thuh.” In Phonics Steps to Reading Success, for example, the TM indicates a type of troublemaker. While the TM usually stands for “Trademark,” when troublemakers or highly-irregular words are introduced will be marked as TM troublemakers. This makes more sense to students who are learning an orderly, systematic, phonetic system.
Moreover, as a few phonics experts note, it is wise to teach these troublesome types of words within the context of a sentence not simply as lists of words to be memorized. Words like if, in, it, is or this, that, these, those, thus can be very confusing visually, particularly to English-language learners who generally have no frame of contextual reference when they are reading.
Words Are Not …Recognized As Wholes
The confusion that arises when students are taught to read words by their shape is clearly explained in an excellent article, Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation by Denis G. Pelli and Katharine A. Tillman.
Work on ‘crowding’ has shown that words are not usually recognized as wholes, even by adults, but rather that the visual system must isolate and recognize the individual letters to get the word….
Research in object recognition has tried to distinguish holistic recognition from recognition by parts. One can also guess an object from its context. Words are objects, and how we recognize them is the core question of reading research. Do fast readers rely most on letter-by-letter decoding (i.e., recognition by parts), whole word shape, or sentence context? We manipulated the text to selectively knock out each source of information while sparing the others. Surprisingly, the effects of the knockouts on reading rate reveal a triple dissociation. Each reading process always contributes the same number of words per minute, regardless of whether the other processes are operating. -Denis G. Pelli, Katharine A. Tillman Psychology and Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America
When we expect students to read passages, to do work, to take tests, we want them to be accurate, not just fast.
Reading Comprehension Requires Students Have Accurate Decoding
Reading comprehension requires students have accurate decoding (which you will be teaching), understanding of the meanings of the words used which reinforces the need to teach as much oral/aural vocabulary as we can, and sufficient background knowledge. Be very cautious in teaching students to memorize words by shape/configuration. "Research proves that the shape of a word is the least-used cue to its recognition by beginning readers (emphasis added)." -Dr. Patrick Groff, San Diego State University
One simple aspect is that the primary books have large print often with predictable stories and the students practice and drill the sight-memorization with large print. Even one misreading or incorrect guess of one word can lead to poor comprehension of a passage or text.
Examples:
The dog is in it in the game if we play Tag with him.
The dog is it in the game if we play Tag with him.
The dog isn’t it in the game it we play Tag with him.
Which sentence is correct? Would whole-word sight memorization be less or more effective than left-to-right using the phonics concepts? Even with a simple one-letter or one- word inaccuracy, doubt enters the reader’s mind and comprehension suffers.
Shall We Teach the Most-Effective Or Less-Effective Strategies
The teaching of sight-word memorization (now called high frequency words), in fact, does not contribute to reading excellence but to the many reading problems we see long term. Research tells us what explicit decoding taught in a systematic manner whereby students are taught to synthetically blend sounds is the most effective. It is up to us, as educators, to be skeptic scholars, striving to teach only the best and not the most popular.
Any student who is taught to use excellent + less-than-excellent + ineffective strategies = a less-than-effective, ineffective reader.
