Literacy in English, even for natives, however, presents a more substantial problem. For many years, educators have been plagued by "reading wars," heavily debated issues concerning how reading should be initially taught to best account for a very significant peculiarity of written English: the fact that many words of high frequency in the most basic printed material do not look the way they sound. The debate first focused on the importance of phonics as compared to the "whole word" method, in which words are learned as wholes as opposed to being sounded out. More recently, the "whole language" approach was championed, in which the intrinsic and motivational values of children's literature are emphasized over the ability to sound out individual words. Tailored Reading techniques are designed to augment all of today's popular methods, including "whole word," "whole language," and direct phonics approaches.
The principal challenge arises from English having evolved with influences from numerous other tongues, the legacy of which involves a considerable number of spelling inconsistencies. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority (more than 80%) of English words are considered to be phonically "regular." However, this regularity is based on a number of principles that have confusing levels of application and many inconsistencies, requiring a great deal of time even for good students to master, let alone young children and at-risk readers. This causes enormous difficulties in learning to read for a significant segment of the population. Many letters and their combinations, for example, have more than one sound (e.g. "bough" and "brought"), and some sounds can be written by more than one letter or combination (e.g. "Phil" and "flat"). To make things even more uncertain, some words that are spelled the same have different pronunciations and meanings, depending on the context. For example, the only way to know whether the word "read" is pronounced with the long or short /e/ sound depends upon whether the sentence concerns the present or past tense.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of English words do follow phonics conventions to some degree, making it crucial for all pupils to learn phonics as a major tool to identify words. Instructional approaches based on a "purist" phonics perspective typically involve sentences such as, "A fat cat sat on a mat." Aside from being rather stilted speech, this format take much longer to enable pupils to learn frequently used (preprimer) words (e.g. "down" and "you"), whose phonics are on a much higher level. It is well within a beginner's grasp, however, to learn these words as wholes, by "sight," along with those that are even less phonetic. Since many "sightwords" are highly frequent in the most elementary reading material, for maximum benefit, both methods of instruction are necessary to the extent that the learner can handle each.
Tailored Reading's response. To meet this challenge, Tailored Reading considers "phonically regular" words that are above a pupil's level of phonics mastery (that she cannot currently sound out), as "sightwords," to be learned as such. For example, the preprimer word, "blue," which is usually one of the first learned (often as a "color word"), is phonically regular, following the "silent e" rule. But if this principle hasn't been mastered, or if the pupil hasn't internalized the ability to blend letter combinations, it is best learned as an individual sightword, leaving to a later time for it to make sense in terms of phonics. Tailored Reading's emphasis is to systematically enlarge the pupil's reading vocabulary as quickly as possible, using "whatever works" for each word at the time it is to be learned.
Most readers learn words best (both "sight" and "sound") when the material is meaningful, related to what they know, reinforced often, and relevant to other aspects of their learning environment. For new readers, "less is more," because they learn a greater amount when given less new information (which needs to be mastered) before moving on. Experience with Tailored Reading has shown that new readers thrive on learning a growing core of usable knowledge rather than attempting to rotely memorize a greater number of less relevant bits of information. It therefore makes sense that for instruction to be as efficient as possible, words should be carefully chosen for most widespread use, as well as to facilitate internalization of the means to unlock new ones. Rather than selecting stories inevitably containing a number of words that have limited carry-over value to other literature, it is more effective to teach words that are found in greater abundance regardless what material is read.
Relating various aspects of written English is intrinsic to Tailored Reading. Each Rainbow Word(those first taught)for example, has been chosen for several reasons, enabling the collection to have a great deal of carry-over to the various language arts.
Since the idea is to have the pupil learn as many relevant words (those most likely to be met in most reading matter) as possible, finding and filling sightword gaps is accomplished in the general order of their frequency of use. This begins with preprimer words (those usually learned first in most reading programs), and then ascends to those of higher levels. There is nothing sacred about these particular lists, however. Words can be deleted if thought to be relatively unimportant, and added from sources the tutor feels to be of value for the pupil. It is important, however, to keep accurate records concerning such changes.
"Soundwords" (those whose phonics are within the ability of the pupil to sound out) are not "learned" individually as ends in themselves. The object here is for the pupil to become progressively able to sound out new ones of greater difficulty. This is dealt with through the activity called Rapid Reading, which consists of highly structured lessons that involves blending letters into words increasingly higher on the phonics hierarchy, to the level of mastery.
With instructional methodology that takes the learner from where he currently is along the word knowledge continuum, including soundwords and sightwords, to a mastery level, specifically taking into account his gaps in each, the path towards literacy becomes one more easily traveled.
What about reading comprehension?
Since comprehension is the goal of learning to read, and the basis of most reading programs, one might wonder why it isn't stressed in Tailored Reading. This is because the most efficient way to elevate comprehension for beginning readers is by increasing the pupil's word knowledge. Much of the rest, if the pupil's oral language skills are relatively intact, usually falls into place by itself. If a
learner is unable to comprehend a selection despite being able to read the words and understand their meanings, at least there is a starting point for discussion. This can be dealt with much more easily through questions that direct the learner to relate what she knows about individual words to the content of the story.
Typically, in other programs, lessons are based on the content of stories and other material with which at-risk readers usually struggle through hopelessly, due to the many "new" words within the selection. Most important among these are words that should have already been mastered. These are the ones that form gaps in their reading vocabularies, which, unless specifically learned, greatly hinder their ability to read in general, often causing them to perceive reading as a drudgery to be avoided at all costs.
We feel that reading should be an enjoyable activity as much as possible. Therefore, selections are based on each learner's mastery of words, enabling her to succeed more easily. Additional information on comprehension can be found in the Theoretical Information page under How is reading comprehension dealt with?
The following summarizes the key concepts of the Tailored Reading approach: 2. Teach phonics according to a meaningful hierarchical structure, such as using Rapid Reading Sheets that requires the pupil to master each level before proceeding on to the next. While the meanings of sightwords are very important and immediately relevant to the pupil's everyday reading, those of soundwords may be less so, since they are being considered only for their letter combinations. The tutor can decide on those that are most beneficial for the learner to know. It is, however, necessary for the pupil to be able to figure out how to spell them since, among other reasons, encoding (spelling) of regular
words reinforces decoding (reading).
1. Teach sightwords in the approximate order of their frequency of use to enable the learner to read progressively higher level material by following the wordlist of each grade level. This material includes Partner Plays, brief dialogues that are based upon specific wordlists that can be read by pupils who have mastered them. Words that are phonically regular but not within the learner's ability need to be taught by sight. Lessons in sounding out should be left to the Sound Sequence(phonics) portion of the system. Of course, the pupil must also know the most important meaning(s) of the words as well.