Bruce--

Could you please tell me more about "making predictions?"  Give an  
example from a teaching session?

Thanks!

Andrea

On Sep 26, 2008, at 10:38 AM, Bruce C wrote:


> Hello List:

> I believe that decoding is an extremely important component of  

> reading, but it is not the only component. Understanding  

> conventions of print and different genres, using and having  

> background knowledge, being able to relate text to self/text to the  

> world/text to other texts, using context to inform decoding, and  

> being able to make predictions are among the many other skills  

> needed to be a good reader.

>

> I did some in-depth interviews with beginning readers and found  

> "decoding" was all they cared about. Comprehension was not the goal  

> for them. Decoding was the goal. I believe many beginning readers  

> would feel satisfied and successful if they accurately decoded each  

> word of a text yet did not comprehend its meaning.

>

> This is sadly reinforced by many teachers who teach as if they  

> believe the same thing.

>

> From Bruce Carmel

> Turning Point

> Brooklyn NY

>

>

> --- On Thu, 9/25/08, tsticht at znet.com <tsticht at znet.com> wrote:

>

>> From: tsticht at znet.com <tsticht at znet.com>

>> Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2537]  The "Decoding" of words,  

>> sentences, and paragraphs

>> To: learningdisabilities at nifl.gov, englishlanguage at nifl.gov,  

>> assessment at nifl.gov, professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov

>> Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 7:45 PM

>> September 25, 2008

>>

>> The “Decoding” of Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs

>>

>> Tom Sticht

>> International Consultant in Adult Education

>>

>> Much discussion of teaching using alphabetics (phonemics;

>> phonics) aims at

>> learning to decode written words. Of course, this is

>> necessary for reading.

>> But beyond the word are the sentence and paragraph. Fluent

>> reading may

>> depend to some extent on how well people can construct

>> sentences and

>> compile them into paragraphs. The question arises, do more

>> skilled readers

>> develop a greater ability to construct sentences and

>> compile them into

>> paragraphs?

>>

>> Ordinarily word, sentence, and paragraph construction are

>> aided by the use

>> of spaces between words. Sentences are marked by

>> punctuation (capitals;

>> periods, etc.), and paragraphs are separated by spaces and

>> sometimes

>> indentation of the first sentence in the paragraph. But how

>> well can low

>> and high ability readers identify words, sentences, and

>> paragraphs when

>> there is no spacing or punctuation to mark beginnings and

>> ends of these

>> aspects of written language?

>>

>> To find out, in an exploratory study colleagues and I

>> worked with 16 low

>> reading young adults with reading skills from 3.5 to 7.7

>> grade levels, and

>> an average score of 5.5 grade level reading. We also worked

>> with 18 college

>> students as high ability readers.

>>

>> We prepared four paragraphs of writing by typing all the

>> words running

>> together, the sentences running together, and paragraphs

>> running together

>> with no spaces or punctuation. We then asked the adults to

>> go through the

>> materials and place a line between each word, a dot over

>> each line that

>> separated sentences, and an x through the dots that

>> separated each

>> paragraph.

>>

>> We found that on average the high ability readers

>> accurately identified 99

>> percent of words accurately, sentences with 77 percent

>> accuracy, and

>> paragraphs with 88 percent accuracy. For the low ability

>> readers words were

>> identified with 77 percent accuracy, sentences with  12

>> percent accuracy,

>> and paragraphs with 19 percent accuracy.

>>

>> This raises the possibility that in reading normal texts,

>> low ability

>> readers may not achieve higher fluency skills in part

>> because of a weakness

>> in sentence meaning construction and paragraph meaning

>> compiling skills.

>> Possibly alphabetics may provide effective word recognition

>> while whole

>> language teaching may foster the development of sentence

>> and paragraph

>> construction and compilation abilities. These are aspects

>> of “decoding”

>> written language that I have not seen given attention in

>> reading research,

>> with either children or adults.

>>

>> Thomas G. Sticht, Email tsticht at aznet.net

>>

>>

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>

>

>

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