No More Sight Words

Eliminate Sight Words, Dolch Words, Whole Words, Word Walls. Why do we have 50,000,000 functional illiterates? Because educators love a bad fad called Sight Words. By Improve-Education.org/Bruce Deitrick Price.

http://www.Improve-Education.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Rudolph
• Flesch
• phonics
• illiteracy
• John
• Dewey
• reading
• public
• schools
• k-12
• Frank
• Smith
• sight
• words
• Dolch
• Words
• whole
• word

[nicki142002]

I arege wtih mnay who cmoenmted taht we need btoh sdies of the biran wnokrig tgeotehr, but if you ralely tnihk you do not raed unsig wlohe wdros, you msut not be albe to raed waht I hvae tpeyd hree. I am ptrety srue you hvae raed tihs etnire psot unsig yuor wohle wrod kwnolgdee bceusae yuor pohcins slkils wulod not do you any good rhigt now, wulod tehy?

You shouldn't post such scare tactics that do nothing but worry parents. Maybe a video that promotes parental involvement might be better?

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@nicki142002 I think your post proves the opposite of what you intend. If you had actually memorized agree as a sight-word (i.e., a graphic design), you would not be able to read arege. It is because you know that individual letters stand for sounds that you can go into the word and rearrange the letters in the most likely way.

I see in the newspapers that we have 50 million functional illiterates. Is mentioning that, and explaining the reason, a scare tactic?

[yamunaharsha]

It is not clear what 98% you talk about, but a big percentage (certainly more than 2 if not 20%) of high usage words are exceptions. See the variations in vowels in these very sentences. You read them because you use whole word reading. Else, you'd be stuck somewhere in the first line like how most children I teach to read would be if they followed the phonic system! What I'm saying is: English has far few vowels and far too many variations for the vowels to be followed phonically.GBShaw'd agree

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@yamunaharsha Please see my review on Amazon of "Uncovering the Logic of English"

by Denise Eide.

[yamunaharsha]

English has a highly confusing phonetic system, in fact so confusing that exceptions are more prevalent than the ones following the rules. This is the reason why the concept of sight words came into being: p-u-t has a different 'u' from b-u-t. How much can phonics help the child? Indian languages, are structured so you read as you write and write as you speak. English, sadly isnt that.Always wondered why linguistologists (or whatever they are called) did not come up with a solution for this.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@yamunaharsha Nonsense. English words are 98% phonetic. There are inconsistencies, which is not the same as saying the words aren't phonetic. Shades of blue are still blue. The u's are like shades of blue. English is 400+ years old. It has taken in words from 50+ languages. It is spoken in far-flung regions with different dialects. So inconsistencies accrue. (Much like the irregular verbs that most languages have--you memorize them.)

[dancinkayley]

@yamunaharsha But at the same time, if you didn't have any phonics background at all, you would be completely stuck if you came to a word that you didn't know/hadn't seen before.

[Ruth5650]

I was looking at a sight word list and I don't understand why there are words on there that can be sound out. such as... " can, make, like, yellow, blue." It makes no sense to me.

[yamunaharsha]

I'll get myself a copy of the book - if what is claimed is true and if the rules do not turn out to be tedious for children to learn, then nothing like it...still the language has a long way to go for somebody to just see and read it without having to remember way too many rules...thanks, nevertheless for the pointer.

[pacrapacma]

Your story is the reason many people want to stop teaching sight words! It confuses many. My daughter is a visual learner also. She fought me when I tried to teach her phonics. She thought she already knew how to read, but she wasn't reading. In fact she didn't even look at the book most of the time. She looked in the air while she tried to find the word she had memorized. I tutor reading. The local schools teach sight words. Some kids are able to learn to read and decode without help, but why!?