Do you agree with Marilyn Adams (1990, p. 108) who argued that rather than relying on context, skillful readers of English thoroughly process the individual letters of words in their texts? Why or why not?
I do not agree with Marilyn Adams statement that rather than relying on context, skillful readers of English thoroughly process the individual letters of words in their text. Reading is about comprehending and not about processing letters. Yes, students should have phonics skills in order to read, but they should not spend time processing the letters of the words. When I read unknown words, I find myself trying to blend letter patterns, but not focusing on each letter of that unknown word.
According to Gollasch's (1980) research and the experiment at the beginning of Chapter 5, "We do not identify all the letters in a word before identifying a word, even if the word appears in isolation." I agree because we don't identify the letters on any word while we read. We depend on our spelling patterns, etc to identify a word. Activity 3 on pg. 93 made me realize that we depend more on the beginnings and endings of the words as we are reading. We don't focus on each individual letter. Activity 2 on pgs. 95-96 justified the reasoning behind not identifying each individual word while reading text. We can't comprehend the words by identifying each letter. Weaver(2009) states that "We don't not comprehend sentences by combining the meanings of individual words, so we do not perceive words merely by combining the perceptions of individual words.
While it is important to recognize all letters, proficient readers should focus on constructing meaning from the text. Gathering meaning from the text is a very important component to literacy. Literacy is based on being able to read, write, and comprehend literature.
I agree with what you are saying, and I disagreed with the quote. Reading is not just about decoding letters and sounds, but more importantly it's about finding meaning in what you read. I also look at word chunks when "stumped" on unknown words, but I never look at the letters in isolations. By doing this it helps me to understand the words in context. Letters are an important building block of reading, but it's not the main focus when proficient readers are reading. They focus on constructing meaning from the text. Like you said, gathering meaning from the text is an important component to literacy. As teachers, our focus should be on helping students find meaning when they are reading. After all, we want our students to become proficient readers.
ReplyDeleteStarlet,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is unnecessary for each individual letter of a word to be processed in order for reading to occur. While reading your post, it made me think - what would our names sound like if they were pronounced letter by letter? Certainly, Jenna does not sound like J-e-n-n-a, so why would anyone encourage someone to read in this way? This is certainly not a good reading strategy!