Mechanics of Learning to Read

Reading unlocks a lifetime of learning and opportunities. Learning to read is the single, most important step toward a successful future. This skill is best mastered when the parent or educator has a firm grasp of the mechanics involved in the reading process. A combination of phonemic awareness, word analysis, phonics and sight words are key principles that make the reading process both meaningful and manageable for young children.

Every word in the English language is made up of letters of the alphabet. Each letter or a combination of letters represents sounds of the spoken language. A child learns to associate the letters with the spoken word as well as comprehending the meaning of that word. This entire process is known as alphabetics and is at the foundation of the reading process. Alphabetics is taught and learned through several methods that include phonemic awareness, word analysis, phonics and sight words.

Phonemic awareness occurs when the young reader is able to identify phonemes in the spoken word. Phonemes are the smallest building blocks of spoken words and English has about 41. Phonemes join together to make syllables and words. In a similar manner, graphemes are written letters that represent phonemes. Together, the audible and the visible depiction of these sounds constitute the beginning of the reading process.

Word analysis is the next logical step with an important distinction. This stage has been described as phonics instruction, with a focus on the grapheme-phoneme, or letter-sound relationship. But this can sometimes narrow the reading instruction because of irregular words that don’t fit a precise pattern or the different possibilities of letter-sound relationships in varying contexts.

It’s at this point that the benefits of knowing sight words are seen. Sight word recognition and phonics are often taught together, since one fully complements the other. Sight words are words that a child can instantly recognize, read and speak. These words appear frequently in children’s books and learning them is a major step toward mastering the entire reading process.

Parents and educators rely on a variety of sight word lists – the two most prominent are the Dolch list, developed by Edward William Dolch in 1948, and the Fry list, generated by Edward B. Fry in 1996. Both men performed extensive research into the mechanics of reading. When a young student memorizes and is able to immediately identify these sight words, most of the written text becomes clearer to understand. That’s because sight words generally comprise more than half of all English text, and even more at the early elementary level.

Phonics is best taught alongside sight word recognition. There are several methods of phonics instruction, with each one having a definite purpose. Analytic phonics teaches children the visual and audible understanding of the letter-sound relationship after the word is identified. Using this method after the child has mastered sight words is especially productive.

Phonic in spelling helps a child use the sounds of the letters to write words. Contextual phonics demonstrates how to identify words within the context of a sentence or paragraph. With analogy phonics, young students use parts of words they already know to form and identify new words. Once again, this method works well after the child has successfully memorized a list of common sight words.

Reading involves a skillful manipulation and understanding of the combination of sounds, letters and their meanings. Through phonemic awareness, word analysis, phonics and sight words, a child is better able to grasp the concepts involved, which will result in an accelerated learning pace and greater comprehension.

Erudition™, the sight word game, exposes children to the 26 English letters and their basic phonic sounds plus 284 sight words. Erudition™’s sight words include virtually the entire Dolch list and many of the Fry list. The game cards are categorized by difficulty level so more experienced readers can play with beginner readers.