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

> 

> 

> ----------------------------------------------------

> National Institute for Literacy

> Adult Literacy Professional Development mailing list

> professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov

>  

> To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please

> go to

> http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/professionaldevelopment

> 

> Professional Development section of the Adult Literacy

> Education Wiki 

> http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Adult_Literacy_Professional_Development