University of Warwick researchers Jonathan Solity and Janet Vousden carried out primary classroom research into an alternative reading strategy that teaches children to recognise just 100 words initially, which will do to read most written English, including books intended for adults. Adding an extra fifty words (as recommended by the national literacy strategy) meant children gained an understanding of only about 2% more of the texts.
The Early Reading Research Project reduced the incidence of children having problems with reading from 20-25% to less than 2%. It involved both phonics (the sound of letters and letter combinations) and sight vocabulary (recognising whole words from the letters in them).
While English appears to have a lot of irregular words, in fact a significant number are highly regular and could be taught through a very small number of skills. There are about 44 phonemes (sounds) but these are represented by a rather larger number of letter groupings. For example, an 'ee' sound might be 'ee' or 'ea' or 'ie'. By teaching children the 61 most common letter groupings, they can read around 70% of all the phonically regular words in adult literature.
The core 100 words accounted for 53% of all the words in a database of analysed adult texts, while just 16 words accounted for a quarter of all the words. Rather than trying to teach all the variations, the strategy focused instead on the most frequently occurring and 'phonic self-correcting'. For example, if a child learns that 'ea' has an 'ee' sound, they will initially trip over the phrase 'loaf of bread', but they know that doesn't make sense, so quickly correct it. The strategy could also help adults who struggled to read.
16 most frequent words: a, and, he, I, in, is, it, my, of, that, the, then, to, was, went, with.
100 high frequency words: a, about, after, all, am, an, and, are, as, at, away ## back, be, because, big, but, by ## call, came, can, come, could ## did, do, down ## for, from ## get, go, got ## had, has, have, he, her, here, him, his ## I, into, is, it ## last, like, little, live, look ## made. make, me, my ## new, next, not, now ## of, off, old, on, once, one, other, our, out, over ## put ## saw, said, see, she, so, some ## take, that, the, their, them, then, there, they, this, three, time, to, today, too, two ## up, us ## very ## was, we, were, went, what, when, will, with ## you.
BBC web site Friday 6th Dcember 2005
