Adult Illiteracy

Phonics is imperative to learning to read because it allows for the reader to distinguish these associations in letters and words that they read to captivate comprehension (Walbank & Bisby, 2016). At the preschool-grade, knowledge of the alphabetic principles should be extensive and in-depth, however, too much focus can lead to over application of this skills having words read but not comprehended. The directional approach for teaching phonics should be precise, articulated well with graphemes organised in a logical and systematic way allowing plenty of time to recite the new skills received inherited obtained attained gained acquired (Learning Point Associates, 2004). Likewise, with phonological awareness the expertise of listening to the sounds in phonemes and words, phonics helps complete the process of sounding out to decode what has been read to eventually move onto the primary goal of learning to read being comprehension (Fellows & Oakley, 2014). Another approach is to teach phonics is the analytical technique in which the teacher guides students to observe phonemes and graphemes by scrutinising full words to bring forth another critical thinking skill required to understand what the text means (Ewing & Maher, 2014). This essential component combined with

he most fundamental responsibility of schools is teaching students to read. Indeed, the future success of all students hinges upon their ability to become proficient readers. Recent scientific studies have allowed us to understand more than ever before how literacy develops, why some children have difficulty, and what constitutes best instructional practice. Scientists now estimate that fully 95 percent of all children can be taught to read. Yet, in spite of all our knowledge, statistics reveal an alarming prevalence of struggling and poor readers that is not limited to any one segment of society:

Phonics will start to be taught in nursery or reception and a child will not be able to learn to read without proper understanding of phonics.

For example, children are taught to take a single-syllable word such as hot apart into its three individual letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /h, o, t/, and ‘blend’ the phonemes together to create a word – ‘hot’. Another method of teaching phonics is to use ‘analytic phonics’, which is where early readers are introduced to the whole word, before being taught to analyse them into their component parts (Wyse et. al, 2007). Hall (2006) argues that early readers typically move from discriminating among large units, such as whole words, to smaller units, such as parts of words and individual letters. Putting forward the case that a synthetic only approach would be disadvantageous to some early readers, and that the analytical approach is often accessed first by many readers, she goes on to state that the sensitivity to onset and rime (the initial sound followed by the final group, as in c-at and b-at), which is the focus of an analytic approach, comes first developmentally. It would be important to mention that Hall (2006) also states synthetic phonics is crucial since the beginner reader needs to get to the phoneme, or individual sound (the focus of a synthetic approach). Furthermore, Hall (2006) also states that pattern recognition is

Reading is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information which is essential in being a productive member of society. If and when a student missed an opportunity to learn the skills necessary for reading, it’s has a profound impact on their lives. As educators we realize that teaching all children to read requires that every child receive excellent reading instruction. We are also aware that children, who are struggling with reading must receive

Phonics advocates have been arguing that in order for children to learn to read, they need to have an explicit instruction in the rules of printed text in order to read properly. The phonics approach has been described as “bottom up” as it teaches the children to decode text and then the meaning and understanding will follow while the whole word approach is described as “top down,” as the children depend on the pictures within the book, form hypothesis and make predictions of the words with the text of the book being read (Wren, 2003).

For some people reading can be a difficult experience. For me it became difficult at the age of five years old. I really wasn’t an educational kid I was more of a kid that like to play with my toys and four brothers, whenever they came home from school. As I grew up reading became a little more difficult for me to master, at times in my middle school my teacher Mr.G would test us on how well and skilled we were at reading. Every day when it was time for him to test me I would get nervous and started to stubble on words and fail my test. By the time I was in high school I learned how to take my time and read, which has help me to progress my reading skills over the years.

When you’re young school is all about popularity and friends, but with a lack of word knowledge reading in class, especially out loud can destroy your credibility. I came from a blue collar background and none of my family ever attempted college, so I figured college wasn’t that important. During school, if it wasn’t interesting I didn’t want to participate or take the time to improve myself. Reading and writing was just another uninteresting, check the block, fake it till you make it, subject for me. I was a slow reader and often times I had to ask the teacher what a particular word meant. What was even worse was having to read out loud in class. Again, the fact that I was a slow reader and I often times mispronounced words caused me to be the subject of reticule and embarrassment. I started to hate reading because I couldn’t do it as well as the other kids; this continued from elementary

The article talks about how teachers get lost in the curriculum and don't think they have time to teach reading or that it's "not their job," and I feel like this is true for some of the teacher's that are still teaching in school. More recently though, I feel like schools and colleges are helping prepare teachers to help the students who need help with reading by reading aloud and having students silently read or follow along and suggests that teachers try other activities to help students. Seeing some students struggle with reading in subjects outside of the ELA classrooms need to be addressed and modified too, because like the article said, there's a lot of students who aren't fluent readers and then eventually check out of school which creates a whole new set of problems. Us as future teachers need to think of or learn ways that we can help these students instead of ignoring the issue and moving past it with lessons from the

With the emergence of No Child Left Behind, the National Literacy Strategy of 1998, and even more recent the Ohio Third Grade Reading Guarantee test, it is not longer the norm to accept that a child may be unable to read. The Literacy Strategy of 1998 has certainly put primary schools under more pressure to teach reading (and to teach to the tests) and they have been doing so much more intensively since then. The National Literacy Strategy that was introduced in fall 1998 intended to play a major role in increasing the standards in literacy and reduce the lower expectations of the education system. (Wall, 2003)

We learn literacy through phonological practices prompted in reading development to increase fluency and comprehension (Konza, 2006). Phonological awareness concerns itself with manipulation of sound patterns related to speech and intonation and has a relationship to phonemic awareness, being the smaller components of language such as individual letter sounds (Hill, 2012). Rose recommends that synthetic phonics are needed for ‘letter-sound correspondence’, learning how words are blended and broken up for spelling and finally being able to recognize words in print, as well as singularly (2006, p. 18). Understanding of these literacy components culminate to skills required to read (National Reading Panel, 2000). Oral language is casual and elusive in syntactical meaning, so in order for children to become effective readers they need to have exposure to formal and ‘decontextualized’ language properties (Konza, 2006, p. 35). Students will not be able to associate speech to written language

Proficient reading skills are most definitely a basic human right and the ticket to personal independence; it is critical that every child in our nation be given access to the “ticket.” Unfortunately, far too many children don’t have the ticket and will never get the ticket if we don’t continue to realistically

There are several different types of phonics but the two main types are implicit and explicit (Ruddell, 2009). The implicit approach, or analytic, is when the teacher teaches the relation between sounds and letters in the context of the word it is found in. This means you are looking at the whole word and not isolating sounds. The explicit approach, or synthetic, approach is the opposite of the analytic approach. Instead of looking at the word as a whole, the teacher looks at each individual sound (Ruddell, 2009). From what I know I believe that both of these need to be brought into the classroom. It is important for the child to know each sound so they are able to sound out unfamiliar words in their readings but it is also important for them to be able to recognize a word in context so they can identify words easily and quicker. In my experience in classrooms I have noticed the different ways these approaches were used. In my kindergarten placement the teacher usually used the explicit approach. Each day we would concentrate on two or three letters and the sounds they made. We would practice the pronunciation and read a poem or sing a song with the letter in it. In my second grade class the teacher had a very different way. She would have the children look at the whole

Reading is believed to be an easy task, something we all learning and develop through the years as we grow, however, is it really that simple? To reading and understanding are both essential when a student begins to read. It is a complex action that requires a multitude of different actions/components, all working at the same time, to become a successful reader. The components that are pertinent to reading are: comprehension, oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency and vocabulary. Without these components, reading may very well be irrelevant because it does not make sense to read and not understand what is being transmitted/relayed. According to the National Reading Panel (NRP), “a combination of techniques is effective for

Learning to read is one of the most foundational skills needed for educational success. As children learn to read they develop the ability to decode, interpret, and store information from what they are reading. Reading comprehension allows a child to gain meaning from text and decoding allows a child to process sounds into words. Reading is vital to educational success because it allows a student to learn new information and build upon their prior knowledge. Students who attain reading skills are more likely to achieve academic success while students who have reading difficulties are likely to struggle academically and fall behind their peers. Reading difficulties have been prominent within the US for years. For example, the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress statistics shows that only about 33% of fourth graders are at or above proficient at reading (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2011). Studies show that the cause of reading difficulties is based primarily on genes, environment, and instructional experience (Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, Scanlon, 2004). Students with a language learning disorder have difficulty comprehending spoken and written language thus making it difficult to learn new information. Children with reading disabilities are more likely to struggle during elementary school years as students are asked to think about what they read more critically. Speech language pathologists and teachers can help