The task of teaching young learners word recognition is crucial to their further cognitive development and, therefore, it puts significant responsibility on a teacher. This report addresses the case of Aa, a young learner who began his transition from the stage of word recognition to the required stage of text comprehension (Hornsby, 2000). By introducing games and similar activities into the process of learning, an educator will be able to spur the development of corresponding skills, as the case of Aa has shown.
Observing changes in Aa’s perception of language and understanding of it, one should note the crucial role of reading in building the language skill set. Unfortunately, Aa has proven to be a rather reluctant reader, which may have facilitated the slow transition from discerning words in sounds to developing the skill of comprehending them. Indeed, Rose (2006) explains that the role of reading in expanding one’s vocabulary and learning to identify and understand words in a speech cannot possibly be underrated.
In their attempt at deconstructing the notion of the simple view of reading, the authors extrapolate that the specified framework helps to connect four crucial aspects of language development in young children (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Specifically, the proposed tool invites the opportunity to embrace the phonic, grammatical, denotational, and connotation-related usage of a word (Johnston & Watson, 2005). The specified observation aligns fully with the case of Aa, where the reading sessions performed during the learning process, even though being quite few, have led to the skill of perceiving words properly and placing them into a correct context.
The experience with Aa has demonstrated that there are significant differences between the skill of word recognition and that one of language comprehension. As has shown the ability to discern specific words in a string of sounds, yet the skill of deriving meaning from the sounds in question took a significant amount of time to develop, which indicates a rift between the two notions (Rupley, Blair, & Nichols, 2009; Stuart, Stainthorp & Snowling, 2008). While the latter is impossible without the former, it is the role of an educator to guide a learner from one stage to the other, avoiding any hindrances that may occur in the way.
Overall, the case of Aa has been an important part of exploring how children acquire language skills. Specifically, the connection between the audial perception of a word and the ability to denote it by using it in a context has been studied in depth (Shea & Ceprano, 2017). While the student made several mistakes by denoting some words incorrectly, the platform for understanding the transition from word recognition to language comprehension has been built (Dymock, 1993).
The experience gained from the case of Aa has provided an extensive foundation for creating learning opportunities for young children as a part of my future professional development. Specifically, the case has demonstrated the strong need to engage children in reading, which requires time and elaborate strategies (Reynolds, 2017). For this reason, further efforts will have to be geared toward fostering reading enthusiasm in young learners, which is a rather challenging goal given the increasing number of distractions that children are likely to focus on instead of treading activities that they might view as boring.
For instance, the use of games as the means of promoting reading and the further comprehension of the text as the next logical step from word recognition may be required. Thus, the emphasis needs to be placed on the enhancement of reading activities as a critical part of early child development.
Reference List
Dymock, S. (1993) ‘Reading But Not Understanding’, Journal of Reading, 37(2), pp. 86-91.
Gough, P. D. & Tunmer, W. E. (1986) ‘Decoding, reading, and reading disability’, Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), pp. 6-10.
Hornsby, D. (2000) A closer look at guided reading. Armadale: Eleanor Curtain Pub.
Johnston, R. S. & Watson, J. E. (2005) The effects of synthetic phonics teaching on reading and spelling attainment: a seven-year longitudinal study. Edinburgh: The Scottish Executive Central Research Unit.
Reynolds, D. (2017) ‘Interactional Scaffolding for Reading Comprehension: A Systematic Review’, Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 66(1), pp. 135-156.
Rose, J. (2006) Independent review of the teaching of early reading. Web.
Rupley, W.H., Blair, T.R. & Nichols, W.D. (2009) ‘Effective Reading Instruction for Struggling Readers: The Role of Direct/Explicit Teaching’, Reading & Writing Quarterly, 25 (2-3), pp. 125-138.
Shea, M. & Ceprano, M. (2017) ‘Reading with Understanding: A Global Expectation’, Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education, 9(1), pp. 1-21.
Stuart, M., Stainthorp, R. & Snowling, M. (2008) ‘Literacy as a complex activity: deconstructing the simple view of reading’, Literacy, 42(2), pp. 59-66.