Decoding In Reading

Decoding In Reading

Decoding refers to the process of translating a printed word into a sound. Example : dog, table, jump. This is an example of decoding regular words, and is sometimes called word identification skill. Regular words are commonly used words, i.e., words frequently found in printed material, blud, wight, frish. This is an example of decoding non-words (or decoding pseudowords), and is sometimes called word attack skill. Pseudowords are pronounceable based on phonics rules but are not real words. Decoding is a rather restricted process, for it involves being able to pronounce (or name) printed words rather than being able to explain what they mean.

a.     Sub-lexical route

“Lexical” refers to a route where the word is familiar and recognition prompts direct access to a pre-existing representation of the word name that is then produced as speech. “Non-lexical” refers to a route used for novel or unfamiliar words. In the sublexical approach you use grapheme phoneme conversion. This means it bypasses the lexical system. It uses your knowledge of phonemes (the sounds of letters) and graphemes (the sound of groups of letters) to decode the word.

A phoneme is the smallest structural unit of language; it's an abstraction and not the physical writing or appearance. In English, for example, "t" would be the sound you hear in the initial position in "tie," "tank," and "toil" (but not the "t" in "thin" because the "t" in "thin" is part of a digraph, which is explained below; in this case, "th" is the phoneme heard in the initial position). 

A grapheme is the basic structural unit written in any given language. In English, it would be each individual written letter in the alphabet (also punctuation marks, and numerals). A digraph is the combination of two graphemes which results in a single phoneme (the "th" combination in the sound heard in the initial position of the English word "thin" or the "sh" combination in "ship"). 

The lexical route is usually the faster because it is the more automatic, but we need the sub-lexical route when we have to match unfamiliar words with their spoken forms.

b.     Analogy

An analogy approach to word identification focuses on recognizing a new word because it shares a word pattern with a known wo r d. For example, a child who knows the word make very well, and who knows the sound for the letter l, could use this combined information to identify a previously unseen word— lake .

c.     Neighborhood effects

B8. EYE MOVEMENTS IN READING

·       Efficient readers do not read all the words (predicting words).

·       Efficient readers make large sweeps with their eyes.

·       Words can be identified by their overall shapes (longer words = short ones).

·       Unskilled readers do not move their eyes fast enough.

·       A saccade (a series of rapid eyes movements lasting from 20 to 30 msec)  is involved in reading along the line of print, followed by periods of fixation (lasts 150 to 50 msec or more) when the eye rests upon a point in the text.

·       High level of regression is what marks out less skilled reading ( regression in skilled reading is often connected with building higher level meaning while in unskilled reading usually serves to check that words have been correctly decoded and take longer fixation times, especially when processing long or unusual words)

Note    :

GPC - This is short for Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme to a grapheme and vice versa.

Digraph - A grapheme containing two letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).

Trigraph - A grapheme containing three letters that makes just one sound (phoneme).

Oral Blending - This involves hearing phonemes and being able to merge them together to make a word. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to blend written words.

Blending- This involves looking at a written word, looking at each grapheme and using knowledge of GPCs to work out which phoneme each grapheme represents and then merging these phonemes together to make a word. This is the basis of reading.

Oral Segmenting - This is the act hearing a whole word and then splitting it up into the phonemes that make it. Children need to develop this skill before they will be able to segment words to spell them.

Segmenting - This involves hearing a word, splitting it up into the phonemes that make it, using knowledge of GPCs to work out which graphemes represent those phonemes and then writing those graphemes down in the right order. This is the basis of spelling.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017 Decoding