Skilled readers may require a minimum of one to four practices or exposures to commit an irregular word to memory (Reitsma, 1983). Children can rely on phonics to decode most of the word and commit to memory the irregular letter/letters. The good news is that most words only have one or two letters at most that are irregular. Words that have unpredictable features are called irregular words. These irregular parts of a word cannot be predicted by sounding them out (Carnine et al, 2006). These words have a sound or spelling pattern that is either irregular or temporarily irregular, if the student simply has not been taught a specific sound or pattern yet. Many high-frequency word lists contain words with irregular spelling patterns that cannot be easily decoded by students, e.g., the ‘a’ in was or the ‘er’ in there. Unfortunately, the practice of memorizing lists of words will not lead to a sight word vocabulary if it is not paired with the teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness. Many schools require students to learn specific lists of high-frequency words as a system to promote sight words. Many high-frequency words are also function words like articles ( the), prepositions ( of, from), pronouns ( their, whom), and conjunctions that “glue” sentences together to guide the reader. Since they appear often in text, it’s important for comprehension to understand them. About 25% of these words are irregular words. The most common high-frequency words, or about 100 words, account for approximately 50% of the words used in school and colleges (Zeno et al., 1995). A sight word can be any word, including high-frequency words! High-frequency words are lists of words that occur often in printed English texts. Sight words are sometimes confused with high-frequency words. Once a reader has a strong alphabetic mapping “system” in place - sight word learning will occur quickly and easily. This process of orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014 Kilpatrick, 2015) forms the “glue” that bonds words in memory. A reader must notice the sequence of letters or spelling, pronounce the word, map the spoken sounds to the letters through reading and writing the word a few times to secure it in memory. To read a word, a connection between a word’s spelling and letter-sounds is key (Ehri, 1992, 1998). So how do children turn a printed word into a sight word? Creating a sight word involves forming permanent connections between a word’s letters, its pronunciation, and its meaning in memory (Perfetti, 1992 Rack, Hulme, Snowling, & Wightman, 1994). These units are stored in long-term memory. Our brains use what we know about letter-sound relationships plus our awareness of speech sounds to map letter patterns and words together as units. Research suggests that we scan every single letter of every word we read. How do students go from sounding out every printed word to knowing sight words? The process of storing a word permanently in memory for instant retrieval is called orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014, Kilpatrick, 2015). Reading words without sounding them out means we have more time and resources to bring towards understanding what we read. Words that you read instantly (Ehri, 1992) are called sight words. When you looked at the words on this page, chances are strong that you automatically and effortlessly read without sounding out each word.
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