Reading Improvement: Word Recognition Skills (1961)

[Music] your ability to reach depends on many skills most basic of all is the skill of word recognition the better you are at recognizing words the better a reader you can be Tom's word recognition skills help make him a good reader he can recognize a word such as this one by the way it looks by the way it is used or by the way it sounds R will R rivalry rivalry Tom is able to recognize most of the words he knows without having to look them up in a dictionary can you let's see how you can develop your word recognition skills look at this word you've probably recognized it already even though many of the letters are missing that's because Thanksgiving has a very special form so has this word can you tell what it is hippopotamus as you've seen some words can be recognized easily because their form is so special but look at these two words they look very much alike the only difference between them is the order of these two letters it is easy to confuse silver with sliver unless you see each word quite accurately these two words are almost exactly alike except for one letter it's easy to read through when you should be reading thorough unless you are careful to notice that little o and the clue for recognizing a word may be even smaller than this the main difference between these and those is just a small line practice in writing Troublesome pairs of words will help you recognize the slight differences between them now let's test your speed of recognition of forms watch carefully ready try again ready do you know what it is yet the less time you need to look at a word to recognize it the faster you can read you can build your speed by using cards with words on them practice with someone else flashing the cards like this by improving your speed and accuracy in seeing words you'll improve your skills in recognizing words by the way they look can you read this sentence you're seeing only the top half of it if you can it shows you have some skill at recognizing the form and use of words perhaps you have to see more of the letters to recognize certain words is that enough you can try this yourself lay a card over a line of print then lower it slowly until you can read what is written this will give you good practice in recognizing words by their form and by their use or context what word is torn from the bottom of the page if you guessed right you made good use of context the way the word was used in the sentence what is the word that has been partly blocked out is this the one you guessed if it is you used context to help you recognize the word here is another sentence with part of a word missing which of these three similar words makes the best sense here you should have picked this word through here is one more sentence with part of a word missing which of these three words makes the best sense here this one scared but usually when you read words aren't missing from sentences suppose you had thought this word was scarred if you had been paying attention to the way the word was used you would have seen it didn't make good sense so far you have seen words that you should be able to recognize by their form and by their context but suppose this is a word you don't recognize by form and suppose the context doesn't help you very much and you have stopped then you must try to recognize the word in some other way rivalry rivalry but you must know how to sound out a word to do that letters represent sounds in our spoken language when letters are joined to form a word they represent the sound of that word when it is spoken the sound of the vowels in a word are the key to the sound of the word in hat a has a short sound a if we gave it a long sound a we would have a different word hate usually in a one- syllable word if there are two vowels the first vowel has a long sound and the second vowel is silent if there is only one vowel at the middle or beginning of a one- syllable word usually it has a short sound for example bit short eye bite long eye silent e e got short o goat long o silent a to sound out words of more than one syllable you must know how to break them into single syllables every syllable has at least one vowel in this word the letter y is used as a vowel very often consonants that come together are put into separate syllables let's try another word how shall we break this into syllables separate the two L's let's try separating the first part this way if we try the rule for pronouncing one syllable words with two vowels this part would probably be pronounced light this is probably L and this syllable is probably sounded sat sat L light satellite now you recognize it not only is the sound of the syllables important but also the stress or accent here is a word broken into its syllables manage that's not familiar but manage is trying the accent on different syllables may be necessary before you recognize a word of course there is much more than this in learning to sound out many words in this sentence is a word you all know but some of you may not recognize it there are many ways you might try to break it into syllables and pronounce it but suppose it still didn't sound like a word you knew then go to a dictionary while dictionaries are important for helping you find the meanings of words they are also very useful in helping you recognize words a dictionary shows you how a word is broken into syllables what the sounds of the syllables are and how they are stressed penicillin now you recognize the word if you don't understand how a word is pronounced from the letters and symbols a dictionary uses you'll find an explanation in the pronunciation key usually at the bottom of the page of course once you've recognized the word you must put it back into context to see if it makes sense before going on so here we have Tom who is efficient in word recognition how about you do you need to improve your word recognition skills remember practice recognizing the forms of words accurately ly and quickly as you read when a word doesn't make sense to you in the way it is used stop to see where the trouble is if you can sound out a word by yourself or by using a dictionary you may discover that the word isn't what you think it is when you recognize words correctly your reading makes sense and it makes sense that developing accurate and Rapid word recognition skills is an important part of becoming a better reader