Home School Preschool - The Phonics vs Sight Reading Debate And The Best Choice For You And Your Child
Author:Trinity Montecristo
When you decide to home school and home school preschool your child you have made a very bold decision to take responsibility for their education and their life\'s path. Something as important as this cannot be left up to strangers who don\'t know your child or your child\'s habits, interests, strengths and weaknesses.
Naturally there are many questions that you will have to answer before you begin home schooling and one of the biggest ones will be what reading method to use?
Reading has been taught in a classroom for the past 150 years and two reading methods, phonics and sight reading, have vied for dominance; each with their detractors and advocates.
So let\'s have a look at the positives and negatives of each one.
Phonics
Phonics is the method that is the most popular at the moment and for good reason. This method is when you 'sound out words', the word 'cat', for example, would be sounded out as 'k-ae-t'.
The benefit of sounding out words is that it allows you to see a strange word and sound it out so that you can read it. This is your 'translating software' so that you can translate an unknown word. This is the best way to teach older children to read who already have a large spoken vocabulary.
Phonics, however, also has a number of glaring shortcomings; the first of these is that young children don\'t have a large vocabulary and when they sound out a word, they still don\'t know what it is.
The second is that when you teach beginner readers phonics, they don\'t know that sounding out words is meant to be reading and you lose them to boredom because what they are doing is too complicated for them. After 6 or 8 months of this your preschooler can still be unable to read, and this can lead to great frustration for both you and your child.
Thirdly, there are many words that are sight words which cannot be sounded out. These are words like 'the, he, her, one and people' and most of the most common words English are sight words. These words account for almost 50of everything written in English which means that your child will not be able to sound out half of the words that they read. A very confusing situation indeed.
Lastly, and most importantly, English is not a consistent language and as a result phonics has many different rules that have to be remembered and applied correctly.
Trying to teach a 4 year old the 'rules of phonics' is no mean feat, no matter what anyone tells you to the contrary.
Sight reading
With Sight Reading you are taught to learn a word like a photograph. You don\'t have to sound it out or spell it out.
This is the way that adults read. We do not sound out the words but rather have memorized what each word looks like.
The drawback of sight reading is that if you see a word that you do not know, you don\'t have any means of finding out how to pronounce it and you have to rely on someone else to tell you.
The advantage of sight reading, however, is that most of the common words in English are sight words and cannot be sounded out by phonics and this allows your child to read at least half of everything written.
Which one must you choose?
When you are teaching your child to read at home, your entire focus should be on building up your child\'s confidence and their passion for reading.
You can only do this by first getting them to recognise and read the basics, then gradually working on improving their reading ability.
The biggest mistake you can make is to have a preference for one method over another. You goal should be to teach your child to read EASILY and QUICKLY and by choosing one method over another you will be severely limiting your child\'s potential.
Adults only sight read yet we insist on teaching our children only phonics. Yet by using both methods together your results would be 1000more effective.
Sight reading should be the first method that you use to teach your child to read. Through this you will build their confidence and through this you will develop their love for reading.
You can begin by teaching your child to sight read the 100 most common words in English and this alone allows them to read over 50of anything written in English, no matter how complex the book. They will also learn to sight read other more complex words.
Once your child is reading proficiently and has read a few basic books they will begin to ask you questions such as 'what\'s this word?', you will then know that they are ready for the next level of reading skill, which is Phonics. By this time your child will have acquired an ease with words and become accustomed to what words 'sound' like.
This will not only give them an all round reading proficiency but also ensure that they can read well from an early age.
Reading is like riding a bicycle; once your child can read, they will become better at it by reading more. The more time they have in the saddle (or book) the better they will be.
Reading, like anything else in life, is a matter of practice and the earlier you start teaching your preschooler to read, the better they will be at it.
About the AuthorTrinity Montecristo is an expert in home school and home school preschool learning. Her home schooling expertise includes reading, writing, math, foreign language tuition and accelerated learning systems. If you want a method to teach your child to read EASILY and FAST, you can find out more about our wonderful reading system, 'Teach Your Child To Read & Reading with Phonics' by visiting our website at: http://www.yourchildcanreadin30days.com
She has successfully taught her son and numerous other children to read through her reading course 'Teach Your Child To Read & Reading with Phonics', in as little as 30 days.
She has a Degree in Public Relations (graduated with honours) and has a Certificate of Proficiency in English (graduated with honours) from the University of Cambridge.
She is a devoted wife and mother. She also runs a successful online business with her husband and continues to actively promote home school preschool reading and literacy for all children. Her mission is – literacy for ALL children.
