What are some of the major differences
between a skills approach to literacy and a comprehensive or
sociopsycholinguistic approach?
The comprehensive approach discusses understanding and
comprehending passages and sentences without necessarily knowing the meanings
of all words. Readers comprehend and use context clues to define the meaning of
a passage, even if several words are unfamiliar. Readers define meaning of
words from the text that they are reading.
The skills approach to reading starts from the readers
recognizing letters and their sounds, to then recognizing words. After letters
and letter-sounds are learned, word recognition and meaning fall into place
automatically. This model has seven steps and principles, but the steps simply
stop at, “Teach decoding and comprehension skills separately until reading
becomes fluent”. Most educators would agree that students need to be taught to
understand the meaning of text while fluently reading.
The sociopsycholinguistic approach of
reading states that several reading processes (letter-sound relationships,
visual aspects of words and texts, context, words and their meanings, and schemas)
all support each other and interact.
When reading about the differences
between the three approaches, the major differences I noticed is how the
reading processes support, or do not support each other. For example, in the
sociopsycholinguistic approach, it states that all reading processes support
each other. When reading about the skills approach, those processes are taught
separately in a certain order. And finally, when reading about the
comprehensive approach to reading, letter-sound relationship is taught in the
beginning of the approach. Words and their meanings are not necessarily being
taught, but using context clues and schemas allows the meanings of the words to
be recognized. These are all very
different approaches to reading, and I have to say I understand and agree with
some parts, but definitely disagree with others as well.
Jaclyn,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that there are pros and cons to the different approaches. I have to say that I agree the least with the skills approach. What good is it for a student to be able to sound out a word or words if they have no understanding of what they read? I really feel like I have a better understanding of how frustrating that can be for a child after completing activity two of this module. The comprehensive/ sociopsycholinguistic approach appears to be much more focused on what the child is taking away from what they are reading, as opposed to them correctly identifying every word. You did a great job of clarifying the differences between the approaches.
Jaclyn,
ReplyDeleteI liked how you stated that there are pieces of each approach that you like, while others you don't. I agree completely. As far as the skills approach goes, I do not think that is reading. Reading is far more than letter-sound recognition; however, I think it is an important part to reading. In the younger grades, I think a teacher must teach this skill as a prerequisite to reading, but that teacher is not actually teaching their children to read at this point in the process. I agree with the comprehensive approach to literacy, because I believe that reading is understanding the whole story, not just bits and pieces. When I teach reading, I emphasize the importance of using key words/context clues in the passage to help with unfamiliar meaning. This tells the students that they do not have to know every single word in order to comprehend what we are reading.