Do you agree with Marilyn Adams (1990, p. 108) who argued that rather than relying on context, “Skillful readers of English thoroughly process the individual letters of words in their texts?” Why or why not?
I would have to disagree with this statement. Like we have read before, and continue to read, readers process the WHOLE word, not individual letters to process the words in the text. Like stated on page 109, good readers do not fixate on a single letter to determine meaning, or even word by word. They use context to create meaning, rather than identify words and letters to create meaning. It also states that good readers do not necessarily read left to right, often regressing, to confirm understanding or reconsider words.
I like the statement on page 112, meanings of individual words contribute to discovering the meaning of the whole text. I think this is important, but different than discovering the letters of words to define a word. I believe when we read, we look at the whole word to determine the meaning, then try to continue to read, to discover the meaning of the whole passage or text.
The visual on page 115 Figure 5.6 is a great way to see how information is processed. We use all of these processes while reading and they all relate in some way. Letters should not be consider the primary reason of understanding text.
I also disagreed with the Adam's quote. I feel like everything we have learned so far in this course points to the importance of context clues helping to find meaning, not individual identification of letters within a word. Although visual clues are necessary and important in identifying a word, I don't believe the identification of every single letter is. I found this point to be well illustrated in the activities on page 91. In activity 1, even though the vowels were absent from the words, I was able to use the letters that were there to identify the words. This proves that not every letter must be identified. I also found figure 5.6 on page 115 to be a great graphical way of showing how a text is comprehended. It shows that there is not one single element that leads to comprehension, but rather a combination of many.
ReplyDeleteJaclyn, I think you make some good points in your argument when disagreeing with Adams's statement. I agree with you and Weaver that readers process the whole word.
ReplyDeleteYour thought, "We look at the whole word to determine the meaning, then try to continue to read, to discover the meaning of the whole passage or text," is very valid. I know in some of the excercises from the last set of readings there were examples of reading isolated words and trying to determine their meanings. The Clockwork Orange activity was a perfect example of continuing to read on to find meaning.
Jaclyn,
ReplyDeleteI also disagree with the Adams' statement and like what you said about processing whole words. Students don't call us over because they "don't know this letter." They need help when they "don't know this word" and the word attack skills and "rules" they know don't necessarily apply, like all of those instances that were outlined in Chapter 5 Weaver.
I also agree that students use context to create meaning rather than always reading left to right, in order. This often means reading ahead or returning to previously read text to reject or confirm meaning.