Contents introduction chapter I. Approaches to teaching reading skills

The Word Method
The word method is otherwise known as “Look and say" Method. The look and say teaching method, also known as the whole word method, was invented in the 1830s and soon became a popular method for teaching reading. By the 1930s and 1940s there was a very strong focus on teaching children to read by this method. In the 1950s, however, it was fiercely criticized in favor of phonics-based teaching. The debate still continues today . Look and say method teaches children to read words as whole units, rather than breaking the word down into individual letters or groups of letters. Elementary learners are repeatedly told the word name while being shown the printed word, perhaps accompanied by a picture or within a meaningful context . By pointing at each word as a teacher reads sentences, children will start to learn each word .teaching principles of the discussed method are as follows:
§ New words are systematically introduced to a student by letting him/her see the word, hear the word and see a picture or a sentence referring to the word.
§ Flashcards are often used with individual words written on them, sometimes with an accompanying picture. They are shown repetitively to a child until he memorizes the pattern of the word.
§ Progressive texts are used with strictly controlled vocabularies containing just those words which have been learned.
§ Initially an elementary learner may concentrate on learning a few hundred words. Once these are mastered new words are systematically added to the repertoire. Typically a child would learn to recognize 1,500 to 3,000 words in his first three or four years of school .

yet _ let cold - could

form - from come -

some
called - cold wood - would

does - goes walk - work
(3) students are invited to look at the words and name the letter (letters) which makes the words different:

though - thought through - though

since - science with - which

hear - near content - context

hear - hare country - county

(4) students in turn read a column of words following the key word (see: A. P. Starkov, R. R. Dixon, Fifth Form Eng lish, Pupil's Book);
(5) students are invited to pick out the words with the graph emes oo, ow, ea, th,.
At the very beginning, a student is compelled to look at each printed letter separately in order to be sure of its shape. S/He often sees words and not sense units. For instance, s/he reads: The book is on the desk and not (The book is) (on the desk) .
Of particular interest here is the question ‘how do fluent readers recognize words? ’ It is now known that fluent readers do not process words as ‘wholes’. In normal reading, they process individual letters during each fixation. They make use of knowledge of spelling patterns, word patterns and the constraints of syntax and semantics to produce a phonetic version of the text (though this is usually produced after, rather than before, words have been recognized). Some scholars also suggest six word recognition strategies: