When "Sound It Out" Isn't Enough

When many of us were learning to read, we were often to "sound out" words we were unfamiliar with. This would entail looking at each letter in a word and putting the sounds together. This method works fine for words like "cat" or "dog", but is less effective for words like "rhyme" or "cough". In practice, only about half of all words in the English language can be sounded out. Yet we often still find ourselves relying on this method as we tell young students to "sound out" words as they read.

You can probably read a sentence like, "Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are... " and you can probably read a sentence with a _____ in it. This is because you are not simply sounding out the words. You are using a number of strategies that rely on context, familiarity with the English language, and visual clues. In Catching Readers Before They Fall, Johnson and Keier describe these strategies as-

• Meaning: Using background knowledge, information from pictures, and context of the sentence or story. What makes sense.
• Structure: Using familiarity with the spoken English language. What sounds right.
• Visual: Using knowledge about letter/sound correspondence. What looks right.

You are not alone in using these strategies; even very early readers go beyond simply sounding out the words they read. Observe a young student reading aloud and you will see evidence of these strategies at work. The student may substitute words based on the context of the story or elements of the illustrations. "Dick and Jane go to the store" may be read as "Dick and Jane go to the mall." While these substitutions may be incorrect, they will probably make sense and sound right within the text. When the student relies solely on sounding words out, mistakes may result in the text no longer making sense. "Dick and Jane go to the store" may be read as "Dick and Jane go to the stop," which alters the sentence considerably.

The goal is to have students use all of the strategies simultaneously in order to read accurately. They should be able to make predictions based on what makes sense and what sounds right and then correct these predictions based on what looks right. Those of us who are fluent readers do this so automatically that we forget they we are using these strategies as we read. We then tell young students to read by "sounding it out."

"Sounding out" is an unfortunate oversimplification of the actual reading process. We must make an effort to alter this approach for the sake of young readers. As Catherine Compton-Lily writes in "Sounding Out": A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading, "The greater challenges reside in addressing a dominant cultural model of reading that offers a simple solution to the complicated task of learning to read."