Here’s an interesting concern: If words that have similarities in their spelling are taught together, grouped according to that similarity, are they easier or harder to learn than when those words are distributed through other words to be learned that do not have that similarity? In a study from the Journal for Applied Behavior Analysis, Chotto et al. (2022) argued that this question had special relevance for teaching “sight words.”

Due to the prevalence of words that cannot be read phonetically in the English language, sight word instruction is required to supplement phonics instruction. In this study, we manipulated stimulus disparity in sight word sets by comparing the effects of sets of sight words with the same initial letter (3 words per set, 3 total sets) versus distributing words with the same initial letter across sets when assessing acquisition of the combined set (9 words) for 5 children who ranged from 4–6 years of age using a combined adapted alternating treatments design and pre-posttest design. All participants mastered the 3-word sets in both teaching conditions but did not master the control sets. In general, participants required more teaching sessions when the words in sets began with the same letter. These findings are consistent with stimulus disparity research demonstrating that discrimination training is generally less efficient when comparison stimuli are similar.

Chotto et al. (2022) accurately argued that “an important feature of effective reading instruction is phonics instruction, which teaches children the relationship between letters and sounds (phonemes).” But, something happened on the way to the market. They elected to work only with “sight words” in a way that was more reflective of “look-say” or “whole-word” instruction than of “phonics” instruction: The children were shown flashcards and asked to name the word on each card.

Not only that, but many of the words Chotto et al. (2022) called “sight words” were, in fact, orthographically regular—the words could be legitimately sounded out using pretty basic phoneme-grapheme correspondences and blending skills. The following chart shows the words that the researchers used for one child in the study.

Teaching irregular words may seem consistent with Ehri’s (2005) argument that in the pre-alphabet phase, children find cues that are only partially relevant to the actual orthographic representation. Shoot, at this point in development, young readers might use features of the presentation that are completely irrelevant to the orthography. Please excuse my digression into imagining children’s thinking:

1. “Oh, that’s the one with the smudge. I should say ‘wuz.’”

2. “Oh, that’s the one with the missing corner. I should say ‘sed.’”

3. “Oh, that’s the one with the fold. I should say ‘sum.’”

“Smudge” or “fold” is not going to work when young readers encounter those words anywhere but on those particular flash cards. In running text or just about any other context (signs, book covers, directions on arithmetic assignments, etc.), the learners will have to know how to read the words.

Children would be much better served to learn to sound out the words “was,” “said,” and “some.” Doing so helps them with sounding out. That should be their first and foremost approach to decoding.

Carnine (1977), in fact, showed that a decoding approach, conducted with real kids in real classrooms and real words resulted in superior reading of other words that had not been explicitly taught. In comparison with children taught by the whole word method, the kids taught with the phonics approach read more untaught (a) letters, (b) regular words, and (c) irregular words—note that all three of those differences were on untaught—i.e., generalization—tests after a few weeks of lessons.

“But,” someone might argue, “sounding out doesn’t work with those words,” and “English is just such a mess.” I beg to differ. First, note that these words (and others like them) are not spelled xzyl or wobr. Sounding them out gets a reader pretty close to the pronunciation (e.g., “wwwaaasss”); then, all the teacher needs to do is say, “Yes! That’s how you sound it out, but we say ‘wuz!’ What do we say?”

Furthermore, educators have known for many years that English is a lot more regular than it may seem at first glance (see, e.g., Hanna & Moore, 1953). Especially once on gets past the Siren song about outlying examples of irregularities (rough-cough-plough-through). When we realizes that letter-sound correspondences are not simply, 1-to-1 relationship, that there are conditional relationships (s on the end of a word often is pronounced /zzz/; vowel-consonant-e spellings affect the sound of the vowel; etc.; see Venezky, 1970).

Those who would like to have solid recommendations about teaching irregular words (i.e., words in which one or two letters have unusual pronunciations) can learn a lot from the University of Florida’w literacy Institute. https://ufli.education.ufl.edu/ Download free professional development resources from there, especially those focused on instruction activities for irregular and high-frequency words. https://ufli.education.ufl.edu/resources/teaching-resources/instructional-activities/irregular-and-high-frequency-words/

Sources

Carnine, D. W. (1977). Phonics versus look-say: Transfer to new words. The Reading Teacher, 30(6), 636-640.

Chotto, J., Lozy, E. D., Marin, R., & Donaldson, J. M. (2022). Effects of stimulus disparity on acquisition of sight word sets: Manipulation of initial letter. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 56(10), 131-145. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.955

Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of reading, 9(2), 167-188. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4

Hanna, P. R., & Moore, Jr., J. T. (1953). Spelling: From spoken word to written symbol. Elemntary School Journal, 53, 329-337.

Venezky, R. (1970). The structure of English orthography. Mouton.