Dolch word list

Last updated

The Dolch word list is a list of frequently used English words (also known as sight words), compiled by Edward William Dolch, a major proponent of the "whole-word" method of beginning reading instruction. The list was first published in a journal article in 1936 [1] and then published in his book Problems in Reading in 1948. [2]

Contents

Dolch compiled the list based on children's books of his era, which is why nouns such as "kitty" and "Santa Claus" appear on the list instead of more current high-frequency words. The list contains 220 "service words" that Dolch thought should be easily recognized in order to achieve reading fluency in the English language. The compilation excludes nouns, which comprise a separate 95-word list. According to Dolch, between 50% and 75% of all words used in schoolbooks, library books, newspapers, and magazines are a part of the Dolch basic sight word vocabulary; however, bear in mind that he compiled this list in 1936.

Critics

Critics of teaching reading using whole word and whole language methods (and proponents of phonics) maintain that memorizing whole words may do more harm than good because it takes time away from the important aspect of practicing basic decoding techniques. [3]

Cognitive neuroscientist, Stanislas Dehaene, writes "cognitive psychology directly refutes any notion of teaching via a 'global' or 'whole language' method." He goes on to talk about "the myth of whole-word reading" (also: sight words), saying it has been refuted by recent experiments. "We do not recognize a printed word through a holistic grasping of its contours, because our brain breaks it down into letters and graphemes." [4] Cognitive neuroscientist, Mark Seidenberg, says "the persistence of the whole language ideas despite the mass of evidence against them is most striking at this point", and goes on to describe it as a "theoretical zombie" because it persists in spite of a lack of supporting evidence. [5] In addition, according to research, whole-word memorisation is "labor-intensive", requiring on average about 35 trials per word. [6]

Teaching strategies

These lists of words are still assigned for memorization in elementary schools in America and elsewhere. Although most of the 220 Dolch words are phonetic, children are sometimes told that they can't be "sounded out" using common sound-to-letter phonics patterns and have to be learned by sight; hence the alternative term, "sight word". The list is divided according to the educational stage in which it was intended that children would memorize these words.

Some educators say the Dolch list can be useful if teachers do not teach children to memorize them; instead, they teach the words by using an explicit, systematic phonics approach, perhaps by using a tool such as Elkonin boxes. [7]

Some educators prefer to use the 1000 Instant Word list prepared in 1979 by Edward Fry, professor of Education and Director of the Reading Center at Rutgers University and Loyola University in Los Angeles. [8]

Dolch list: Non-nouns

Pre-primer: (40 words) a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you

Primer: (52 words) all, am, are, at, ate, be, black, brown, but, came, did, do, eat, four, get, good, have, he, into, like, must, new, no, now, on, our, out, please, pretty, ran, ride, saw, say, she, so, soon, that, there, they, this, too, under, want, was, well, went, what, white, who, will, with, yes

1st Grade: (41 words) after, again, an, any, as, ask, by, could, every, fly, from, give, going, had, has, her, him, his, how, just, know, let, live, may, of, old, once, open, over, put, round, some, stop, take, thank, them, then, think, walk, were, when

2nd Grade: (46 words) always, around, because, been, before, best, both, buy, call, cold, does, don't, fast, first, five, found, gave, goes, green, its, made, many, off, or, pull, read, right, sing, sit, sleep, tell, their, these, those, upon, us, use, very, wash, which, why, wish, work, would, write, your

3rd Grade: (41 words) about, better, bring, carry, clean, cut, done, draw, drink, eight, fall, far, full, got, grow, hold, hot, hurt, if, keep, kind, laugh, light, long, much, myself, never, only, own, pick, seven, shall, show, six, small, start, ten, today, together, try, warm

Dolch list: Nouns

(97 words) apple, baby, back, ball, bear, bed, bell, bird, birthday, boat, box, boy, bread, brother, cake, car, cat, chair, chicken, children, Christmas, coat, corn, cow, day, dog, doll, door, duck, egg, eye, farm, farmer, father, feet, fire, fish, floor, flower, game, garden, girl, goat, grass, ground, hand, head, hill, home, horse, house, kitty, leg, letter, man, men, milk, money, morning, mother, name, nest, night, paper, party, picture, pig, rabbit, rain, ring, robin, Santa Claus, school, seed, sheep, shoe, sister, snow, song, squirrel, stick, street, sun, table, thing, time, top, toy, tree, watch, water, way, wind, window, woman, women, wood

See also

Related Research Articles

Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phonics</span> Method of teaching reading and writing

Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing to beginners. To use phonics is to teach the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters (graphemes) or groups of letters or syllables of the written language. Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code. It can be used with any writing system that is alphabetic, such as that of English, Russian, and most other languages. Phonics is also sometimes used as part of the process of teaching Chinese people to read and write Chinese characters, which are not alphabetic, using pinyin, which is alphabetic.

A vocabulary is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word vocabulary originated from the Latin vocabulum, meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of language and communication, helping convey thoughts, ideas, emotions, and information. Vocabulary can be oral, written, or signed and can be categorized into two main types: active vocabulary and passive vocabulary. An individual's vocabulary continually evolves through various methods, including direct instruction, independent reading, and natural language exposure, but it can also shrink due to forgetting, trauma, or disease. Furthermore, vocabulary is a significant focus of study across various disciplines, like linguistics, education, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Vocabulary is not limited to single words; it also encompasses multi-word units known as collocations, idioms, and other types of phraseology. Acquiring an adequate vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Speed reading</span> Techniques claiming to improve the ability to read quickly

Speed reading is any of many techniques claiming to improve one's ability to read quickly. Speed-reading methods include chunking and minimizing subvocalization. The many available speed-reading training programs may utilize books, videos, software, and seminars. There is little scientific evidence regarding speed reading, and as a result its value seems uncertain. Cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene says that claims of reading up to 1,000 words per minute "must be viewed with skepticism".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dick and Jane</span> Series of childrens early reading books

Dick and Jane are the two main characters created by Zerna Sharp for a series of basal readers written by William S. Gray to teach children to read. The characters first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers in 1930 and continued in a subsequent series of books through the final version in 1965. These readers were used in classrooms in the United States and in other English-speaking countries for nearly four decades, reaching the height of their popularity in the 1950s, when 80 percent of first-grade students in the United States used them. Although the Dick and Jane series of primers continued to be sold until 1973 and remained in use in some classrooms throughout the 1970s, they were replaced with other reading texts by the 1980s and gradually disappeared from school curricula.

Reading for special needs has become an area of interest as the understanding of reading has improved. Teaching children with special needs how to read was not historically pursued due to perspectives of a Reading Readiness model. This model assumes that a reader must learn to read in a hierarchical manner such that one skill must be mastered before learning the next skill. This approach often led to teaching sub-skills of reading in a decontextualized manner. This style of teaching made it difficult for children to master these early skills, and as a result, did not advance to more advanced literacy instruction and often continued to receive age-inappropriate instruction.

Basal readers are textbooks used to teach reading and associated skills to schoolchildren. Commonly called "reading books" or "readers" they are usually published as anthologies that combine previously published short stories, excerpts of longer narratives, and original works. A standard basal series comes with individual identical books for students, a Teacher's Edition of the book, and a collection of workbooks, assessments, and activities.

Phonological awareness is an individual's awareness of the phonological structure, or sound structure, of words. Phonological awareness is an important and reliable predictor of later reading ability and has, therefore, been the focus of much research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Synthetic phonics</span> Teaching reading by blending and segmenting the sounds of the letters

Synthetic phonics, also known as blended phonics or inductive phonics, is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.

Inventive spelling is the use of unconventional spellings of words.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanislas Dehaene</span> French cognitive neuroscientist

Stanislas Dehaene is a French author and cognitive neuroscientist whose research centers on a number of topics, including numerical cognition, the neural basis of reading and the neural correlates of consciousness. As of 2017, he is a professor at the Collège de France and, since 1989, the director of INSERM Unit 562, "Cognitive Neuroimaging".

High frequency sight words are commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode. Sight words were introduced after whole language fell out of favor with the education establishment.

Diane McGuinness is a cognitive psychologist who has written extensively on sex differences, education, learning disabilities, and early reading instruction. She currently holds the title of Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of South Florida.

Balanced literacy is a theory of teaching reading and writing the English language that arose in the 1990s and has a variety of interpretations. For some, balanced literacy strikes a balance between whole language and phonics and puts an end to the so called reading wars. Others say balanced literacy, in practice, usually means the whole language approach to reading.

Analytic phonics refers to a very common approach to the teaching of reading that starts at the word level, not at the sound (phoneme) level. It does not teach the blending of sounds together as is done in synthetic phonics. One method is to have students identify a common sound in a set of words that each contain that same sound. For example, the teacher and student discuss how the following words are alike: pat, park, push and pen. Analytic phonics is often taught together with levelled-reading books, look-say practice, and the use of aids such as phonics worksheets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reading</span> Taking in the meaning of letters or symbols

Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.

Mark S. Seidenberg is Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories. He is a specialist in psycholinguistics, focusing specifically on the cognitive and neurological bases of language and reading. Seidenberg received his Ph.D. from Columbia University under the mentorship of Thomas Bever and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. He has held academic positions at McGill University, the University of Southern California, and since 2001 at the University of Wisconsin. Seidenberg has published over a hundred scientific articles and is the author of Language at the Speed of Sight (2017). Seidenberg is married to fellow psychologist Maryellen MacDonald and has two children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evidence-based education</span> Paradigm of the education field

Evidence-based education (EBE) is the principle that education practices should be based on the best available scientific evidence, with randomised trials as the gold standard of evidence, rather than tradition, personal judgement, or other influences. Evidence-based education is related to evidence-based teaching, evidence-based learning, and school effectiveness research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual word form area</span> Region of the brain

The visual word form area (VWFA) is a functional region of the left fusiform gyrus and surrounding cortex that is hypothesized to be involved in identifying words and letters from lower-level shape images, prior to association with phonology or semantics. Because the alphabet is relatively new in human evolution, it is unlikely that this region developed as a result of selection pressures related to word recognition per se; however, this region may be highly specialized for certain types of shapes that occur naturally in the environment and are therefore likely to surface within written language.

The simple view of reading is a scientific theory that a student's ability to understand written words depends on how well they sound out (decode) the words and understand the meaning of those words. Specifically, their reading comprehension can be predicted by multiplying their skill in decoding the written words by their ability to understand the meaning of those words. It is expressed in this equation:

References

  1. ↑ Dolch, E. W. "A Basic Sight Vocabulary." The Elementary School Journal, vol. 36, no. 6, 1936, pp.456-460.
  2. ↑ Dolch, Edward William. Problems in Reading. Garrard Press, 1948, pp.99-106.
  3. ↑ Seidenberg, Mark (2017). Language at the speed of sight. New York, NY: Basic Books. p. 147. ISBN   978-1-5416-1715-5.
  4. ↑ Stanislas Dehaene (2010-10-26). Reading in the brain. Penquin Books. ISBN   9780143118053.
  5. ↑ Seidenberg, Mark (2017). "In normal science, a theory whose assumptions and predictions have been repeatedly contradicted by data will be discarded. That is what happened to the Smith and Goodman theories within reading science, but in education they are theoretical zombies that cannot be stopped by conventional weapons such as empirical disconfirmation, leaving them free to roam the educational landscape." Language at the speed of light. p. 271=author=Mark Seidenberg. ISBN   9780465080656.
  6. ↑ Murray, Bruce; McIlwain, Jane (2019). "How do beginners learn to read irregular words as sight words". Journal of Research in Reading. 42 (1): 123–136. doi: 10.1111/1467-9817.12250 . ISSN   0141-0423. S2CID   150055551.
  7. ↑ "Sight words: An evidence-based literacy strategy". www.understood.org.
  8. ↑ Edward Fry (1979). 1000 Instant Words: The Most Common Words for Teaching Reading, Writing, and Spelling. ISBN   0809208806.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.