OT: Weird Reading

S'mee AKA Jani

It is neat that we can read and comprehend this text, but don't put too much stock in the "University of Cambridge" study that supposedly shows that spelling isn't important as long as the first and last letters of the word are in place. There isn't any back up that there ever *was* it only applies to folks who are already at least semi-proficient in reading for context. This would completely throw a beginning reader -- especially one who is learning in a phonics-only environment. The important factors that allow us to understand, comprehend and "read" the jumbled words are context and sentence structure (the grammar). Beginning readers do a lot of what you did to read this -- they look at the first letter (or first few letters), they make predictions based on what they've already read in the sentence (fex, in the sentence, "My dog ran after the c" a reader would logically insert the word, "cat" or "car" depending on his-her most ready frame of reference or other contextual clues available -- pictures, prior story content.)

So, it's not a matter of demonstrating that spelling isn't important, as this implies, as it is a matter of demonstrating the benefit of being a proficient and practiced reader.

Alexis