Editing Phonics (section)

===Sight words and sight vocabulary===

'''[[Sight word]]s''' (i.e. high-frequency or common words) are ''not'' a part of the phonics method.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/reading-issues/what-are-sight-words|title=What are sight words, Understood.org|date=30 August 2019 }}</ref> They are usually associated with [[whole language]] and [[balanced literacy]] where students are expected to memorize common words such as those on the [[Dolch word list]] and the Fry word list (e.g., a, be, call, do, eat, fall, gave, etc.).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.uen.org/k-2educator/word_lists.shtml|title=Fry Instant Words, UTAH EDUCATION NETWORK}}</ref> The supposition (in whole language) is that students will learn to read more easily if they memorize the most common words they will encounter, especially words that are not easily decoded (i.e. exceptions). However, according to research, whole-word memorisation is "labor-intensive", requiring on average about 35 trials per word.<ref name="Bruce Murray 2019">{{cite journal|last1=Murray|first1=Bruce|last2=McIlwain|first2=Jane|title=How do beginners learn to read irregular words as sight words|journal=Journal of Research in Reading|volume=42|issue=1|year=2019|pages=123–136|issn=0141-0423 
|doi=10.1111/1467-9817.12250|s2cid=150055551|doi-access=free}}</ref>

On the other hand, phonics advocates say that most words are decodable, so comparatively few words have to be memorized. And because a child will over time encounter many low-frequency words, "the phonological recoding mechanism is a very powerful, indeed essential, mechanism throughout reading development".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pdf/pspi22.pdf|title=HOW PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE INFORMS THE TEACHING OF READING, VOL. 2, NO. 2, NOVEMBER 2001, page 40.}}</ref> Furthermore, researchers suggest that teachers who withhold phonics instruction to make it easier on children "are having the opposite effect" by making it harder for children to gain basic word-recognition skills. They suggest that learners should focus on understanding the principles of phonics so they can recognize the phonemic overlaps among words (e.g., have, had, has, having, haven't, etc.), making it easier to decode them all.<ref>{{cite book |author=Seidenberg, Mark |title=Language at the speed of sight |page=147|publisher=Basic Books|location=New York, NY|year=2017|isbn=978-1-5416-1715-5}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.readingrockets.org/article/new-model-teaching-high-frequency-words|title=A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words, Reading Rockets|date=2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/Literacy/Striving-Readers-Comprehensive-Literacy-Grant/Literacy-Academy/2-07-Teaching-Sight-Words-According-to-Science.pdf.aspx?lang=en-US|title=Teaching Sight Words According to Science, OHIO Department of Education|date=2019}}</ref>

'''Sight vocabulary''' is a part of the phonics method. It describes words that are stored in long-term memory and read automatically. Skilled fully-alphabetic readers learn to store words in long-term memory without memorization (i.e. a mental dictionary), making reading and comprehension easier. The process, called ''[[orthographic mapping]]'', involves ''decoding, crosschecking, mental marking and rereading''. It takes significantly less time than memorization. This process works for fully-alphabetic readers when reading simple decodable words from left to right through the word. ''Irregular words'' pose more of a challenge, yet research in 2018 concluded that "fully-alphabetic students" learn irregular words more easily when they use a process called ''hierarchical decoding''. In this process, students, rather than decode from left to right, are taught to focus attention on the irregular elements such as a vowel-digraph and a silent-e; for example, ''break (b - r - '''ea - '''k), height (h - '''eigh''' - t), touch (t - '''ou - ch'''), and make (m - '''a'''- k'''e''')''. Consequentially, they suggest that teachers and tutors should focus on "teaching decoding with more advanced vowel patterns before expecting young readers to tackle irregular words".<ref name="Bruce Murray 2019"/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.readingrockets.org/research-by-topic/orthographic-mapping-acquisition-sight-word-reading-spelling-memory-and-vocabulary|title=Orthographic mapping, Reading rockets|date=19 September 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|journal=Scientific Studies of Reading|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888438.2013.819356?scroll=top&needAccess=true|title=Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning|author=Linnea C. Ehri|date=September 26, 2013| volume=18 | pages=5–21 |doi=10.1080/10888438.2013.819356}}</ref>