DECODING

From the constructivist stance, learners have already begun 'reading the world even before they learn to
read the words'. This means that they already have knowledge prior to learning their ABCs, implying that
their experiences have provided them a general understanding of their context.

Their experiences and world knowledge are structured and stored as part of their schema in such a way
that even without knowing how to crack the code to its smallest unit, they already formed meanings and
interpretations based on their day to day situation.

If this is the case, why do we need to teach them decoding?

An actor, writer, and comedian Woody Allen believes that reading really matters, because according to
him, "You have to read to survive." Vacca and Vacca (2005) also supports this, saying that people need
advanced level of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct
personal lives.

This high level demand for literacy makes decoding skill significant, without which one's interaction with
print everything becomes limited.

How would a non-decoder read medicine labels, captions and signage, and other printed documents
without knowing how decode?

Remember that learners combine sources of information and shift between the text, print knowledge,
and personal knowledge to figure out what the text says. When learners are trying to read written texts,
whether short (like the name of a store) or long (like newspapers or novels), they need to have a
technique for "breaking the written code" of the words. Not knowing the process for this, they would not
see words; instead, they see a series of meaningless marks on a page. This calls would just for decoding
skill to be able to perform various literacy demands in authentic situations as they perceive meaning
based on the marks on a page. Learning the alphabet and the sounds associated with individual letters
serve as the "raw material" learners need to begin breaking the code, but decoding strategies provide
them with the process for determining how to read and pronounce the combination of letters that form
words.

The term decode, according to Literacy Dictionary (Harris and Hodges, 1995), is to analyze spoken or
graphic symbols of a familiar language to ascertain their intended meaning.

Decoding is the ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of
letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words.
The word indentification skills include phonic analysis, structural analysis, context clues, configuration
clues, dictionary skills, and sometimes picture clues.

Decoding is also the process by which a word is broken into individual phonemes and recognized based
on those phonemes. For instance proficient decoders separate the sounds "guh", "aah", and "puh" in
the word "gap".

In preparation for decoding, learners must have with them an understanding of the following:

Phoneme Awareness

This refers to learners' awareness that spoken words are made up of distinct sounds. This awareness is
seen to be crucial in learning to read because individual letters or letter combinations map to a
phonemic (sound) equivalent in English language.

The Sound of Written Language

This refers to child's awareness of differences between spoken and story language.

Concept of Story

This refers to the idea that every narration has a beginning, middle and ending.

Decoding Ability

This requires applying letter-sound knowledge to "sound-out" known.

Spelling Ability

This means matching the sounds hear to alphabet letter names, a transition or matching of phoneme to
grapheme cues for wrting down oral texts.

What are the causes of difficulty in reading and writing in English?

Several reasons that make English language difficult to learn are the following:

1. English is not spelled phonemically. The one-to-one phoneme-grapheme relationship is not always
true in English.
2. English become a difficult process of word and sentence and analysis for secondary clues, meaning,
structural, and form clues, to word attack and pronunciation.

3. The letter is used as a primary clue to vocalization.

4. Most teachers separate reading and writing processes.

5. Children lack the oral-aural familiarity with words and the meanings attached to them.

Principles should guide decoding instruction?

Gunning (2005) enumerates the following principles for helping learners identify words:

1. Begin all instruction with meaning text experiences such as rhymes, poems, songs, and books.

2. Children's needs and the texts being read should determine the word identification element being
supported or emphasized.

3. Model the element of word identification being emphasized using the texts children are reading.

4. Practice in word identification comes through repeated reading and writing.

5. Allow and encourage children to take risk as they read, trying words before you tell them what they
are.

Symptoms of decoding difficulty:

These are some cases when despite implementing these principles on teaching decoding , children still
seem to perform below expectation . When learners manifest the following symptoms, then they
require extra time and additional input.

1. Learners have trouble sounding out words and recognizing words out of context.

2. They are confused between letters and the sounds they represent.

3. They have slow oral reading rate (reading word by word).

4. They ignore punctuation marks.

Activities can be done to help struggling decoders the extra input needing more time for practice and
memory improvement may be a combination of several activities done in an enjoyable , pleasure
manner so that children can learn decoding indirectly , with less pressure to acquire such skill in formal
setting.

1. Occasionally point letters and ask them to name them.

2. Let them sing the alphabet with audio , video , and audio-visual support.

3. Encourage them to use what they know about sounds and letters to write notes and emails.

4. Talk about sight words and irregular words which have to be memorized and recalled upon sight.

5. Teach them to sort/categorized picture and objects by the sounds they contain while simultaneously
saying the letter-sound repeatedly.

6. Use manipulatives to help letter-sound relationship. These can include counters , sound boxes , and
magnetic letters.

What strategy can be used to teach decoding?

One strategy is teaching phonics, which refers to a system of instruction that helps children
develop an understanding of the alphabetic principle, the idea that the letters and letter patterns of
written language represent the sounds of spoken language.

The goals in teaching phonics:

A. Teaching learners phonics skills by embedding phonics instruction in text reading, a more implicit
approach that relies to some extent on incidental learning.

B. Teaching them to segment words into phonemes and to select letters for those phonemes.

C. Teaching them explicitly to convert letters into sounds and then blend the sounds to form
recognizable words.

D. Improving the ability of good readers to spell.

E. Providing children with key knowledge and skills and to ensure that they know how to apply that
knowledge in their reading and writing.

F. Ensuring that children understand the purpose of learning letter sounds and that they are able to
apply these skills accurately and fluently in their daily reading and writing activities.

G. Helping children map the relations between letters and sounds.

H. Permitting children to quickly and automatically translate the letters or spelling patterns of written
words into speech sounds.

I. Giving opportunities to children with reading disabilities to write and relate their writing to spelling
and reading.

How to conduct phonics instruction

1.Develop general concept of alphabetical reading with simultaneous inclusion of the writing activity as
a necessary component in the development of reading concept.Do this

a. Showing each letter in only one phonetic value.

b. Excluding words with silent letters, double letters, nor combination of letters

c. Using two-letter or three letter words in which the letter have the sound-values assigned at the
outset.

d. Using short sentences

e. Introducing double consonants and other digraphs that appear in consistent uses

f. Taking up words whose spellings may be called semi-irregular.

g. Introducing irregularly-spelled words

2.Only the five letters (a,e,i,o,u) and perhaps seventeen consonants letters
(p,b,t,d,c,g,f,v,s,m,n,l,r,h,y,w,j) would be used,each with only one sound value.

3. Two-letter and three-letter words, referring to familiar or easily explained concepts,would be

composed from the above material and divided into five groups according to the vowel-letter involved.

4.Compose short phrases and sentences referring to familiar concepts with the above type of words.This
requires the gradual instruction of a small set of the commonest irregularly spelled words such as
I,is,the,a,has etc.,which would have to be taught as sight words

5.Develop the basic visual and auditory discrimination skills involved in the perception aspect of the
reading process by doing the steps repeatedly.

6.Develop ability and fluency to read and write.

Another method is called the Gillingham-Stillman method whose purpose is to provide readers,disabled
or potentially disabled,who has specific language difficulty,with a method for learning to read that is
consistent with the evolution of language functions.

Orton (2014) hypothesized that specific language disabilities he observed may have been due to
hemispherical dominance in specific areas of the brain. He related certain instances of reading disability
to the difficulty students might potentially have when dealing with inconsistencies that result from
mixed dominance. Mirror and reversals seemed to be evidenced of these difficulties.

Gillingham and Stillman claimed that their method provides “phonetic method”

Consistent with the evolutions of language functions.This method engages learners using only this,and
that the best teachers to use this method are those familiar with traditional reading and spelling
instruction.

Procedure

Introduce this method with a narrative entitled "The Growth of Written Language." The narrative is
intended to provide a positive mind-set; it traces, with examples, the evolution of communications from
spoken language to picture writing to alphabetic writing. End the method with an explanation to the
students that the difficulty they have incurred with reading is not unique. Thereafter, a sequence of
exercises beginning with the learning of letter and letter sound, then blending sounds to words, and
finally sentence and story reading is suggested.
 a. LETTERS.
Teach sounds represented by letters and then build these into words. To this end, each word family is
taught by associations involving visual, auditory, and kinesthetic process.

First Associative Process .

Show to the student a letter and say it. Let the child repeat it. Follow it by the sound representing it.
Then let the child repeat it.
Second Associative Process
Make the sound represented by the letter and let the child name the letter.
Third Associative form •
Explain and write the letter form. Let the student trace the lines, copy, write the word from memory,
and then write the word without looking at what is being written.

b. WORDS.
After 10 letters are well-known, begin blending (from synthetic to analytic, and then analytic to
synthetic).

c. SENTENCES AND STORIES.

After a child can read and write any three-letter 'perfectly-phonetic' words, sentence and story reading
commence. Begin with simple, highly structure stories, referred to as 'Little Stories," which are
presented to the child to read and write.
• Let the child read the story or sentence silently until he/she can read it perfectly. Any words with
which the child may have difficulty with are either sounded out, or, in cases where words may be
unfamiliar, such as 'phonetically-irregular' words, pronunciation must be provided. Encourage the child
to be accurate and to avoid guessing.

For sentence and story writing, dictate to him/her the Little Stories. As you dictate the story, avoiding
unnecessary repetitions, the child writes the words.

d. OTHER.
As the child's reading skills develop, the teacher may want to use further guidance provided by
Gillinghan and Stillman:
• Children learn that polysvllabic words (words with more than one syllable) are formed by syllables in
the same way monosyllabic words (one syllable words)are formed by letters. To this end, learners are
presented with and asked to combine detached syllables, and are taught to identify the appropriate
accent by trying the accent on each syllable.
• Dictionary use is taught for the purpose of identifying the pronunciation of words.
• To deal with a few selected words which are phonetically irregular,' whole-word drill is suggested.
• Finally, until the child completes a major portion of the phonics program, he or she is discouraged
from reading independently.