I used to be mad about "whole language" reading approaches in theory but now I work with school-age kids and I am mad about it in practice.
the word is "commute"
kid: complete?
me: do you see a P in that word?
kid: uh.... compare?
me: where are you getting a P??? sound it out.
kid: com... complete?
me: is that a P after the M? sound it out.
kid: *stares blankly*
me: [oh right, nobody taught them how to do this. fucking hell...] okay, we'll do this together [like it's kindergarden even though you're thirteen years old...]. what sound does C make?
I am not a reading teacher or a dyslexia specialist but I'm having to do remedial phonics instruction for middle schoolers because nobody ever taught them how SO THEY CAN'T FUCKING READ
I cannot overstate how much these kids are just making wild guesses when I ask them to read something. Because that's what they were taught to do. If you don't know a word, use context clues and make a guess at what you think the word might be.
Which is a fucking insane approach to reading, by the way, and I could rant about this forever because this makes absolutely no sense and I cannot figure out how the entire educational field was duped into thinking that this makes a lick of sense.
But I also want to emphasize that even kids who are decent readers have this problem. I work with some kids who straight-up can't read, but even my kids who absolutely can read will just guess wildly at an unfamiliar word. Those kids will go back and sound it out if I force them to, because they can read, so they have the necessary decoding skills. But they have to be pushed to do it and reminded several times to quit fucking guessing and read the actual letters on the page, Jason.
For example. I have a kid who is actually a pretty strong reader - probably one of my best.
The word was "disagreement."
He made a couple of guesses - some nonsensical, but after pushing him to sound out the word, he got closer. He kept saying "dis-age-ment" and "dis-argue-ment."
And I said okay, let's break this word down. Is there anything in here you recognize?
"The beginning is 'dis' and the end is 'ment' like argument, but I don't know the middle."
Great! Let's pull the middle out. I wrote the word "agree" on the page. Do you know this word?
"Age? Argue?"
SOUND. IT. OUT.
"Ag... agriculture?"
Jason the love of god. I drew a line in the middle. Ag/ree. Sound out each part.
"I don't know."
JASON. I wrote them out on opposite sides of the paper. Ag...........ree. What sound does ag make?
"Ag?"
YES GREAT FANTASTIC. Now come all the way over here. Ree. Sound it out.
"Are?"
JASON. R. E. E.
"Rey? Ree?"
Yes, thank you, it's Ree. Put it together.
"Ag...ree? Oh! It's disagreement!"
YES. EXCELLENT. THANK YOU. WHY WAS THIS SO HARD?
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have