“Sound it Out” is Not Enough
The one thing that I would never say to a struggling reader in the face of an unfamiliar word is, “Sound it out”.
Why? Two reasons.
- It’s something they’ve heard all their struggling reading lives and it’s never helped. It’s something that makes them feel like failures because everyone else seems to know what “sound it out” means.
- It’s not enough information. When I couldn’t figure out how to change the font on this new web theme, I got the instructions to “go to style.css and make the changes you want .” It’s easy if you know what you’re doing but, if I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t have asked! Most of us need to start about ten steps back from “go to style.css”.
“Sound it out” is not enough.
So what would I say?
- Say the sounds and tell me what you hear.
- Say the sounds clearly and tell me what you hear. (for the person who adds “uh” after every consonant so that “try” sounds like “tuh” “ruh” “eye”, a three syllable word.)
- Say the sounds as you see them and tell me what you hear. (for a person who isn’t in the habit of moving from left to right all through the word bcause they see each word as a whole object that they either recognise or they don’t)
As long as you keep in mind The Deal and Decodability, these are specific instructions which will usually get a result.
What might go wrong?
- The student might not be good at blending the sounds to hear a word though I find it quite rare amongst older strugglers.
- They might only be able to hear the word when someone else says the sounds. This is usually temporary until they get confidence and understand what it is they’re listening for.
- They might have a memory problem which prevents them from remembering the first sound by the time they’ve got to the last. I’ve only encountered this with one person who didn’t have serious substance misuse issues. Alcohol and cannabis are terrible memory destroyers and I’m very upfront about this with my students.
