Deciphering the Alphabetic Code
By: Dr. David P. Hurford

Reading is one of the most important and complex behaviors that people learn to do. In our culture, the social and economic success that an individual has is dependent upon their ability to successfully learn to read. Approximately 15% to 20% of our nation's students have difficulty learning to read. In the past, once a student was identified as experiencing reading failure, they were considerably behind in reading, and catching up was very difficult. Difficulty catching up was due, in part, to educators not knowing the nature of reading and learning disabilities or what to do about these disabilities.

Unlike language acquisition, exposing young students to text does not result in spontaneous reading. The students must learn the relationship between the letters that represent the sounds of their language; learn to use the knowledge of this relationship to decode words into their respective sounds; synthesize the individual sounds into words; and then recognize that they have this word in their vocabulary. Lastly, and most importantly, the students must be able to comprehend the written material.

Comprehending text is the goal of reading; however, comprehending the English language is difficult for some learners, because the English language is an opaque writing system. An opaque writing system does not have a one-on-one system for representing sounds. There are over 40 sounds in the English language and there are only 26 letters of the alphabet. As a result, some letters are used to represent more than one sound. In addition, some sounds are represented by several spelling combinations. When a student must learn to read within an opaque writing system, it takes considerably more time and practice before the processes and skills become automatic.

Although there are many methods that teach students to read by having them learn and recite the alphabet and learn the names of the letters of the alphabet, this knowledge is not relevant to learning to read. Letter name knowledge can confuse the beginning reader because this knowledge is not directly applicable to the reading process. Individuals cannot decode a sound that a letter represents by only having knowledge of the letter name. If reading consisted of knowing only letter names, the word "bird" would be "bçîardç," which is not a word. Beginning readers need to have a working knowledge of the alphabetic code (letter-sound correspondence) and how to use the alphabetic code to read.

Learning to read requires that students know how to decode a word into the sounds that each letter represents; recreate the word by blending the sounds together; and then comprehend what is decoded. What is of utmost importance in terms of the reading process is knowing the sounds that the letters represent. Without this knowledge, students cannot decode words into sounds. Once students learn how to decode words into sounds, they can then learn how to spell.

Historically, reading and spelling have been two skills that were taught independently of each other. Reading may have been taught in the morning and spelling in the afternoon. Under these circumstances, students are not able to appreciate the reciprocal nature of the alphabetic code. Reading is a process in which the letters that make up words are decoded into their respective sounds. Spelling is a process in which the sounds of a word are encoded into their respective letters. Reading and spelling are related processes that need to be mastered to fully engage in the written form of the English language. As students learn to spell, they can begin writing the words they know.

A consistent finding in the research is that the students learn and remember remarkably well by writing. In the case of learning the sounds that are represented by letters, writing the letter while vocalizing the letter's sound has been shown to be an effective way of learning letter-sound correspondences. This multi-sensory approach allows students to become actively engaged in the learning process. The more students engage in the learning process, the more they enjoy learning how to read.

Dr. David P. Hurford, from Pittsburg State University, used two decades of research about learning and reading disorders to write a literacy curriculum for kindergartners. Dr. Hurford partnered with DEPCO, LLC to help expand the early childhood market.

DEPCO, LLC develops and markets educational curriculum for early childhood, K-12, and the post-secondary market. For more information, please visit http://www.depcollc.com.