Expanding Reading Skills Through Syllabication

Abstract

The complexity of the English language has generated myriad phonics rules, along with a host of exceptions. Different pronunciations, as well as dialects, render many o f these rules inoperable 'in certain regions. It seems an impossible task for the child with learning problems to master all these rules and their exceptions. However, i t is often an equally impossible task for many disabled readers to read without a strong base in phonics or to generalize phonics principles unaided. From this dilemma we propose a modified phonics approach to teaching syllabication skills to the middleand uppergrade remedial reader. This syllabication system reduces to two the quantity of rules to be learned and eliminates the necessity of teaching variations and exceptions. Using this system, phonetically irregular words are attacked as i f they followed the rules, and the child is taught to rely on context clues to bridge the gap from a slightly distorted pronunciation to the word. For example, the child who has been taught to syllabicate using this system would divide the unknown word between as follows: