Module 1: Reading Reflection

What are some of the major differences between a skills approach to literacy and a comprehensive or sociopsycholinguistic approach?

            The skills approach most simply means “that reading proceeds from the smallest units [phonemic awareness] to the largest [word meaning]” as stated by Weaver (2002, p. 34). This approach teaches reading using a “bottom-up” or “part to whole” method which means that the progression of content goes as followed: phonemic awareness, phonics, automatic, rapid work recognition and lastly meaning. Advocates from the reading such as Marilyn Adams, Frank Vellutino, and Keith Stanovich feel as though fluent readers can simply read and identify the word’s meaning without the need for the surrounding context. Along with the understanding that specific letters and letter combinations make a specific sound creating a certain word, advocates of the skills approach seem to conclude that the meaning of the word is also understood when the word is read correctly.

            The comprehensive and sociopsycholingustic approach is much more complex than the skills approach and can be seen as “whole to part” teaching. This approach claims to have four main type of contexts, all of which work together to determine ones understanding of a word or sentence: “Grammatical context within the sentence”, “semantic context within the sentence”, “situational, pragmatic context”, and “schematic context” (Weaver, 2002, p.16).  The sociopsycholingustic approach has a lot to do with ones interpretation of a specific reading either influenced by ones past experiences (schema) or within the transition of a message/concept. Weaver (2002, p.23) explains that “meaning is not in the text itself, whether the text be literary or otherwise. Rather, meaning arises during the transaction between reader and text”.

             The main and most prominent different between the skills and sociopsycholingustic approach is the varying theories in how reading should be taught- whole to part or part to whole. The sociopsycholingustic side says that reading should be something that is taught by constructing meaning from words through various texts. After the text has been read and talked about as a group, then the students will begin to talk about phonics and letter formation while “the children use writing as a means of expressing themselves, communicating, and coming to know and understand new concepts and experiences” (Weaver, 2002, p. 3). On the other hand, the skills approach starts off by teaching the students the letters and their formations through various methods, then moves to recognizing individual words and reading from different forms of simple text. The sociopsycholingustic approach allows the students the opportunity to get a full understanding of the language by exposing them to different forms of one word or various meanings of one sentence, while the skills approach simply gives them the tools the students need to sound out words they may not be familiar with.

“Studies investigating children’s definitions of reading have found, too, that poorer and younger readers tend to conceptualize reading as a matter of decoding and getting words, whereas older and more proficient readers generally conceptualize reading as more a matter of understanding the text.” (Weaver, 2002, p. 4)

Another difference between the two approaches that is an outcome of the way each teaches reading is that with the skills approach the students may be able to pronounce every word correctly in the sentence, but they may truly have no understanding of the content. Whereas, with the sociopsycholingustic approach the students can read through a sentence and may get the understanding with or without knowing every word because they are able to not only sound out the unknown words, but are also able to use context clues to determine the words meanings. 

References

Weaver, C. (2002). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.