Module 3: Activity 2

     I have heard negatives and positives of teaching students phonemic awareness through the use of nonsense words. However, one of my teachers last year was very against using nonsense words because she thought it was a waste of the students' time and I feel like I agree with her reasoning. If our end goal is to teach children to read fluently and to perceive the text, then we do not need to be asking students to pronounce nonsense words if they are not words the student is going to actually need to know. In order for our students to gain the comprehension skills they need it is necessary that we expose them to actual words and their meanings as much as possible. I understand why people use nonsense words, and its so that the student can get the hang of specific phonics rules, however, why can't we expose them to the phonics rules with actual English words?  In "Reading Process & Practice", Weaver talks a lot about the importance of focusing on comprehension instead of perfect reading especially when he states, "the time spent on learning phonics terms would be better spend reading, which, among other benefits, would give children the opportunity to read more and more words by analogy with the parts of words they already know, to come to recognize many of these words automatically after several exposures, and to internalize more and more of the frequently occurring letter-sound patterns in our language" (2002, p.103).