... and that the reader rapidly spelled out the words.

[teacherjapan]

It was formerly supposed that, when reading, the eyes move steadily along a line of print, bringing each letter in turn into clear vision, and that the reader rapidly spelled out the words.

Does the underlined part mean, “understand the spelling of the words?”

(Source is unknown, because this this the passage quoted for an entrance exam in Japan)

 

[Tarheel]

It's a guess. I guess it means the reader recognized the words.

 

[PeterCW]

It means that it was thought that people read the individual letters and then combined them to recognise the word. So if they see the word "cat" they read "c" then "a" then "t" and then realise that together they spell "cat".

Now we think that people recognise whole words by their shape. So when you see the word "cat" you recognise it without being fully aware of the individual letters.

 

[5jj]

Does the underlined part mean, “understand the spelling of the words?”

No. it means that they interpreted each word as a sequence of letters rather than a whole unit So, they'd initially read cat as /kə-æ-tə-kəæt/.

 

[Tarheel]

It means that it was thought that people read the individual letters and then combined them to recignise the word. So if they see the word "cat" they read "c" then "a" then "t" and then realise that together they spell "cat".

Now we think that people recognise whole words by their shape. So when you see the word "cat" you recognise it without being fully aware of the individual letters.

If that's the case, I could have told them they got that wrong.

 

[Skrej]

It is logical, because that's how we still teach reading. First step is letter recognition, second step is sound/letter correlation, followed by sounding out the letters, then blending into a word.

It's only once a word is permanently entered into someone's vocabulary does it become sight recognizable. Give even an accomplished reader some strange new vocabulary word, and they'll try sounding it out. For example, my doctor recently gave we a new prescription, which did have a generic form available. I still can't pronounce it by sight and have to sound it out.

However, we've always taught some words as sight words, typically ones that don't follow the general rules of English pronunciation.

 

[SoothingDave]

Yes, and there has been controversy in education over practices that want to skip the first step (letter recognition, sounding things out) and go straight to sight reading everything.

 

[dunchee]

(Source is unknown, because this this the passage quoted for an entrance exam in Japan)

That entrance exam IS the source.

 

[probus]

The reason we ask for the source of quoted material is to protect UE from legal liability for copyright infringement. I don't think a brief quotation in an examination question would constitute an infringement, nor woild a re-quote in our forum.