I am big on homework, as I feel it is difficult to learn much if you only have one two hour class a week, as is the case in much of ABE. Most students agree wholeheartedly, once they get the literacy bit between the teeth. Such students, mindful of the Matthew effect and seeking volume of reading per se, and having found paired reading helpful, have asked for recorded readings to read along with at home. I call this read-along. I could have called it ‘the workaholic’s scaffolded reading tool’, or ‘paired reading for the fireside’. The objective of the technique is simple - it is to increase the quantity students read, painlessly. Almost every student trying read-along at home has asked for more.
The student gets a recording of a reading, and the text. He listens to the recording while reading the text. This means the text must not be edited or abridged in any way, and this means that you will have to produce it yourself. I now record onto computer. This makes recordings easy to store and repeat copies can be made onto CD. (And, with any luck, recordings in digital form should be transferable easily enough onto the next audio technology to come along, so a library can be built up.) I have recorded short stories, jokes and off-beat news cuttings (usually translated into more everyday language) as well as the manual for a MIG welder. Stories are ideal for the more fluent reader simply to practice reading in volume and at reasonable speed. Jokes and news items are shorter and can be rendered into short sentences and simple language, so can be used for the less advanced reader.
Students give very positive feedback and are motivated. They always complete the reading and then demand more. They seem to enjoy their reading (which is not unimportant!). Read-along seems to improve confidence and the technique demonstrably belongs to the student. Comprehension is usually very good, so presumably students are formulating schemata, prioritising ideas, questioning, making appropriate inferences and connections and experiencing appropriate imagery, as texts on comprehension demand (and see the excellent Keene & Zimmermann 1997). I think it is very important that we not ‘test’ students on their reading, and I do not. The reading should be absolutely pressure-free, done for uncomplicated enjoyment; done exactly as we read in fact.
Reading is much, much more, of course, than simply recognising words one after the other. They must, though, be recognised if we are to read at all. It is, as we have seen, probable that many words are recognised as whole words, with larger, composite words being recognised perhaps in letter groupings – perhaps roots and morphemes. It is certain that fluent readers do not read letter by letter, and neither should students.
Some words are so simple, and so common, that it seems to me they may usefully be learned as wholes. I am talking about the first hundred ‘keywords’, the Dolch list (and see Beard 1987 p. 77 and the adult literacy core curriculum, Basic Skills Agency 2001 pp. 59 & 67). These words are astonishingly common. They are also very often the meaning carriers, with other words around them highly predictable from context.
One in every five words you read will be one of the following: in, was, is, I, he, it, a, the, that, to, and, of.
Fully half the words you read will be one of the above or the following: are, for, you, had, so, have, said, as, not they, with, one, we on, his, at, him, all, but, old, be, up, do, can, me, came, my, new, get, she, here, has, her, will, an, no, or, now, did, by, if, go, down, just, out, your, into, our, went, them, well, there, were, big, call, back, been, come, from, only, first, off, over, must, make, more, made, much, look, little, some, like, right, then, their, when, this, two, see, about, could, before, other, which, what, where, who, want.
In case you find these statistics hard to credit, read the following passage in which the first twelve keywords have been italicised and underlined, the remainder of the first 100 keywords being simply underlined.