If you have ever been on an underground train in London you will have seen the pipes that hang from the walls of the tunnels. I believe that one of these pipes is a curry pipe. I think that there is an enormous boiler in the middle of London which makes curry twenty four hours a day and that this curry is then pumped out along the curry pipes in the tunnels of the underground system to restaurants all over town. This is the only explanation I can offer for the fact that curry looks, and tastes, exactly the same all over London but is hotter in the centre of town than it is in the suburbs.
In this passage (which I wrote in the early 1980s – things are different now!) there are 117 words all told of which 40 (34%) come from the first twelve keyword list and 71 (61%) from the list of the first hundred.
For a beginner reader, without real facility in instant reading of these words, I believe their ubiquity justifies the resurrection of a ‘flash’, or ‘look and say’ method. First, their ubiquity should be demonstrated in a short piece of text to the student’s satisfaction if the student finds it hard to believe (as I did). Each keyword is then written, in large clear felt tip, on one side of a card. On the other the word is written in ordinary script. The cards are ‘flashed’ for the student to read, the tutor able to see, from the rear of the card, what the student can see on the front of the card. The exercise is presented to the student as a visually mediated attack skill. The objective, which the student needs to be meta-cognitively clear about, is to be able to recognise instantly, and by sight, each keyword as a whole item. (To bring this into our millennium the exercise is easily managed in Powerpoint - I write each word (in large comic sans) on two slides with a blank between and reveal thus: word - blank - word - blank - new word - blank - new word - blank … This makes it possible to flash the word then show a blank screen while it is ‘read’ then show it again so as to make sure everyone is content.) It is also possible, of course, for students to do this for themselves.
Sometimes, while trying to do one thing you find you have done another, and apparently different but much better, thing. Another apparently ‘flash’ sight reading method I have used with early to intermediate students involves showing colour slides of social sight vocabulary. The technique was originally intended as a light-hearted way of differently approaching one particular kind of reading practice, namely the rapid reading of vocabulary from signs and so on photographed in situ in the real world. I have come to the conclusion it may be doing much more than that; that it may be teaching more powerful and more general skills. I believe it is analogous to the ‘listening skills’ technique, which tightens up the ear. This technique ‘tightens up’ our looking, actually and in the mind. The skill of better looking seems to generalise, in the same way that better listening does after practising listening skills. All real world vocabulary, all signs, seem to become more visible, or perhaps just less threatening. This technique seems to induce improvement in mental imagery (and see Center et al 1999). It also improves confidence. How does it work?
First let me make clear what I mean by ‘social sight’ vocabulary. This is simply words seen in the real world which have relevance. Signs like toilets, gents, ladies, staff only, no entry, pull, push, way out, pay here, departures, arrivals, car park, no smoking, keep clear, private, no unauthorised personnel, open, closed, emergency exit, sale, out of order and so on and so on. Over the years I have accumulated many slides of such signs. (My favourite reads open 7 days a week except Tuesdays.) Most boxes of slides come back with at least one dark, blank slide. I have accumulated many of these as well. This is how I use them.
I run a short slide show of perhaps fifty vocabulary slides interspersed with blank slides. I project a slide of, for example, a sign reading ‘no admittance’ and leave it up for a short time (depending on the level of the student). Then I replace it with a blank slide so that the screen goes dark. At this point either the student has already read the sign, in which case we can go on to the next slide, or he is stuck with having to hold the image in his mind and ‘read’ it there. This is the really productive time, I believe. If there is not fairly swift success then the original slide is shown again and the sign read from it. My experience has been that the rate of success, and speed, increase steadily and also that confidence grows. Having to ‘see’ signs in the mind’s eye seems to help literacy imaging skills generally.
This technique lends itself particularly well to the digital camera and the computer VDU. A blank is easily produced, and stored as a file. Images are easily caught and stored. They can also be manipulated. A relevant selection of images for any particular occasion can be assembled on disc with blank screens interspersed between them. Moving forward and backward through the images is simple. I guess this could even be a technique a student could run through independently. The reason for the technique (visual word recognition skill training) and its procedures must, of course, be very fully explained to the student.