How to teach reading? Learning methods to teach children to read There are 2 main methods to teach children to read: the analytical and the global. The first is based on the child learning to separate the letters, then form syllables and, finally, words. The second focuses on associating meanings to the entire written word. Both methods are complementary to each other.
Traditionally there are two methods in learning to read.
Often presented as opposed and incompatible, but in reality, they are complementary.
It is the global method and the analytical.
The global method associates a meaning to the word
The global method is the one explained in the video above.
It is based on a synthetic process.
From this perspective, the word is perceived as a whole with a form associated with a meaning.
Many children when they see the word “Stop” know perfectly well how it is pronounced and what it means long before they are able to recognize separately the “s”, “t”, “o” and “p” and know what sound corresponds to each.
Words require a more complex discrimination ability than letters.
But it is the actual meaningful units of spoken language and the spaces between them that make it so much easier for the child to see them as a whole.
The synthesis process adds reading speed in those children who have followed a good analytical process.
And it becomes almost the only method of access to reading for children with mental disabilities, since the contribution of meaning is an essential element of motivation, it is the ultimate goal of reading.
The analytical method is based on what we see written
The analytical method, as its name indicates, is based on a process of analysis of the written stimuli that are perceived through vision.
Looking at it from left to right, the first thing we see in the word “duck” is a “p” that, together with an “a”, reads .
This is the most used method to learn Spanish and on which the vast majority of methodologies are based.
However, it is not as simple a task as it might seem at first.
On the one hand, you have to isolate the letters as individual stimuli in that network of curved and straight lines that make up the word.
Then, each written letter (grapheme) must be attributed a sound (phoneme).
The grapheme-phoneme relationship must be univocal, that is, the only way to read that letter is with that sound.
However, the opposite is not the case, since there are sounds that can be written in various ways (vaca-baca; ha-a).
This is the main cause of spelling mistakes and a workhorse for educators and teachers. Therefore, the analytical process is not infallible.
This process, moreover, gives us access to a reading called mechanics, but it does not tell us anything about the meaning of that word.
To know what part of reality represents what we read, we have to take another turn and do the comprehensive reading.
What teaching method is best for children?
The truth is that at school, during early childhood education (3,4,5 years), an approach to reading is usually made using the global method: words are taught to children associated with images, similarities between words are observed ( elephant and star begin with the same letter), etc; and, already in primary education (from the age of 6), an analysis of the segments of words begins: the syllable (pa-pe-pi-po-pu). Both the analytical and the global method are valid for developing reading skills. And both are necessary for quality reading. Whether we insist more on one or the other will depend on the needs of the child at each moment of the development of said capacity. Source: https://www.elbebe.com/educacion/metodos-aprendizaje-para-ensenar-leer-ninos
