{"id":69752,"date":"2023-09-12T01:46:12","date_gmt":"2023-09-12T05:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=69752"},"modified":"2023-09-12T01:46:12","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T05:46:12","slug":"learning-to-read-what-challenges-does-this-represent-for-primary-school-pupils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/learning-to-read-what-challenges-does-this-represent-for-primary-school-pupils\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to read: what challenges does this represent for primary school pupils?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Entry into\u00a0<\/span>primary school<\/span><\/a>\u00a0coincides with the discovery of fundamental knowledge which will structure the lives and personalities of students.\u00a0Reading involves going through a relatively long learning process, over several years, and more or less difficult depending on the students, which represents a growing challenge in a society characterized by an accelerating\u00a0<\/span>movement<\/span><\/a>\u00a0.<\/span><\/p>\n

Learning to read can be thought of as a two-stage rocket.\u00a0The first involves learning to decode, that is to say, to recognize each of the words.\u00a0The second floor allows children to understand what sets of words mean in the form of sentences and texts.<\/span><\/p>\n

This dichotomy between decoding and comprehension is not arbitrary, it is based on the \u201csimple model of reading\u201d\u00a0<\/span>proposed in the 1980s by researchers Gough and Tunmer<\/span><\/a>\u00a0.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let’s describe what these two stages involve from a cognitive point of view and look at some activities to facilitate their progress or acquisition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Decoding, or learning to recognize words<\/strong><\/h4>\n

A crucial step in learning to read consists not only of learning to know and then visually recognizing each letter of the alphabet as having its own identity but above all of associating its shape with its own sound.\u00a0This latter process is called \u201cgrapheme (written form)\/phoneme (sound form) conversion\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Parallel learning to write in handwritten form<\/span><\/a>\u00a0will allow children to create a stronger, more durable and more easily movable representation of these letters.\u00a0In addition to writing, there is the possibility of manipulating letters in the form of real objects distinguished by their color, texture or weight, which will enrich the child’s representation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the link between the written form of letters and the corresponding sound is arbitrary in nature, grapheme\/phoneme conversion involves complex learning.\u00a0From a cerebral point of view,<\/a>\u00a0it is notably accompanied\u00a0by the development of part of a bundle of white matter fibers (a sort of cerebral highway) connecting an occipito-temporal area involved in the processing of the visual form of letters to a more dorsal area involved in sound processing.<\/p>\n

The grapheme\/phoneme conversion process will rely on the ability to associate visual representations of letters with sound representations.\u00a0It is for this reason that, in a seemingly paradoxical way, the\u00a0ability to discriminate and manipulate the sounds of language<\/a> , what we call \u201cphonological awareness\u201d, will play an important role in learning to read, an activity appearing at first glance to be exclusively visual.<\/p>\n

There are different ways to train this phonological awareness, starting in kindergarten.\u00a0For example, we can use nursery rhymes with rhymes, assonance or alliteration, do exercises involving manipulating the sounds of words (recognizing the first sound of a word, recognizing a sound common to several words, etc.) .<\/p>\n

It is also possible to use images on which an animal or an object whose name begins with the sound of the letter is represented (for example a snake for the letter S\u00a0)<\/em>\u00a0.\u00a0The ability to touch letters with a certain relief will also make it easier\u00a0to learn grapheme\/phoneme conversion<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

It will then be a matter of learning to convert increasingly large groups of letters into corresponding sounds (\u201cOR\u201d in [u] for example) to ultimately succeed in decoding entire words.\u00a0This so-called \u201cgraphophonological\u201d route<\/strong>\u00a0(or \u201cindirect\u201d because it involves a conversion of visual information into phonological information) will make it possible in particular to decode regular words, for example\u00a0sink<\/em>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Another path, called \u201corthographic\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0(or \u201cdirect\u201d), will develop in parallel and will make it possible to recognize words based on their spelling.\u00a0It will be particularly useful for identifying irregular words such as the word\u00a0woman<\/em>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Understand or activate mental representations<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Once decoding skills are sufficiently developed and automated, the student will be able to start reading sentences and texts of increasing complexity.\u00a0According to the\u00a0cognitive model of Construction-Integration<\/a>\u00a0proposed by Walter Kintsch and which is authoritative in relation to the study of comprehension, children will learn to activate, during the reading of sentences and texts, two forms of mental representation: the\u00a0basic of text<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0the situation model<\/strong>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

The text base<\/strong>\u00a0includes:<\/p>\n