Word recognition is the ability to read words in isolation or within the context of a sentence or story without hesitation. When learning to read, children must understand the relationships between a letter, or combination of letters, and the sound or sounds they represent. Some letters, however, represent more than one sound. For example, the c in cake and city, the f sound in fat is the same as ph in phase and phone, and the vowel combination ea makes different sounds in dead, bead, and steak. These are just a few of the exceptions that make learning to read more difficult. More often than not, however, English words have regular, consistent spellings with only a small percentage being highly irregular. There are several strategies to help the beginning reader read unfamiliar words. Sounding out words, or decoding, is of utmost importance in developing reading fluency and comprehension. The more children practice decoding, the more fluent readers they become.

Have the child attack an unfamiliar word piece by piece by sounding out the beginning letter, digraph (sh, ch, ea, etc.) or blend (st, bl, dr, etc.). If needed, sound out the letter(s) at the end and in the middle. If he/she has the beginning and ending sounds right, but mispronounces the middle sound, isolate the middle letters and see what sound the letters make. After sounding out the word, have the child blend the sounds together and try to say the word. Ask him/her if the word makes sense. Don’t let the child struggle too long. If he/she cannot make sense of or decode the word, review the sounds for decoding, say the word for and with the child, and move on.

Have the child look at the picture to confirm whether the word he/she decoded makes sense. For instance, if the child reads belt rather than bell, ask him/her to look at the picture and think about whether belt makes sense in the context of the sentence.

Have the child look for familiar word chunks within a word like and in sand and eat in treat. Help the child recognize common prefixes (un-, re-, dis-, non-, en-, etc.), suffixes (-ing, -ed, -er, -able, -ness, -tion, etc.), and then read each chunk in the word by itself. For example, tr-eat-able is treatable, and s-and-ing is sanding. Then have the child read the sentence again to see if the word makes sense.

Certain rules of phonics help decode words. There are exceptions, but the rules help in decoding.

Recognizing syllables helps identify words. Have the child decode each syllable as if it were a single word and blend the syllables together. Identifying the first syllable often triggers the entire word. Rules for dividing words into syllables are:

Have the child compare familiar words to unfamiliar ones and decide if the familiar word is part of the unfamiliar one, for example, fiction and fictitious. Use the known word to see if the unfamiliar one makes sense, if it does, the two words may be close enough for understanding the context of the word.

Have the child read the sentence again to see if the word makes sense. If it doesn’t, have him/her think of a word that might make sense and try it.

Have the child continue beyond the unfamiliar word and look for clues to help recognize the word. The word may appear in another sentence that provides other clues to help understand the context of the word.

Guide him/her through the previous steps for decoding. When he/she reads a word incorrectly, help him/her self-correct. Always give positive responses and praise for trying. Again, don’t allow the child to struggle too long with decoding one word. To avoid frustration, help him/her decode the word and move on.