Reading Rescue – theory Part 2
My blog entry on November 23 presented a paragraph to read that broke all the rules for reading. You did not use your phonics skills or your whole language skills to read the passage as none of them conformed to the rules of reading. and yet you were able to read it by using a set of skills that were not taught to you.
Your brain has mastered the skill of reading to such an extent that you are able to pick up suble clues from the combination of letters and spaces and context and length of words etc. to make sense of something that actually makes no sense.
Your reading speed probably slowed down as you read this passage as your brain had to process something that it normally does not have to process. During “normal” reading, when you encounter a “new” word, your brain automatically slows down and searches for a skill that will decode the word for you. If it is a complex combination of letters you will probably attempt to use your phonics skills to decode it:
eg. Chargoggagooggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamogg – a lake in Massachusetts