Improving reading through explicit teaching of basic sight words

 Recently, there has been a strong emphasis placed on reading in the curriculum reform.  Reading to
Learn is one of the key tasks in helping students become independent learners.  Because words are the
building blocks for reading comprehension, a large vocabulary opens students up to a wider range of
reading materials.  To read fluently with understanding, readers need to recognise about 95 percent of
the words in a text (Adams, 1990).
Students who know words by sight are able to read them aloud automatically.  The ability to recognise
a large number of words instantly and automatically enables students to read fluently and to focus their

attention on making sense of the passage improving their comprehension and understanding.  This
is especially the case for early readers.  Readers have a limited amount of attention available while
reading (Adams, 1990; Samuels, 2004; Stanovich, 1980).  As they need to focus much of their attention
on word recognition, little attention is left for comprehension.  One hundred words account for almost
half of all the words we read and write (Fry, Fountoukidis, & Polk, 1985).  The ten words - the, of, and,
a, to, in, is, you, that and it account for about 25 percent of all the words in school texts.  Therefore
high frequency words are a vital part of students’ sight vocabulary.  However, many students, especially
struggling readers, have difficulties in recognising basic sight words because these words tend to be
abstract words.  Also many of the high frequency words share the same letters, for example, on/no, was/
saw and of/for.  Students often confuse these words.  Explicit teaching and many repetitions of the basic
sight words may be necessary for them to become part of students’ sight vocabulary in order to enhance
their reading fluency and comprehension.
Although the basic sight words occur frequently in texts, some students cannot recognise them
automatically and accurately.  Moreover, some teachers tend to think it more worthwhile to teach
content words and so they spend more time teaching them.  They assume that students know the basic
sight words well due to their frequent occurrence in texts.  Students need to acquire good vocabulary
so that they can read.  Teachers from Cheung Chau Sacred Heart School and HKFEW Wong Cho Bau
School wanted to enhance students’ reading ability by enlarging their vocabulary.  High frequency
words were taught with the aim of making these words sight vocabulary so as to enable students to read
fluently with comprehension and meaning.
Reading fluency and reading comprehension are highly correlated.  According to the National Reading
Panel (2000), fluency is reading text with speed, accuracy, and expression.  In this study, we focussed
only on accuracy and automaticity in reading, whereas prosody, which is also an important component
in reading fluency, was not included.  To further develop students’ reading fluency, teachers may
provide more opportunities for students to read aloud.  Examples include repeated reading practice,
paired reading and rereading, reader’s theatre and choral reading.

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