Word Recognition
Easy and Hard Words
Some words are easy to recognize when reading. You don’t need a dictionary when you read an article (a, an) or a pronoun, such as her or they. However, new vocabulary words may be more difficult to understand.
- For example: He must adhere to the school’s new policy or risk expulsion.
In this sentence, the words adhere, policy, and expulsion may be new. These words are not yet sight words. Sight words are words you can understand immediately when you see them, such as basic vocabulary (for example: hello, man, is, go, or eat).
Developing Sight Words
Any word in English can become a sight word. A good way to develop new sight words is to study groups of new vocabulary words and create word cards (see the example in Reading Lesson 4). After reading new words, make a list of related words. This will help you not only learn a new sight word but also reinforce related words.
- For example: Read the following paragraph about Moore’s Law and note all the vocabulary words which are not your sight words.
Moore's Law
Gordon Moore was cofounder of Intel, the largest microchip company. In 1975, Moore predicted micro-processor speeds would double at the rate of every two years. He made this prediction because of the way microchip components, such as transistors, had increased on silicon chips. Moore was slightly off on his prophecy; the number of transistors doubled about every 18 months. This is why many people call it Moore’s Law.
Related Words
You may have chosen the following words from the paragraph:
Possible unknown words:
- cofounder
- microchip
- predict
- processor
- rate
- components
- transistors
- silicon
- prophecy
Remember: a thesaurus provides synonyms, and a good dictionary provides example sentences along with definitions. This will help you recognize related words and phrases.