What are some of the major differences between a skills approach to literacy and a comprehensive or sociopsycholinguistic approach?
The skills approach to literacy begins with the small pieces of the language and builds upon one another, working their way up to comprehension strategies. Phonics skills act as the "recipes" that guide to the reading instruction. This approach deals with learning letter sound relationships, decoding, segmenting phonemes, and identifying patterns within words. All of these skills together allow for the reader to easily decode and become fluent readers. This theory believes the "bits and pieces are essential prior to meaning being addressed".
The comprehensive approach to literacy takes the learner's schema in order to construct meaning of the text. In order for this theory to be successful, teachers use literature pieces that the students are familiar with while incorporating "letter-sound patterns within the context". The teachers and students work together to dissect phonological skills by pulling pieces and examples from the text. Reading and writing strategies go hand in hand in this theory. The reading creates a print rich environment for the students, and the students expand upon what they have learned within the text. Then they work to transfer it to their writing. The students soon come to understand concepts that are within the text and begin making their own life connections.
The sociopsycholinguistic literacy approach is when a transaction occurs between the text and the reader within several contexts. By reading the reader begins to connect to his or her own experiences then meaning derives from the text. This literacy approach focuses on the "whole-to-part" view of reading. Readers look at the big picture then they are able to break down words and concepts within the text such as: specific letter isolations, specific vocabulary meanings, making their own connections, and situational contexts.
After reading about all of these literacy approaches, I noticed several differences. Each approach is taught in a variety of ways. The skills approach is skill based then students learn how to apply it while reading. Once the basics are taught, they will be ready to move to the next step-making connections. Secondly, the comprehensive approach focuses on the learner's schema then ties in the smaller bits such as, the phonics component later. These two theories seemed to be kind of opposite of one another. Lastly, the sociopsycholinguistic approach agrees that all of the bits and pieces of literacy go hand-in-hand. It states that readers use what they know, but also are taught the bits and pieces in order to read and comprehend. I believe that all of these theories could be effective within the classroom, but you would have to assess and evaluate the learners at hand prior to deciding which theory may be the best approach to use within the classroom.
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI love how you described the skills approach as a "recipe" because that is a great way to think of this concept. There are various things that are mixed together in order to get an end result, which in this case is being able to read words. However, I do think that the sociopsycholinguistic approach could also be described as a "recipe" because it has the same concepts but it is just mixed together a little different. These approaches are definitely opposite because of the vast differences in the teaching process. One is taught "part to whole" and the other is taught "whole to part", as Weaver described it in the text. The skills approach starts off with the smaller parts or the "basics" and the sociopsycholinguistic begins with the big concepts such as word understanding.