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Reading Skills
By Alan R. McGillvray

 

February 24, 2011
Thursday


Dear Editor,

I will respond to this letter by stating, a reading course that starts with the alphabet, and the sounds the letters make. A method that went out of style back in the 1930s.

I was lucky enough to have an old teacher, Mrs. White, for my first grade teacher, who knew how to teach children to read using the alphabet and she taught us how to sound out the word. Instead of looking at a word and assuming it says something other than what it's supposed to.

I was in the grocery store the other day, there were two high-school girls in line ahead. One looked at the newspaper laying there and read something from it. She got two words wrong in what she read out loud, I had read the article previously, and because I know how to sound out what I'm seeing, I knew she didn't really know how to read. This poor child will go through her whole life not understanding the importance of knowing what's really going on in her world.

Yours, for a society that knows how to read,

Alan R. McGillvray
Ketchikan, AK

About: "Long-time Alaskan and Ketchikan resident."

Received February 23, 2011 - Published February 24, 2011

 

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