ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at reading fluency and discusses fluent writing. The whole-word method of teaching reading is built entirely on the flawed principle that multiple exposures to whole words are sufficient to teach reading. A larger percentage of children learn to automatically process words if they are taught to break words apart and put words together through the systematic teaching of the alphabetic code. Increase in automatic processing is established by building strong phonic decoding skills first and allowing regular practice of text containing high frequency, decodable words. A child with the ability to match symbols on the page to spoken sounds is already set up for a high degree of accuracy in word decoding. The fastest, most efficient, most generalisable way of increasing accuracy in word decoding is to make sure phonological awareness is sufficient and that the child has a strong foundation in systematic synthetic phonics.
