ABSTRACT
The most fundamental responsibility of schools is to teach students how to read. The development of reading skills obviously serves as the gateway to the world of printed information, as reading serves as the major foundational skill for all school-based learning. Many proponents of “whole language” education feel that because humans learn to speak their native language through immersion, the act of reading follows a similar pattern and exposure to the printed word leads to the development of reading skills. Every spoken language has a class of vowels and a class of consonants. In order to successfully master our language, students must receive adequate exposure to the components of each of the several linguistic influences. A student must string together the individual sounds or phonemes to produce a word. Sound-symbol correspondence is paramount. Students should be taught not only the phonemes and graphemes associated with the language, but also the myriad of spelling rules governing usage and application.
