Language Experiences Which Promote Reading

In the language-experience approach to reading instruction, communicative skills are viewed without distinction among listening, speaking, spelling, and writing. The children learn to conceive of expression and reception of expression as natural parts of experience, rather than as separate tasks that occur during a break in regular activity. The skillful language-experience teacher weaves opportunities for communication practice (listening, speaking, writing, reading, and dictating) unobtrusively into the fabric of daily experience. Through this practice, the child comes to feel that he can talk about what he thinks, that he can talk about what he can communicate in other ways, and that he can recall what he or others dictate and what he or others write through reading. The child comes to recognize letters and their function, and learns little by little the details of language use, because he wants to. New skills are put to immediate use and receive immediate positive feedback. Through this method, children not only learn to read better, but they also develop mature concepts about the value and use of reading and other communicative skills. [Not available in hard copy due to marginal legibility of original document]. (MH)