Forums/Lexercise Application/Discussion Group
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Irregular Words
Kimberly Murphy
asked this on February 01, 2011 18:53
Sandie has posted an explanation of how Lexercise deals with irregular words, here: http://support.lexercise.com/entries/421485-what-about-irregular-no.... I have always wondered, though, about classifying words such as "have" and "give" as irregular. I teach them as following the orthographic rule that English words cannot end in the letter 'v'; thus these words end in '-ve'. I'd love to get some feedback on this! Thanks.
Kim
Comments
You make such a good point, Kim! These words DO follow the regular pattern you describe.
In Lexercise we have chosen not to address this pattern until Level 24. That means that before Level 24 these words have to be read and spelled from memory. The words you mention are so common that we think we need to teach early. Of course, we could choose to move the whole pattern (i.e., the pattern addressed at Level 24) to an earlier level, but we chose not to do that because, other than a small group high frequency words (including 'give' and 'have'), the utility of the pattern is not as great as the patterns we are targeting in Levels 1-23.
This discussion raises a useful general point: Many words that are considered "irregular" at the level of basic phonics are useful, high frequency words that become phonetically regular once the learner has upper-level orthographic knowledge.
Another example of high frequency words with an upper level orthographic pattern is the word group that includes all, tall, ball, mall, walk, etc. in which the sound of the vowel shifts when followed by an /l/ sound. (Compare the vowel sounds in "at" and "all.") Lexercise addresses the sound of <a> after /l/ at Level 25.
Ah, yes, now it makes sense! Thanks, Sandie.
We have a student using Lexercise in addition to his 4 OG 1:1 tutorials each week. While I can customize the application and practice of his graphemes and needs around phoneme segmentation, it would be terrific if one of the games highlighted practice of his newly learned sight words (a.k.a. "learned words" or "irregular words"). Is there a way we can do this? The matchstar game would fit the bill as it is about rapid naming.
Thanks!
Corey, thank you for your suggestion. We always appreciate such feedback and collaboration from our clinicians! Let me just make sure I understand exactly what you are looking for. Are you suggesting a separate MatchStar game to more specifically target the non-phonetic words that are currently at each Lexercise level, or are you suggesting that we also include more 'sight words' that are not currently included in Lexercise?
We are definitely open to adding more words to our database if, in our judgment: 1)They fit our scope & sequence pattern, 2)They fill a need (i.e., enough words with that pattern are not already in the data base.)
Let me know what you need and we will try to make it work!!
Kim