Excerpt from The Teaching of Primary Reading: A Handbook for Teachers Using, the California State Series d104s There are two processes in learning to read: the mechanical, which is largely the mastery of words; and thought interpretation, that is, understanding the meaning of words associated as they are in sentences. The two processes can not be far separated. Though in the early stages most of the learner's attention must be on the mastery of words, his reading must be, from the beginning, thought recognition. The material which he reads, while it must be simple enough to come within his easy comprehension, must contain real thought, and thought which is interesting from the child's point of view. Up to the time of his entering school, the child has partially learned to understand oral language; he has learned in some degree to express his thoughts in articulate speech; he has acquired a great number of sense experiences; and he has partially established synthetic associations between his auditory and articulate language and his store of ideas and thoughts. In learning to read he is to acquire visual symbols for the thoughts he has already gained. The shortest and most natural method is from the spoken sentence to the written or printed sentence. The first reading lessons, therefore, should consist of short sentences, derived from the children's guided conversations on interesting topics, such as their pets, toys, games, nature lessons, and child literature. These are written sentence by sentence upon the blackboard, read and re-read, erased, written again and read repeatedly until mastered. In this way the child's reflex for oral speech is utilized; and oral reading is, from the beginning, talking the child's thoughts or the thoughts of another. If this idea is never lost, "word-saying" and unnatural and expressionless reading will not occur. When three to six sentences are learned, the important words are selected by the class. Thorough and oft-repeated word-drills, by varied and interesting devices, make these words familiar to the children. A new word is always presented in script; and, in the first lessons, in a sentence; but after the presentation of the word it is given in the word-drills in all four forms; as, cup, cup, Cup, cup. Children take script and print together very readily. In the reading lessons after the first two weeks, script and print alternate. There is therefore no transition from script to print or vice versa. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.