-> and I am very interested in your view that accuracy is essential in
-> reading.
I have already written at least two extensive replies on my views about
accuracy in reading. In some contexts (such as reading for personal
enjoyment) it is not as important as being able to read accurately for
professional documents and the like. But, all students do need the
ability to read every word accurately _when they deem it is the
necessary context to do so_. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the school
teachers to ensure that a child develop this ability.
Perhaps when you wrote to me (I know that our mail turn around between
The States and OZ/NZ is not speedy!), you had not yet seen those posts
of mine.
-> I would be interested to hear your views on functional grammar, which
-> supports viewing the text as a whole - because of the "function"
-> which the word plays. ie in different contexts the "word" has
-> different meanings so how can we stress accuracy when it is not
-> there???
I think you are using a misleading argument, or
misinterpreting/misconstruing my point. When I say "read for accuracy" I
mean that the student is able to decode the letters on the page for a
word that they represent. Obviously, some words have more than one
meaning, and in that case the reader must refer to the context of the
article in order to choose the correct meaning. Simply because an
ambiguity may exist which necessitates referring to the context of the
article as well, does not indicate that reading for accuracy is
unattainable or undesirable or unnecessary.
An example I had used some time back (and possibly also in a different
electronic forum) was this: a child substitutes the word "walked" for
"skipped" in some sentence in a story such as "Mary skipped down the
street." There are some teachers whom I have had discussions with, who
say that it is not important that the child made this substitution of
the word "walked" instead of the printed word in the book, and that the
meaning of the story is essentially the same, and they do not correct
the student. I suppose, if a child is having a very difficult time
reading, and is in their first reading class, it may be appropriate to
not correct every error and let an occassional error of this type slide.
But, IMO, the goal should be that the child will be able to read every
word on the page accurately. Your issue about ambiguity in certain cases
leading to a necessity to consider the context does not detract from
this, but is only smoke.
I also wonder at your referring to this as "functional grammar". I
usually think of grammar as being "syntax", whereas this seems more of a
semantics issue. It is possible to have a perfectly grammatically
correct sentence, such as:
The hat walked into the paper and ate rocks for dinner.
It makes no sense, semantically, but the noun-verb-prepositional
phrase-conjunction-sentence predicate  is a perfectly correct
grammatical structure.
Sheila
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