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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Comprehension has nothing to do with the method of deciphering words.  I've seen kids who could "call" words beautifully and not be able to answer the simplest question about what they have read.[/quote]

Being able to read fluently and accurately is KEY to being able to comprehend text and is necessarily but not always sufficient.

I have not personally experienced "word callers" in my teaching experience but I am aware that some teachers do believe they have seen such students.  When I test these students, it turns out they have strong "sight word" and guessing strategies, but only make it to about the 2nd or 3rd grade reading level before their sight word knowledge tops out -- you can only memorize by sight so many words before you have to resort to guessing.

I have never seen a "word caller" read past the 3rd grade level.   In each case, I have taught the child how to decode words, and then he or she makes more progress.

The only true word caller I have seen was in ESOL children who were able to decode words but not understand them.  Once they learned English, they were able to understand the words.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805835/

[quote]
The validity of the word caller phenomenon has been questioned by researchers (Hamilton & Shinn, 2003; Nathan & Stanovich, 1991; Stanovich, 1986, 2000), and has been described as a “red herring” of the reading literature (Nathan & Stanovich, 1991, p. 177). Despite the frequent use of the term (e.g., Walczyk & Griffin-Ross, 2007), there is almost no research to indicate what the actual prevalence of word calling among developing readers is and what teachers’ understanding of the term is.[/quote]

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