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Fluency in Reading Irish as L1 or L2:Promoting High-frequency Word Recognitionin Emergent ReadersTina M. Hickey aa School of Psychology , University College Dublin , Belfield, Dublin, IrelandPublished online: 22 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: Tina M. Hickey (2007) Fluency in Reading Irish as L1 or L2: Promoting High-frequencyWord Recognition in Emergent Readers, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10:4,471-493, DOI: 10.2167/beb455.0

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Fluency in Reading Irish as L1 or L2:Promoting High-frequency WordRecognition in Emergent Readers

Tina M. HickeySchool of Psychology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin, Ireland

A body of research has identified fluency and efficient word recognition as criticalcomponents of reading both in L1 and L2, showing a significant positive correlationbetween reading fluency and comprehension. This points to the need to strive forfluency from the child’s earliest experiences with print through developing effectivedecoding skills and fast, accurate, word recognition. In this examination of fluencyEhri’s theory of word recognition development is considered in relation to some ofthe miscues of young L2 readers of Irish. A brief outline of Irish orthographypresents some of the difficulties children encounter when learning Irish reading.The presentation of the most frequent Irish words in a special corpus of books aimedat early readers of Irish allows a consideration of ways of promoting deeper analysisof these words. This is what facilitates automatic and accurate word recognition andunderpins the decoding skills that make independent reading in the L2 lesslaborious and more effective.

doi: 10.2167/beb455.0

Keywords: fluency, high frequency, Irish, reading, word recognition

IntroductionGrabe (2004) claims that the remarkable advances in research on English L1

reading in the last 15 years have generated major implications for readinginstruction. Researchers in L2 reading such as Koda (2004), Bernhardt (2003)and Grabe and Stoller (2002) have begun to systematise conclusions from L1reading research as the basis for recommending improvements in L2 readinginstruction. An issue receiving increasing attention is reading fluency,identified by the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) as one of the fivecritical components of reading. Snow et al . (1998) argued that the ability toextract meaning from print depends on the development of word recognitionaccuracy and reading fluency. Harris and Hodges (1995: 85) defined readingfluency as ‘freedom from word identification problems that might hindercomprehension’, and this definition was further refined to: ‘efficient, effectiveword-recognition skills that permit a reader to construct the meaning of a text’by Pikulski and Chard (2005: 510). They emphasise the need to strive forfluency from the child’s earliest experiences with print through developingeffective decoding skills. Rather than viewing these decoding skills as the lessinteresting end of the reading process, they argue that automatic decodingskills are essential for successful reading comprehension.

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Fraser (2004) noted that relatively few empirical studies have addressed theissue of developing fluency in L2 reading, although a number haveinvestigated the L1�L2 reading fluency gap. Even bilinguals with advancedL2 skills read about 30% slower in their second language than in their first (e.g.Segalowitz & Hebert, 1990) and their less automatic L2 word recognition skillsimpede their ability to extract meaning from texts. Hickey (1991), in a study ofyoung L2 readers of Irish in Grade 3 (aged 8�9 years), found similar delay inL2 reading, with a rate of only 75 words per minute in Irish compared to amean rate of 115 words per minute in English, their L1.

Skilful readers have highly automatic and effortless word recognition,which frees up their cognitive resources for text comprehension (Taguchi et al .,2004), and research supports this both in L1 reading (e.g. Adams, 1994;Stanovich, 1992), and in L2 reading (e.g., Anderson, 1999; Day & Bamford,1998). Automatic word recognition is essential because ‘it is highly unlikelythat excellent reading comprehension will be observed in the face of deficientword recognition skills’ (Stanovich, 1992: 4).

Such deficient word recognition skills are commonly noted in L2 readers(Anderson, 1999). As fluency and reading practice are mutually reinforcing,these readers are likely to have low motivation to practise reading in the L2,leading to what Stanovich (1986) termed the ‘Matthew effect’ (the learner whoreads well tends to read a lot, and to read fluently, whereas the learner who isnot a fluent reader tends to avoid reading, and does not develop the readingfluency necessary to enjoy reading).

However, Pikulski and Chard (2005) argue that a broader approach todeveloping fluency is needed than the simple advice ‘read, read, read’.Instead, they contend that explicit fluency instruction needs to be built intoliteracy instruction. They proposed a nine-step programme for improvingfluency and two of these initial steps, building the graphophonic foundations forfluency and providing instruction in recognising high-frequency words areconsidered here as aspects of the teaching of Irish reading which deservefurther consideration. They link also with other steps such as building andextending vocabulary, teaching common word parts and spelling patternsand the facilitation of repeated reading and independent reading. This paperwill address the issue of how to build effective recognition of high-frequencywords into an integrated approach to the teaching of Irish reading, in orderto facilitate the repeated reading and extensive reading that will assist bothreading and language development. The situation regarding the teaching ofIrish reading will be summarised first, followed by a brief outline of Irishorthography and a discussion of the challenges this presents to youngreaders.

Teaching Irish ReadingThe Republic of Ireland’s Revised Primary School Curriculum (Government

of Ireland, 1999) views Irish reading as an integral part of the languagelearning process for both L1 and L2 learners. There are three main groups ofyoung readers of Irish in the Republic:

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. L2 readers of Irish in English-medium schools who begin reading instructionin English, but learn Irish as a single subject from school entry at age 4,and begin Irish reading at age 7�8, in Grade 2.

. L2 readers of Irish in Irish immersion (‘all-Irish’) schools. In these schoolsinitial literacy is usually taught in Irish, the majority’s L2 (but see NıBhaoill & O Duibhir (2004) for discussion of differences between schoolsin this regard).

. L1 readers of Irish in Gaeltachtaı (Irish-speaking communities) who attendschools in officially designated Irish-speaking areas and who beginreading instruction in Irish. In these schools Irish is the official mediumof instruction, but children whose mother tongue is Irish are usuallymixed with L2 learners of Irish whose families are English-speaking.

The majority of children in Ireland attend English-medium schools (93%,Department of Education website, statistics 2002�2003), acquire their firstliteracy in English, their L1, and then move on to read in Irish as L2 within afew years. A minority acquire their first literacy in Irish either as their L1 or astheir L2, and go on to acquire literacy in English within a few years.

The Revised Curriculum expects children to generalise the skills from readingone language to the other, and most children are engaged in reading both Englishand Irish by age 9. However, despite this reliance on transfer of skills, there tendsto be little discussion with children of the orthographic differences between thelanguages, and teachers complain of a dearth of materials with which to presentthe grapheme�phoneme rules of Irish to beginners. The teaching of Irish readinghas tended to be oriented mainly towards reinforcing language items learnedorally, with little systematic identification of regular grapheme�phonemecorrespondences during Irish reading classes, little use of phonics for L2 readersin particular and an absence of discussion about the orthographical differencesbetween the two languages. The next section briefly outlines the Irishorthographical system (see Hickey, 2005 for a fuller examination) and discussesthe challenges it poses to young readers.

The Challenges of Irish Orthography: Miscues in YoungReaders

The Irish alphabet comprises 5 vowels and 13 consonants:1

B/a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t u�/

and represents approximately 50 basic sounds in the language (the lettersB/j, q, v, x, y, z�/ are also used in loan words). The five vowels of Irish can beeither short or long, and a length mark (sıneadh fada ) is placed abovethe vowel (B/a�/, B/e�/, B/ı�/, B/o�/, B/u�/) to indicate its lengthening, e.g.B/ba�/ /ba:/ ‘understanding’ versus B/ba�/ /ba/ ‘cows’. Vowels on which nostress is placed are pronounced as schwa /3/, but this is not representedorthographically.

While the script now used for written Irish is familiar to readers of English,the orthographical system differs significantly from English, and has beendescribed by O Murchu (1977) as ‘bewildering’ to newcomers. Standardisation

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of spelling in 1922, while simplifying to represent modern pronunciation, alsointroduced inconsistencies and a number of other difficulties (see O Murchu,1977 and O Se, 1990). One of the more ‘exotic features’ (O Murchu, 1977: 269)of Irish phonology that is expressed in its orthography is the contrast betweenslender (palatalised) and broad (non-palatalised or velarised) consonantforms. Orthographically the quality of the consonant is indicated by precedingor succeeding it with a slender or broad vowel. The following examples (takenfrom O Baoill, 2001: xiv) show minimal pairs of broad and slender consonants,with the palatalised consonant marked with a following /?/ according to thenorms of Irish phonetic transcription:

B/bo�/ /bo:/�//buo:/ ’cow’ B/beo�/ /b?o:/�//bio:/ ’alive’

B/buı�/ /bi:/�//bui:/ ’yellow’ B/bı�/ /b?i:/�//bii:/ ’be’

Another feature of Irish is its initial mutations, whereby the start of words,including verbs, nouns and adjectives, are either lenited (made more lenis inarticulation) or eclipsed (whereby a voiced segment becomes nasalised and avoiceless segment becomes voiced). For example, B/poca�/ /po:ka/ ’pocket’,when lenited (e.g. after the first person singular possessive B/mo�/ ‘my’)becomes (mo ) B/phoca�/ /fo:ka/ and when eclipsed (e.g. after the first personplural possessive B/ar�/ ‘our’) is (ar ) B/bpoca�/ /bo:ka/. Lenition is markedorthographically by the insertion of a B/h�/ after the initial stop, fricative or/m/, and eclipsis is marked by the prefixing of certain consonants to stopsand /f/, or of B/n�/ to a vowel. Both lenition and eclipsis change thepronunciation of the original consonant and result in complex word-initialconsonant clusters. Readers need to learn the following grapheme�phonemecorrespondences for lenited consonants:

B/ph�/�//f/ B/bh�/�//w/ B/th�/�//h/ B/dh�/�//g/ B/ch�/�//x/ B/phr�/�//fr/

B/fh�/�//Ø/ B/mh�/�//w/ B/sh�/�//h/ B/gh�/�//g/ B/chr�/�//xr/

The following are possible word-initial combinations on eclipsed consonants:

B/bp�/�//b/ B/mb�/�//m/ B/dt�/�//d/ B/nd�/�//n/ B/gc�/�//g/

B/ng�/�//E/ B/bhf�/�//w/ B/ngr�/�//Er/ B/tsr�/�//tr/ B/mbr�/�//mr/

Thus, while Irish uses an alphabet that is familiar to English readers, andshares some sounds and segments with English, it also has a different set ofrules to represent different sounds and morphosyntactic processes. While it isnot as deep an orthography as English, it nevertheless presents the childembarking on Irish reading with considerable challenges.

Those challenges are evident in the errors they make in reading some of themost frequent words and clusters they encounter. Miscue analysis of data

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collected in a study of Irish reading (see Hickey, 2005) among L2 readers aged7�8 years in Grade 2 in English-medium schools showed that many childrenin the lower half of the ability range had difficulty decoding even some of themost frequent Irish words. For example, the high-frequency word B/sı�/ ‘she’was frequently read aloud first as /s?e:/ ‘he’ and B/ı�/ ‘her’ was decoded oftenas /e:/ ‘him’ by these children. Other high-frequency words that challengedthese children are listed in Table 1, with some other miscues of words thatoccur in early texts.

These miscues indicate only partial analysis of the word, and an unduereliance on initial or salient letters, which will be discussed further below. Infact, these miscues indicate that these young readers of Irish were unsure ofsome of the most regular grapheme�phoneme relationships in the language,such as the long vowel sounds represented by B/a, ı, o, u, e�/. For example,new words with the vowel B/e�/ /e:/ were mispronounced as /i:/ by anumber of children (e.g. B/peist�/ ‘worm’ was read as /pi:st/) and new wordswith B/a�/ /a:/ were frequently mispronounced /e:/ (e.g. the name B/Aine�/

was read as /e:nya/), possibly indicating some intrusion from English letternames for these graphemes.

Hickey (2001, 2005) discussed some of these problems experienced byyoung children learning to read in Irish, and argued for an integratedapproach targeting both lower-level reading skills and the promotion ofrepeated reading and extensive reading, with more effective use of existingmaterials, the development of new materials, and the facilitation of parentalsupport for Irish reading. Focusing here on developing the lower-level skills, itappears that instruction explicitly promoting analysis of the most regularsound-symbol correspondences and the most frequent words in early readersis a critical step in addressing problems with reading fluency in Irish. Childrenwho are still laboriously decoding and misidentifying high-frequency wordscan be helped to increase their level of reading fluency through early

Table 1 Miscues in L2 readers of Irish aged 7� 8 years

Word and pronunciation Miscue in Grade 2 children’s data

ı /i:/ ‘her/it (feminine Noun)’ e /e:/ ‘him/it masc N’

sı /s?i:/ ‘she’ se /s?e:/ ‘he’

seo /s?o/ ‘here’ /so:/

ata /3ta:/ (relative�/pres. verb ‘to be’) /atu:/

na /n3/ (def. art pl.�/gen fem N sg) an /3n/ (def. art. sg.)

sıos /s?i:s/ ‘down’ suas /su3s/ ‘up’

crann /krann/ or /kraun/ ‘tree’ /cre:n/

lamh /la:v/ ‘hand’ /le:m/

Sean /s?a:n/ (boy’s name) /s?e:n/

lon /lo:n/ ‘lunch’ /le:n/

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intervention, as will be discussed further below. First, research on howchildren acquire automatic sight word recognition is outlined briefly.

High-frequency Words and Automaticity: Acquiring SightWords

Gardner (2004: 5) noted that there is now ‘general consensus that high-frequency words must be mastered in order to achieve minimum levels ofreading proficiency in both L1 and L2’. Such mastery requires that these wordsare recognised accurately and automatically, that is, on sight. Early research(e.g. Bridge et al ., 1983) had claimed that sight words are developed throughexposure to predictable text. However, Johnston (2000) showed that evenproficient first-grade readers learn only a very limited number of words frompredictable texts. Menon and Hiebert (2005: 16) concluded that over-relianceon predictable syntax may lead beginning readers to develop poor grapho-phonic strategies. Such poor strategies include a reliance on initial or salientletters to identify words. Harrison et al . (1996) found that about 80% of their 8-year-old sample showed inaccurate word-guessing based on initial, or initialand final letters when asked to read phonetically regular words, and about60% continued to make similar errors four years later, indicating the difficultyin replacing poor strategies, once established. Ehri (1992, 1995, 1998, 1999)developed an influential theory of how emergent readers learn sight words.The phases in this development, according to Ehri, are summarised below:

(1) Pre-alphabetic phase , when children have no awareness that sounds andletters are systematically related. At this time they acquire sight wordsby using visual clues in the printed representation of the word, e.g. theymight read the word MacDonalds by remembering the distinctivedouble arches of the trademark.

(2) Partial alphabetic phase , when children have learned some limitedknowledge of the relations between letters and sounds and knowsome letter sounds and names. However, because this is limited, theyread words by focusing on the initial letters, or on the letters whichcorrespond to the most salient sounds in a word, described as phonetic-cue reading. Later they may include final letters as decoding clues.

(3) Full alphabetic phase , when children are able to match up all the lettersthey see with the sounds they hear in a word. They can segment thesounds of a word into units, match them to the letters in the word andblend the sounds in order to pronounce the word.

(4) Consolidated alphabetic stage , when children can recognise whole wordsinstantly as units as a result of analysis and practice. Arising fromfurther practice with their sight words, pupils start to notice patterns insimilar words, and extract out letter patterns across different wordswhich they store as letter units. These consolidated units allow readersto operate with chunks of letters rather than individual letters, and thathelps them to read and remember multisyllabic words as sight words.

Ehrı (1992) argued that the most effective way for beginning readers to storesight words in memory is to analyse fully the sounds in the spoken words,

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segment them into their smallest sounds, compare these sounds to the lettersthey see, and work out which letter(s) match each sound, claiming that thewords that pupils practise reading several times in this way are retained inmemory as sight words which are recognised accurately and quickly. However,in commenting on the need to promote the automatic recognition of high-frequency words, Pikulski and Chard (2005: 514) noted the difficulty that manyhigh-frequency words are function words with irregular grapheme�phonemerelationships in English. As a result, there has been a tendency to teach them aswhole-words, using flashcards to train children to read them as wholes. YetEhri’s analyses of how children acquire sight words show that this initial focuson a whole-word route to sight word learning is less effective in developingsight word recognition to the most efficient level required for fluent reading.Ehri (2003: 2) summarised this issue based on the meta-analysis produced forthe National Reading Panel Report (2000):

People used to think that readers learned to read sight words bymemorising their visual shapes. However, research has led us to rejectthis idea. Now we know that sight word learning depends upon theapplication of grapheme-phoneme correspondences. These provide theglue that holds the words in memory for quick reading . . . Becoming askilled reader of sight words requires knowledge of phonemic segmen-tation, letter-sound correspondences, and spelling patterns to bond thecomplete spellings of specific words to their pronunciations and mean-ings in memory . . . A skilled reader is able to read familiar wordsaccurately and quickly because all of the letters have been secured inmemory.

Gaskins et al. (1996) noted that, while many of their first-grade readers couldread some words by sight, they had remained at the first two stages of sightword learning, and therefore made many errors and were also hampered by notbeing able to recognise patterns to transfer to reading new words. Perfetti (1991)argued that it is the quality of the word’s representation in memory thatdetermines the level of automaticity. Shallow analysis based on overall wordshape or on one or two salient letters, as in the first two word recognition stages,results in frequent errors and lower levels of automaticity. Stanovich (1991)showed that teachers who help pupils to analyse words promote automaticity,as does frequent practice with texts containing high-frequency words.

Nı Bhaoill and O Duibhir (2004) called for analysis of high-frequency wordsin Irish in order to enable teachers to assist emergent readers of Irish.Identifying high-frequency words in books aimed at young readers of Irishhas become more feasible and accurate with the development of a corpusspecifically devoted to the language that is aimed at children in early readersand in children’s leisure reading books in general. Analysis of such a corpus ispresented here, including consideration of the most frequently occurringwords in Early Reader texts as well as in the total corpus. Then ways ofhelping children to automatise the recognition of these high-frequency wordswill be considered.

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The Irish Corpus of Children’s Books (CLGP)This research is part of a larger study developing criteria for levelling Irish

children’s books according to interest and language difficulty in order topromote extensive reading. A corpus of books for children published mainlyby An Gum (the State’s Irish publishing section) was assembled. Corpas naLeabhar Gaeilge do Phaistı (Corpus of Irish Children’s Books) (CLGP) comprisesbooks aimed at preschoolers and children in primary school (up to about age13), and includes fiction and factual books, but excludes textbooks. The totalCLGP includes books to be read aloud to young children, early readers, andstories and longer books aimed at older independent readers. In all, the corpuscomprises over 200,000 word tokens, which includes about 13,000 word types.Table 2 details the distribution of books in the total corpus.

Data from that part of the corpus that comprises books aimed at earlyreaders were for some purposes analysed separately in order to examine moreclosely the language that is presented to children in the very early stages ofreading in Irish.

Most frequent words in Early Readers’ Irish books

Table 3 presents the most frequent words from the Early Readers’ corpus.It is at the point where children are beginning to read such small booksindependently that they are developing sight words, and thus it wasconsidered that it would be most useful to orient specifically towards thewords used in those books. A body of research (e.g. Carlisle, 2000; Gardner,2004; Mahony et al ., 2000; Nagy et al ., 1993) shows that young readers’ability to make word family connections varies significantly betweenchildren depending on variables such as whether they are reading in theirL1 or L2, their general reading skills, the size of their existing vocabulary,as well as on the instructional methods used with them. It was consideredmore conservative to assume that very young children learning to read inwhat is, for the majority, their second language are likely to treat words asseparate entities initially, rather than linking them to word families. This isparticularly relevant in Irish where words are fairly unstable, with initialmutations frequently altering initial consonants, genitive and plural inflec-tions changing the base form of nouns etc. For this reason it was decided topresent the most frequent words as word types, in order to examine whichversion of a word is used most frequently in early reader texts for children,

Table 2 Corpus of children’s books in Irish (CLGP)

Age group Number of books Number of words Number of word types

Read-aloud books 29 18,335 3,088

Early Reader books 151 18,118 1,983

Others (7� 13 years) 78 145,011 11,734

Total 258 210,464 12,779

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Table 3 The most frequent words in the Irish Early Reader corpus (by rank)

Rank Word Freq. % Texts

1 an* 830 4.50 121

2 a* 559 3.03 92

3 ta* 384 2.08 87

4 ar* 321 1.74 89

5 ag* 269 1.46 75

6 se* 269 1.46 60

7 agus* 224 1.21 83

8 me* 216 1.17 47

9 na* 213 1.15 66

10 is* 209 1.13 63

11 arsa* 197 1.07 40

12 sa* 197 1.07 67

13 mo* 164 0.89 46

14 ata* 159 0.86 48

15 go* 148 0.80 60

16 e* 135 0.73 49

17 sı* 133 0.72 24

18 seo* 123 0.67 48

19 bhı* 120 0.65 37

20 maith* 112 0.61 44

21 bhfuil* 106 0.57 41

22 le* 105 0.57 40

23 nıl* 104 0.56 29

24 liom* 101 0.55 32

25 nı* 98 0.53 35

26 i* 88 0.48 28

27 do* 79 0.43 29

28 tu* 79 0.43 31

29 ce 77 0.42 27

30 deir* 75 0.41 10

31 ann* 69 0.37 28

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Table 3 (Continued )

Rank Word Freq. % Texts

32 isteach* 68 0.37 33

33 amach* 65 0.35 38

34 chonaic* 62 0.34 19

35 mise* 62 0.34 22

36 beag* 59 0.32 18

37 ach* 58 0.31 35

38 ina* 55 0.30 30

39 anois* 54 0.29 32

40 teach 54 0.29 14

41 cad 51 0.28 19

42 leis* 51 0.28 27

43 Liam 51 0.28 16

44 ca 50 0.27 28

45 o* 50 0.27 25

46 deas 48 0.26 24

47 siad 48 0.26 21

48 dul* 47 0.25 25

49 fein* 47 0.25 25

50 agam* 46 0.25 14

51 leat* 46 0.25 21

52 Bear 44 0.24 8

53 Mamaı 44 0.24 20

54 sin* 44 0.24 23

55 Daidı 43 0.23 18

56 fear* 43 0.23 11

57 trı 43 0.23 20

58 chuaigh* 40 0.22 14

59 mor* 40 0.22 21

60 feach 39 0.21 12

61 nach* 39 0.21 21

62 rith 39 0.21 21

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Table 3 (Continued )

Rank Word Freq. % Texts

63 Sciob 39 0.21 10

64 buı 36 0.20 16

65 leaba 36 0.20 8

66 in* 34 0.18 21

67 Bran 33 0.18 12

68 cat 33 0.18 10

69 rua 33 0.18 10

70 anseo 32 0.17 12

71 brea 32 0.17 14

72 feidir 32 0.17 8

73 air* 31 0.17 15

74 as* 31 0.17 16

75 Bhrain 31 0.17 9

76 orm 31 0.17 18

77 raibh* 31 0.17 21

78 bıonn 30 0.16 14

79 chuir* 30 0.16 12

80 dearg 30 0.16 14

81 faoin* 30 0.16 12

82 mhala 30 0.16 10

83 Mhamaı 30 0.16 14

84 sugradh 30 0.16 15

85 cen 29 0.16 12

86 chodladh 29 0.16 14

87 linn 29 0.16 18

88 san* 29 0.16 20

89 duit 28 0.15 16

90 gorm 28 0.15 12

91 agat* 27 0.15 16

92 dtı* 27 0.15 11

93 leim 27 0.15 19

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rather than making assumptions about whether children link that word torelated words, or variants on that word.

Table 3 presents the most frequent words in the Early Readers books inIrish. The list comprises 102 words because on reaching 100 all of the words atthe same frequency level were included. Those words that figure in the mostfrequent 100 in the Early Reader corpus and in the larger corpus (CLGP) ofalmost 200,000 words are marked with an asterisk. Differences between themost frequent words from the smaller and the larger children’s corpus will bediscussed later.

Table 3 also presents information on the number of books in which eachword appears, allowing some comparison between a word such as sıcın(‘chicken’), which occurs frequently in a small number of texts (5), or am(time), which has about the same frequency, but is spread across a largernumber of texts (13). Repeated exposure to a word is necessary before it can berecognised at sight: Reitsma (1983) found that children needed to meet thesame word (and decode it successfully) at least four times before they couldtreat it as a sight word, and repeated reinforcement of particular words is moreeasily achieved within the same story. For ease of consultation, the words arealso presented alphabetically in Table 4 with their rank order of frequency.

The 102 most frequent words from the Early Readers Corpus of Irish booksaccount for 47% of the total words used in those books. The most frequent 214words give coverage of 70% of this corpus, but 424 words are required to reach80%. Comparing the most frequent words from the Early Reader corpus to thetotal corpus, we find that 60 of the Early Reader words occur in the 100 mostfrequent words from the larger corpus. The differences centre, to a largeextent, on the greater number of content words and character names that occurin the Early Reader corpus. For example, the following character names figurein the Early Readers’ most frequent words and not in the most frequent 100from the larger corpus of children’s books in Irish:

Table 3 (Continued )

Rank Word Freq. % Texts

94 sicın 27 0.15 5

95 amharc 26 0.14 8

96 eile* 26 0.14 12

97 liomsa 26 0.14 14

98 sneachta 26 0.14 8

99 am 25 0.14 13

100 Daideo 25 0.14 6

101 mhaith 25 0.14 13

102 tar* 25 0.14 11

*Words also in most frequent 100 of total CLGP

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Table 4 Alphabetic list of the most frequent words in the Early Reader corpus

Rank Word Rank Word

2 a* 85 cen

37 ach* 86 chodladh

5 ag* 34 chonaic*

50 agam* 58 chuaigh*

91 agat* 79 chuir*

7 agus* 100 Daideo

73 air* 55 Daidı

99 am 80 dearg

33 amach* 46 deas

95 amharc 30 deir*

1 an* 27 do*

31 ann* 92 dtı*

39 anois* 89 duit

70 anseo 48 dul*

4 ar* 16 e*

11 arsa* 96 eile*

74 as* 81 faoin*

14 ata* 60 feach

36 beag* 56 fear*

52 Bear 72 feidir

21 bhfuil* 49 fein*

19 bhı* 15 go*

75 Bhrain 90 gorm

78 bıonn 26 i*

67 Bran 66 in*

71 brea 38 ina*

64 buı 10 is*

44 ca 32 isteach*

41 cad 22 le*

68 cat 65 leaba

29 ce 51 leat*

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Daidı/a Dhaidı (Daddy and Vocative case), Daideo (Granddad), Mamaı/aMhamaı (Mammy and vocative), Liam, Sciob (dog’s name), Sicın(‘chicken’), bear (bear), Bran (dog’s name), (a) Bhrain (vocative of Bran)

Another notable difference between the Early Reader corpus and the largerone was the greater representation of the question words B/ce�/ and B/cen�/

‘who’, B/cad�/ ‘what’ and B/ca�/ ‘where’ in the Early Reader corpus, probablyas a result of the high representation of direct speech in these books. Thewords in common are discussed below.

Form and function words

As has been documented for other languages, a high proportion of themost frequent words in Irish are function words. These are defined as wordsthat have little meaning on their own, but that serve a syntactic or semantic

Table 4 (Continued )

Rank Word Rank Word

93 leim 76 orm

42 leis* 77 raibh*

43 Liam 62 rith

87 linn 69 rua

24 liom* 88 san*

97 liomsa 63 Sciob

20 maith* 6 se*

53 Mamaı 18 seo*

8 me* 17 sı*

101 mhaith 47 siad

82 mhala 94 sicın

83 Mhamaı 54 sin*

35 mise* 98 sneachta

13 mo* 84 sugradh

59 mor* 3 ta*

9 na* 102 tar*

61 nach* 40 teach

25 nı* 57 trı

23 nıl* 28 tu*

45 o*

*Word types also in most frequent 100 of total corpus of children’s books in Irish (CLGP)

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function in a phrase or sentence, such as articles, pronouns, prepositions,conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and interjections and expletives. Contentwords, on the other hand, are words that have meaning beyond theirgrammatical function, such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs and main verbs.Some of the most frequent function words in the most frequent Early Readerlist are discussed below.

Definite articlesB/An�/, the definite article singular, has several other functions, including

interrogative particle, and prefix meaning ‘very’. B/Na�/, the plural definitearticle, also functions as the genitive singular article for feminine nouns. Onthe evidence of the miscue analysis, these two words present significantdifficulties for young L2 readers, with children frequently reading na as an .This may be due to both conceptual issues (since English speakers areunfamiliar with the concept of the definite article being marked for case ornumber), and decoding problems, with the similarity of the letters and thesimilarity of the contexts in which they occur leading children not to attend tothem closely enough to distinguish them. Concordance on an showed that itmostly occurred before nouns (605 occurrences). Only a small proportion ofoccurrences were question particles e.g.B/an bhfaca�/ ‘did [you] see’ (17) andB/an bhfuil�/ (question form of present tense verb to be) (35) or prefixes B/an-mhor�/ ‘very-big’ (6). Concordance on na showed the following patterns: Na�/

noun (188 occurrences) e.g. B/na blathanna�/ ‘the flowers’. Na�/ genitivesingular feminine noun (25 occurrences): e.g. B/i lar na coille�/ ‘in the middleof the wood’, B/teas na greine�/ ‘heat of the sun’.

Pronouns and prepositional pronounsIrish has a system of prepositions that are marked for person (the

prepositional pronouns), and some of these figure in the most frequent words,as is shown below. The pronouns that appear in the first 100 words of the EarlyReader corpus are shown, as well as the most frequent prepositional pronouns.

Pronounsme Itu youse hesı shesiad they

mise me � emphatice 3rd masc. objı 3rd fem. Obj.

mo 1st per Poss.a 3rd per Poss masc/fem.

Prepositional pronounsle with prepliom 1st per

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liomsa 1st per emphaticleat 2nd perleis 3rd per masclinn 1st per. pl

ar on prepair 3rd per masc on-him

ag at prepagam 1st person at-meagat 2nd person at-you

do to prepduit to-you

The pronouns are regular, and the miscues already discussed indicate thatchildren need to become proficient at distinguishing the long vowel sounds inparticular. In learning the prepositional pronouns, children might be helped bythe teacher drawing their attention to two forms from the same pattern, whichwould help them to realise that they cannot rely on the first letter todistinguish these forms, but need to look at the rest of the word to ascertainwho is being referred to.

Other prepositions occurred in the most frequent words, but in their neutralform not marked for person, e.g. B/o�/ ‘from’, B/go dtı�/ ‘to’, B/faoin�/

‘under’, B/i�/, B/in�/ and B/ina�/, ‘in’, B/sa�/ and B/san�/ ‘in-the’, B/as�/

‘out from’. Altogether these pronouns and prepositional pronouns make up 32of the 102 most frequent words, a very significant proportion of the mostfrequent words, and therefore warranting particular emphasis in earlyexercises.

The verb ‘to be’The following forms of the verb ‘to be’ together make up 6% of the most

frequent words in the Early Reader Corpus:

Present tense forms: B/ta , ata , bhfuil , bıonn , nıl�/

Past tense forms: B/bhı , raibh�/

Overall, more than 40% of the most frequent words that children will meet inearly reader books comprise the articles, personal pronouns, a number ofprepositions and prepositional pronouns, and forms of the verb ‘to be’.

Language of narrativesThe language of narratives aimed at young independent readers requires

some ‘book language’ to manage indirect speech, and among the mostfrequent words are B/arsa�/ ‘said’ and B/deir�/ ‘says’. While the books aimedat early independent readers often try to avoid these terms simply bypresenting direct speech in speech bubbles, nevertheless the conventions ofreading require readers to control such terms quite early in their development,as is clear from their frequency even in the early reader corpus. In fact,

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B/arsa�/ ‘said’ has the same frequency rank in the Early Reader corpus as it hasin the Total CLGP corpus, indicating how early it becomes an importantfeature of narrative texts. Other verbs in the Early Reader corpus show theorientation towards narrative about current activities and past events, as isseen in Table 5.

Included also are the imperatives B/feach/amharc �/ ‘look’, which direct theyoung reader to the pictures accompanying text in some instances.

Facilitating Sight Word Learning in Irish: Theory into PracticeWhile a detailed approach to the teaching of the most frequent words in the

Early Reader corpus is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worthwhile to lookbriefly at a study that tackled the issue of helping children to acquire fast andaccurate decoding of high-frequency words. Gaskins et al . (1996/7) describe astudy using the Benchmark Extended Word Identification Program forBeginning Readers (BWI) with first-graders. This system centres on 93 high-frequency words to be learned as keywords in first grade, at a rate of 3�4 perweek. The teacher initially sounds out a word and helps pupils to discuss howmany sounds they hear before the teacher writes it on the blackboard. Childrenare then invited to compare the number of sounds heard with the number ofletters, and any digraphs are discussed. The teacher then elicits any similarwords and rhymes, and the children discuss any pattern visible, and anyexceptions. Teachers model how to analyse and talk about words, encouragingchildren to compare the initial sounds of new words with words they alreadyknow, then moving on to the vowels and comparing them to other familiarwords, or asking children to be ‘detectives’ to work out whether the vowelmakes a different sound in the new word than in a familiar word. Children are

Table 5 Verbs other than the verb ‘to be’ and copula in Early Readers

Rank Word Translation

11 arsa ‘said’

30 deir ‘says’

34 chonaic ‘saw’

48 dul ‘going’

59 chuaigh ‘went’

61 feach ‘look’ imperative, Standard

63 rith ‘ran/running’

80 chuir ‘put’

85 sugradh ‘playing’

94 leim ‘jumped/jumping’

96 amharc ‘look’ imperative, Ulster dialect

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invited to check up on their learning by using the questions on a ‘Talk toyourself’ chart that asks, for example, ‘I hear . . . sounds’ and ‘Isee . . . letters . . . because . . .’, ‘Another word with the same vowel sound is . . .’.

A very interesting feature of this approach is that teachers also explicitlydiscussed with children the different types of word recognition, giving examplesof visual-cue reading, phonetic-cue reading and contextual guessing, and thepitfalls of these strategies in causing errors. This aimed to convince pupils of theneed to analyse words fully, rather than partially at the outset, and wasenthusiastically received by the children, who were then more willing to be worddetectives and analytic in approaching new words, rather than being contentwith a more superficial analysis of the word. Keywords, once learnt, are writtenon the word wall, and therefore available for comparison with new wordsexhibiting some similarities. This is used in another exercise where childrenshare what they have learned about the word with a partner by following‘partner-sharing’ questions in order to identify similar words together.

At the end of each lesson children apply what they have learned byreading texts that contain the words learned and similar words. These can beeither a predictable rhyme composed by the teacher, or an Early Readerbook. Teachers read the text aloud first while children point and follow, thenthey echo read and choral read, and finally the children read all or part ofthe text alone. The text is sent home with the children and parents are askedto read it with their child, and children tell what they have learned aboutthese words.

Using a similar approach to the most frequent words in the Irish EarlyReader corpus could be beneficial, both for L1 learners and for L2 learnersacquiring their first or second literacy in Irish. Only in recent years havethere been major advances in the development and provision of gradedbooks and early readers for very young readers of Irish. One such series isSeidean Sı (An Gum, 2003), a course specially developed for children who areL1 speakers of Irish or L2 learners in all-Irish schools who are acquiring theirinitial literacy through Irish. The course contains several series of earlyreaders, with simple language and frequent repetition, as well as workbooks,CD-Roms and flashcards. The material is being produced in phases, and todate has targeted 4�7 year olds in the first three grades at the pre-readingand early reading stages in Irish-medium schools. The focus in the children’sworkbooks is on word-initial broad consonants and short vowels in the firstyear and on word-initial slender consonants and long vowels in the secondyear. Phonemic awareness is developed with a range of exercises, andchildren are offered frequent practice to help link the initial consonant withthe first sound and with the written word. In fact, teachers are now usingsome of these materials, as well as the series of books produced in NorthernIreland such as Ceim ar Cheim and Spleachadh (An tAisaonad Lan-Ghaeilge,various years) with older L2 learners of Irish in English-medium schools, inorder to access suitable material for the very early stages of reading Irish asL2. The provision of materials focusing on developing more fine-grainedsight word analysis of the most frequent words in the early reader corpuswould be a very useful addition to these materials, as a development of the

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materials that currently orient children to initial consonants and to whole-word recognition of flashcards.

Clearly, the needs of Irish immersion schools and Gaeltacht schools(where initial literacy is taught in Irish) in relation to Irish reading arepressing, but it would also be beneficial at this point to review the materialsused to teach Irish reading to children who learn their initial literacy inEnglish and come to Irish reading with very little proficiency in their L2.While it is true that these children transfer their nascent reading skills fromEnglish to Irish, the absence of explicit instruction on how to deal with Irishorthography appears in some cases to result in the acquisition of less thaneffective decoding strategies, or strategies that are counterproductive. Thesechildren receive little if any explanation of the different orthographical rulesthey encounter in Irish. Building more analytic exercises as classwork intotheir early formal reading of Irish would help to develop more accurate andfluent early decoding, which would assist weaker readers in particular. It isparticularly noteworthy in this regard that Ehri (2003) cautions againstlimiting word analysis instruction to workbook exercises, arguing thatdiscussion and direct input from the teacher in modelling how to talk aboutword analysis are more effective. It would be valuable to develop materialsto assist teachers to discuss with children, using a range of examples, the factthat Irish words can change their initial consonants, depending on what goesbefore them, producing words with complex clusters of consonants word-initially. Children could be encouraged to become ‘word detectives’ as inGaskins et al ., starting with patterns such as Mamaı ‘Mommy’ and moMhamaı ‘my Mommy’ and then tackling tasks such as working out what theword was before it was changed in other phrases such as mo theach , a Dhaid ,trı bhear. This could then be extended to look at other initial mutations suchas ag an mbear, ina gcodladh so that children are aware that these mutationsserve a function, and are able to decode the consonant clusters resulting fromthem. A case could be made for such discussions to be in English with the L2learners, but some work could even be carried out through Irish if enoughprops, visual aids and examples were used, and brief notes on the Irishexercises could be written in English and sent home to parents so that theycould reinforce the message as part of homework.

Another feature of Irish orthography that would benefit from such class-work with young readers of Irish is the use of vowels before or after aconsonant to signal the quality of the consonant. Instead, children who acquiretheir initial literacy in English approach Irish reading expecting to sound outvowels in Irish as they do in English, or expecting that combinations of vowelsrepresent particular sounds. In fact, in early frequent words like B/dearg�/

‘red’ the first vowel signals the slender (palatalised) quality of the firstconsonant /d/ producing /d?ar3g/, as does the first vowel also in B/fear�/

‘man’ /f?ar/ or B/teach�/ ‘house’ /t?ax/. In other cases, the second vowelbefore the final consonant signals that that consonant is slender, for example inB/deir�/ ‘says’ /d?er?/. Thus, older L2 readers could be helped to understandthat vowels in Irish often serve a different function than in English, indicating,as they do, the quality of the consonant rather than always being sounded outby themselves or in combination with other vowels. It might be helpful to

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produce some materials where words are segmented phonemically usingcolour codes for the letters in the same phoneme, e.g.

There are a number of patterns in the most frequent words in the Early Readercorpus, which would allow children to link similar words on the word wall asthey learn them. Some of these are presented in Table 6 as illustration, and it isclear that there are enough words in these patterns among the most frequentwords to justify some grouping, which might help children to find thecommon pattern, but also, in Ehri’s approach, encourage them to look for the

Table 6 Some vowel patterns in the most frequent words in Irish Early readers

a ı e

ca /ka:/ta /ta:/ata /3ta:/m(h)ala /ma:l 3/

a /a:/*na /na;/*la /la:/*da /da:/*amhain /3va:n?/ *thainig /ha:n?3g?/*

-ach

ach/ax/nach/nax/amach/3max/isteach/3? s? t? ax/teach/t? ax/

sı /s?i:/nı /n?i:/nıl /n?il?/bhı /v?i/(go) dtı /d?i:/Daidı /dad?i:/Mamaı /mami:/trı /t?r?i:/bıonn /b?i:n/buı /bi:/

ı /i:/*arıs /3?r?i:s?/*sıos /s?i:s/*

–aoi- �//i:/

faoi /fi:/*faoin/fi:n?/cathaoir/kahi:r?/*

e /e:/me /me:/se /s?e:/ce /k?e:/cen /ke:n?/bear /b?e:r/fein /f?e:n?/feidir /f?e:d?3 r?/feach /f?e:x/leim /l?e:m?/

cheile /x?e:l?3/*leir /l?e:r?/ *lei /l?e:i/ *

-ea-

dearg /d?ar3g/deas /d?as/leat /l?at/leaba /l?ab 3/

* Indicates a word with similar pattern in most frequent 100 list from the total Children’s Books inIrish Corpus.

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distinguishing letters so that they can be helped to progress from the phase ofbasing their word recognition on the initial letter.

Work on establishing accurate and fast recognition of these words needs tobe supplemented by analysis of the differences between similar words, andthen by extension to new words containing those sounds so that children cansound out those words by analogy. Practice with these words in repeatedreadings of simple texts is then necessary to consolidate their learning andmake their recognition fully automatic.

ConclusionsFluency is now receiving attention in underpinning successful reading both

in L1 and L2. Improving fluency is not sufficient to ensure successful reading,but rather it is necessary in order to facilitate processing and comprehension.Ehri’s model of how children develop word recognition shows the phases intheir developing decoding skills on the way to recognising words by sight.Instruction that focuses on analysis of the high-frequency words as part of anintegrated approach to teaching reading has been shown to be useful in movingchildren towards automatic sight word recognition. Building up faster andmore accurate word recognition of the high-frequency words of Irish would laya firmer foundation for supporting the repeated reading and extensive readingthat research shows to be crucial for developing effective L2 reading skills.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Seosamh O Murchu and An Gum forassistance in this research.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Tina M. Hickey, School of

Psychology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland (Tina.Hickey@ucd.ie).

Note1. This description of Irish orthography is based on Graimear Gaeilge na mBraithre

Crıostaı , 1999; An Focloir Poca , (O Baoill, 2001); O Murchu, 1990; O Se, 1995, 2000; OBaoill, 1996; O Siadhail, 1989.

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