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Flash Cards: Sight Words for Every Level of ESL/EFL Reading Fluency

Lance Herrington

"Flash cards are a convenient, simple, and popular format for presenting discrete stimulus items (e.g., sight words) during discrimination training. Sight words can be presented singly while the instructor delivers prompts, reinforcement, and corrective feedback. Each repetition of the three-term contingency (presentation of the flash card, response of the learner, and consequence delivered by the teacher) further strengthens future responding in the presence of the relevant antecedent" (Kupzyk, Daly, & Andersen, 2011).

In the American education system, flashcards in the classroom were a prominent feature of my own learning experience of literacy. But as an American student of other languages at bhigh school and college in the U.S., I found flashcards relegated to an almost extracurricular status that, even at the introductory level of instruction, was: 1) optional or self-administered; 2) treated solely as a method of review; and/or 3) focused exclusively on lexicon. As a teacher of ESL/EFL, I have found that one simple tool from my childhood days in elementary school classrooms can be adapted for effective classroom practice that increases learners' familiarity with (and confidence in their ability to process) the most frequently encountered words in written English, across genres. Using flashcards of these words in creative ways that focus on the immediacy of recognition (instead of vocabulary knowledge) can be interactive in a way that enlivens repetition. In other words, the benefits without the boredom.

Edward B. Fry compiled a corpus of what he refers to as "Instant Words." These are the thousand most common English words, ranked in frequential order, of which the first hundred words account for half (and the first three hundred words account for approximately 65%) of all written material in English language. "Is it any wonder that all students must learn to recognize these words instantly and to spell them correctly also? Being able to recognize these words on sight contributes significantly to reading fluency" (Kress & Fry, 2016). I have experienced and observed how bringing sight words into the ESL/EFL classroom, both in terms of students' awareness and autonomy, can have literacy benefits that are both motivational and strategic.

As one of the most popular and widely-used sets of English sight words, Fry's list is readily available in the form of commercially-produced flashcards, as well as accessible online in formats that are downloadable and/or printable. During next week's Teaching Demonstrations, I hope to share some creative ways that I have been able to incorporate these into classroom fluency practice that is quick, easy, engaging, and helpful to learners.
                                                                                                               

REFERENCES

Kress, J.B. & Fry, E.B. (2016). The reading teacher's book of lists. Jossey-Bass.

Kupzyk, S., Daly, E.J., & Andersen, M.N. (2011). A comparison of two flash-card methods for improving sight-word reading. Journal of applied behavior analysis, 44(4), 781-792. 
https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.2011.44-781

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