There is an assertion that children should have access to a variety of texts that they can easily read, however, there is an issue over what makes a text easy to read. For quite a number of years, materials that contained tightly controlled vocabulary were used. Such materials were steeped in the understanding that learning would be easy, if a child encounters the same words repeatedly in his reading, and if he were exposed to new words along with sentence structures in a predetermined sequence .Intuitively, these ideas make a certain amount of sense, but I see fault with the “Go, Spot, go” type of writing.
If we think about the natural oral language of our Trinidadian or Tobagonian children, the simple language pattern of “Go Spot, go” is not what they hear in daily life; in addition, the vocabulary repetition is unnatural (when was the last time you said, “Look, oh look, look, look at the hot aloo pies”, in conversation?) I believe that stories written with restricted sentence patterns and done to fit a formula of certain words, usually lack literary merit. It is for these reasons that I suggest we look for and use alternatives, such as Predictable Texts, like Mother Goose rhymes, environmental print and Pattern Books. If you have an experience in using any of these texts , please share them with us.
Lemoy
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