The Power of Orthographic Mapping: Unpacking a Key Component of Reading Success

Subtropical. Complicate. Antelope. These are long words. We don’t see them every day. They have complicated spelling patterns. Did you have any trouble reading them? Did you have to sound them out?

If you are a skilled reader, it’s likely that you didn’t have to sound them out. That’s because those are what researchers call “sight words”. In this article, we're going to be using the researchers' definition of sight words. For researchers, a sight word is any word that we can read accurately and effortlessly. It's not just the words on the Dolch 220 or the Fry list. For most adults, it's a huge library of words, commonly called your “sight word memory.”.

Your sight word memory is all the words that you can read both accurately and effortlessly. And for most adults, their sight word memories are somewhere between 30,000 and 70,000 words. So, when you sit down to read an article like this, most of the words on the page just come to you instantly, and that's because they sit in your sight word memory.

There's only one way to get a word into your sight word memory — through a process that's commonly called 'orthographic mapping'.

‘Orthographic mapping’ is best defined as the process we use to turn unfamiliar words into instantly recognizable sight words. This vital process enables readers to build a large library of words that they instantly recognize, which is essential for fluent reading, and fluent reading is crucial to strong literacy outcomes.

So, if you read subtropical, complicate, and antelope instantly and accurately, it's because you have already orthographically mapped them to your permanent long-term memory. So, you might then ask, ‘How do I get my hands on some ‘orthographic mapping’ lessons?’

You might already have them if you use materials from Really Great Reading. While orthographic mapping can't be taught explicitly, teaching foundational literacy skills correctly can activate a learner’s “orthographic mapping engine.”

Activating the “orthographic mapping engine” relies on the acquisition of several teachable foundational literacy skills, particularly phonemic awareness and phonics decoding. And then you need to add some knowledge, particularly knowledge of phoneme-grapheme relationships and knowledge of syllable patterns. These skills and knowledge help learners grasp the underlying substructures within words, which is key to facilitating the orthographic mapping process.

When these skills and knowledge are taught effectively, they enable students to activate their orthographic mapping engines. Once activated, this engine continues throughout life (barring any catastrophic events), constantly transforming unfamiliar words into easily recognizable ones. However, it requires the right fuel—words. We’ll discuss this fuel shortly, but first, let's explore how this engine transforms students into autonomous, self-teaching word learners. To understand this a little better, let’s introduce David Share’s self-teaching hypothesis.

Self-Teaching Hypothesis

We aren’t born with any sight words. If you have 70,000 words in your sight word memory, it’s likely that you taught most of them to yourself. For early readers, all written words are unfamiliar, but as they master a core set of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and can phonetically segment and blend simple words, they begin to teach themselves words. They become self-teaching engines.

Consider this simple example. Joey is a 1st grader who loves frogs. He talks about frogs, draws pictures of frogs, and loves to read about frogs. With a teacher's guidance, he has developed the ability to hear the four phonemes in "frog" (/f/-/r/-/ŏ/-/g/) and has thus developed a strong sense of the relationship between the four phonemes and four graphemes in the word. He also has developed strong letter-sound correspondences and has learned to manipulate phonemes. This all happens with instruction; most students won’t pick up on these skills without being taught.

As Joey begins to encounter words that are similar to the word "frog," his brain takes what it knows about the word "frog" and starts to teach itself words that have similar structures, like "fog," "frost," and "smog." He’s teaching himself these new words by analogy. He uses his skills and knowledge to transform these unfamiliar words into instantly recognizable sight words.

David Share's Self-Teaching Hypothesis, proposed in the 1990s, focuses on the crucial role of decoding in learning to read and how it facilitates the development of word recognition skills. According to the Self-Teaching Hypothesis, each successful decoding encounter with an unfamiliar word provides a learning opportunity for the reader. This means that every time a child decodes a word, they essentially teach themselves how to recognize that word more quickly and effortlessly in the future. The hypothesis suggests that decoding (sounding out words) is critical because it allows children to independently acquire orthographic knowledge of words. This orthographic learning contributes to the development of a sight word memory—a lexicon of words that can be recognized accurately and effortlessly. Researchers often call this a person’s Orthographic Lexicon.

In essence, Share posits that the act of decoding itself is what teaches children to read. This implies that effective reading instruction should ensure that children have ample opportunities to engage in decoding, thereby leveraging their natural learning processes to build their reading skills autonomously. Share’s self-teaching hypothesis highlights the importance of phonological decoding in enabling readers to become independent and proficient over time.

The decoding process is seen as a reliable method to identify novel letter strings, thanks to the alphabetic nature of written language, thus enabling incidental learning of spellings. This process is supported by oral language skills and a solid understanding of the mapping between speech sounds (phonemes) and spellings (graphemes).

The self-teaching hypothesis also implies that it is not feasible to directly teach all the words a person might encounter. This is particularly true because we are constantly adding words to the English lexicon. My 2nd grade teacher didn’t teach me words like googled, hashtag and emoji, that’s because they hadn’t been invented yet! However she taught me the skills I needed to decode these words, and through repeated encounters, they became part of my sight word memory because I orthographically mapped them.

At Really Great Reading we like to say, we need to teach skills, not words. And we need to teach those skills in a very specific way so that students develop a few key skills, phonemic proficiency, and automatic phoneme-grapheme correspondences.

Orthographic Mapping Engine and the Fuel It Needs – Words

Just as the engine is the core component that powers the car, the orthographic mapping engine is central to turning unfamiliar words into instantly recognizable sight words. For most skilled readers, it’s efficient, converting words into sight words effortlessly, with just multiple exposures.

Once we get a child’s orthographic mapping engine started, we need to fuel it. It’s fueled by words. The quality of the fuel matters; in this case, the fuel is the exposure to written words that have phonics patterns familiar to the reader. High-quality fuel (words with clear, recognizable phonics patterns) leads to better performance of the engine, enabling it to work faster and more efficiently. Even though English phonemes can be spelled in numerous ways, a foundational knowledge of a limited number of grapheme-phoneme correspondences can start the engine, and it can be fueled by controlled decodable text.

Thus, exposure to orthographic patterns through logically organized word lists aids in the rapid recognition of new words. While typically developing readers may need only a few exposures to recognize words quickly, struggling readers may require more extensive practice. (It’s thought that between 1 and 5 encounters is sufficient for most learners).

Researchers now know that students with active engines can teach themselves new spelling patterns and thus increase the power of their orthographic mapping engines. When children really understand the substructures that drive English orthography (phonemes and graphemes), they can even teach themselves new patterns.

Consider this example: if a child knows how to decode the word "sit," understands the phoneme and grapheme relationships in the word "sit", and is correctly exposed to the word "sight"—which has three phonemes and a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes—then they can teach themselves that "igh" spells the long I sound in the word. This recognition of a new spelling pattern allows them to teach themselves words like "right," "might," and with the help of the word "frog," even teach themselves the word "fright." Thus, don’t be surprised if you observe learners rapidly generalizing their skills to a number of untaught spelling patterns.

Previously we said, “Each successful decoding encounter with an unfamiliar word provides a learning opportunity for the reader”. What else (besides phoneme-grapheme knowledge and phoneme proficiency) do we need for a successful encounter . . . knowing the correct pronunciation of the word.

Knowing the pronunciation of many words is crucial to developing a large sight word memory, a large orthographic lexicon. Essentially having a rich oral vocabulary with lots of words you’ve heard before. To speak of researcher terms, it means having a large Phonological Lexicon.

When a reader encounters an unfamiliar written word, if they can associate it with a word they have already heard, they are more likely to quickly convert it to a sight word.

Thus, exposure to a broad and diverse vocabulary through conversation, reading aloud, and other auditory experiences enriches a reader's phonological lexicon. This diversity not only aids in recognizing more words but also in understanding various contexts and nuances in language usage. It's important for educational strategies to include a mix of phonics-based approaches and activities that promote rich verbal interactions. These interactions help children link the sounds they hear in everyday life with the letters they see in the text.

Difference between a High-Frequency Word and a Sight Word

So, we are labeling subtropical, complicate, and antelope as sight words. They aren’t on Dolch 220 or the Fry list. For researchers there is a difference between a High Frequency Word and a Sight Word. The Dolch 220 and the Fry list are both sets of high-frequency words used in teaching reading. These are often the first words we want our students to turn into sight words (words that are instantly and accurately recognized). Thus, both lists are widely used in educational settings to help children develop reading fluency by recognizing words quickly and automatically.

Many sight words are regularly spelled and thus can be orthographically mapped by using basic letter sound correspondences, the ones learned in kindergarten. These words include "if," "and," "it" and "had." Others have irregular spellings, like "said" "saw" and "could." For readers to become fluent, they need to orthographically map both regularly spelled and irregularly spelled high-frequency words. That’s why we introduced Heart Word Magic.

This approach is designed to help students learn irregularly spelled high-frequency words, words that don't follow the common phonics rules. The idea behind Heart Word Magic is to blend phonics with visual and mnemonic aids to help students memorize these irregular words. For example, students might learn to recognize and spell words like "said" or "saw" or “could” by highlighting both the regular and irregular parts of the word. This method acknowledges the parts of the word that can be sounded out phonetically, while also focusing on the irregular parts that students just need to "learn by heart."