Teaching Modern Syllabication.

DESPITE all the definitional and methodological controversies in reading, there is general agreement that the end goal of instruction should be to enable the student to ex tract from a line of printed words a thought and language structure that have meaning for him. All reading instruction should be directed toward this ultimate goal. Teachers recog nize the close relationship between subvocal speech, thought, and lan guage. They should leave the task of clarifying the interrelationships be tween these variables to linguists and psychologists. The primary task of the teacher is to design instruction to aid the student in matching his speech and language to the printed page. Controversy arises because no one "knows" what instruction is nec essary for any student. Teachers must choose from a plethora of ma terials and philosophies by using a mixture of partial knowledge, prag matism and common sense. Some resolution of the controversies will no doubt be forthcoming. In the meantime, teachers must continue evaluating instruction to determine which activities facilitate achieve ment of the end goal and which ones are merely traditional and may even be detrimental. A growing controversy about the effectiveness of current procedures for teaching syllabication exists. There is still almost universal accept ance of the following generalizations: a) a word is divided between adjacent consonants (the vc/cv rule), b) a word is divided before a consonant (the v/cv rules), c) le attaches to a preceding consonant to form a syl lable. Groffs (1971) list of authori ties who recommend teaching letter syllabication could be titled "Who's Who in Reading." The view of these