Did you know? A literate adult's sight word memory holds 30,000 - 70,000 words!
Did you know that adults have a very large library of words that they read automatically? Among literate adults, this library typically contains between 30,000 and 70,000 words. Teachers call these sight words. These are words that are decoded quickly and without conscious effort. Researchers say our brains still decode them, but it’s done so lightning fast that it seems like we don’t!
Consider words like majestic, communications, oatmeal, encyclopedia. If you are a literate adult, it probably took you less than 2 seconds to read those four words and you did it without conscious effort. Researchers have a fancy name for these words – Orthographic Lexicon. These are words that we read fast (typically in less than .20/second or 200 milliseconds) and without any conscious effort. The primary goal of decoding is to build words into our Orthographic Lexicon (our sight word memory). This is why efficient and effective decoding instruction is so essential for beginning and struggling readers.
