Which Words Are Special? Identification of “Sight” Words in Educational Resources

ABSTRACT Which words are important for early reading instruction? A standard view holds that certain words should be emphasized early in development because they are used with high frequency and/or contain atypical spelling‐sound structure. Such words have been labeled “sight,” “trick,” “snap,” or simply “high frequency” words; we refer to them as “special” words, which is intended to reflect their status as words that have been identified as being of particular instructional importance. The present study examined whether instructional resources such as commonly used curricula and word lists agree on their identity. Understanding the contents of these resources and those like them is important given their prevalence in instruction: teachers rely on wordlists to plan activities to support early word reading skills. We addressed this question using six such resources ranging from the classic Dolch list to modern commercial curricula. Results show substantial disagreement about the designated words and their properties. A total of 973 distinct words are identified in these materials. Only 28 words (3%) appear in all six resources, and over half appear in only a single one (560 words; 56%). Additional analyses demonstrate that the materials differ in terms of a number of word properties including frequency and spelling‐sound consistency. Together the results indicate a surprising lack of agreement about which words should be treated as special for instructional purposes. These differences suggest that beginning readers' learning experiences may vary greatly. In the general discussion we describe an alternative method for identifying words on a more principled basis, which would also facilitate comparisons across curricula. This method is based on computational theories of word reading that specify how properties of words such as spelling‐sound consistency and word frequency affect learning. Theories of this kind can provide a more systematic basis for identifying words to emphasize in early instruction.