2. The Emergent Reader of Irish: Promoting Real Recognition of The Most Useful Words

Fluency and efficient word recognition have been identified as critical components of reading, and research shows a significant positive correlation between oral reading fluency and comprehension. There is a need to strive for fluency from the child’s earliest experiences with print through the fostering of effective decoding skills and fast, accurate word recognition. Ehri’s theory of word recognition development is considered here with regard to some of the miscues of young second language readers of Irish. A brief outline of Irish orthography presents some of the difficulties children encounter when learning Irish reading. The presentation of the most frequent Irish words in a special corpus of books aimed at early independent readers of Irish allows a consideration of ways of promoting deeper analysis of these words. This is what facilitates automatic and accurate word recognition and underpins the decoding skills which make independent reading in the L2 less laborious and more effective