Excerpt from The Rational Method in Reading: An Original Presentation of Sight and Sound Work, That Leads Rapidly to Independent and Intelligent Reading

The method of teaching reading embodied in this book is an outgrowth of the authors profound dissatisfaction with the results of the word method.

The latter method, while it possesses the undisputed merit of leading to facility in thought gathering during the first stage of the work, proves slow and cumbrous afterward, fails to excite the child to effort, furnishes him with but a scanty vocabulary, and finally sends him out of school unprovided with a key by means of which, without further assistance, he may gain access to the treasures of the language.

The Rational Method is a peculiar combination of the word and phonetic methods. It utilizes each for that part of the work to which it is especially adapted. The word method is used, first as principal, because of its value in developing a habit of reading thoughtfully, and afterward as auxiliary, to remedy the shortcomings of the phonetic method, and increase the stock of word phonograms. The phonetic method, which is introduced by easy stages during the ascendency of the word method, finally becomes the principal means of growth and progress. It imparts power, while it supplies the key which the word method is inadequate to give.

The aims of the Rational Method are: -

1. To make the child not only independent in his reading, but generally self-reliant.

2. To enable him to read a vastly greater amount than heretofore in a given time, and thus acquire not only a fuller vocabulary, but greater maturity of mind.

3. To put him into possession, during the first year and a half of school life, of a complete key to the language, so that, no matter how soon thereafter his schooling may cease, his ability to read will be assured.

The following are the leading features of the phonetic part of the work: -

I. The presentation of the sounds and their symbols (phonograms) in a rational order, that is, an order in which the easier precede the harder. The easiest sounds to use in phonetic reading are those that may be indefinitely prolonged, and the blending of which in words may therefore be most readily shown and perceived. These sounds, the Rational Method deals with first.

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