Word: reader
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...youngsters enter first grade at seven, a year later than U.S. children. But in a few weeks, using a phonics system, they can handle all sounds of their Cyrillic alphabet (Russian is more precisely phonetic than English). Bright or slow, all children then take up a standard first-grade reader with a vocabulary of 2,000 words. By comparison, one commonly used U.S. first reader. Fun with Dick and Jane* is limited to a 158-word vocabulary. Sample: "See me run," said Sally. "See Spot run. Oh, oh! This...
...essence, the Russians shun this-is-fun in favor of solid content. In his first reader, the Russian tot is blatantly propagandized, notably in a eulogy of Lenin's love for children. He is urged to keep clean, study hard, tell the truth, feed birds in winter, help old ladies when they fall, and take care of papa when mama is off at her job flying an airplane. But he also studies the lives of ants, bees and squirrels. He is taught how to identify six mushrooms, twelve birds and the tracks of hares, foxes and wolves. Fully...
...second grade the Soviet student doubles his reading vocabulary to 4,000 words. In third grade he hits 8,000 words with a formidable reader of 384 pages. The paper is cheap; the prose is rich. A third-grader studies the origin of everything from rivers and steel to frogs and wind. Anatomy and medicine are introduced with an adult description of bones, muscles, lungs, heart, ear, contagious diseases and six bacteria, all illustrated. Throughout the reader are stories by first-rate authors-Chekhov, Turgenev, Gorky...
When he finishes fourth grade, with a reading vocabulary of 10,000 words, the Soviet student is ready for a systematic study of Russian literature, plus separate courses in history, geography and foreign languages. By contrast, the U.S. fourth-grader is still at work on a "basal" reader with a vocabulary of fewer than 1,800 words, "a middle-class idealization" of cardboard mommies and daddies in "a hypothetical and sterile community"-trirling stories written by obscure women with three names...
...Words." The reason for such limitations is the U.S. dogma of "vocabulary control"-holding down each reader to only a few new words. The rules are often "downright exquisite," says Trace. Widely used readers boast that "no new words" appear for 100 pages or more; the old words are endlessly repeated; the stories are inevitably dull. "Insipid, trivial, inane, pointless," Trace calls them...