PLD’s High Frequency Words (HFW’s)

High frequency words, are a set of common words which are phonetically regular and irregular that require no effort to recall (orthographic lexicon or sight vocabulary). In the past, they have been referred to as “sight words”. “Sight words” mean so many things to different people. The term “sight word” often provides a false impression that these commonly used words are to be learned by sight (or visual memorisation). Research does not support teaching these words as visual whole units without paying attention to the phoneme-grapheme (sound to letter) correspondences. It is far more useful to regard “sight words” as high frequency words that need to be explicitly taught so they are eventually learned by sight. Automatic recognition of the words by sight is the end product that is achieved through systematic and explicit teaching.