reading development

Learning Outcomes

  • By the end of this session, you should be able to:
  • Describe the main stages that characterize the process of learning to read.
  • Describe the main factors determining how well children learn to read.
  • Explain the difference between decoding skills and comprehension.
  • Understand why learning to read some scripts is more difficult than others.

Today’s Session

  • Theories of Learning to Read:
  • Frith’s (1985) Stage Model
  • Ehri’s (1999) Phase Model
  • What Influences Learning to Read?
  • Decoding vs. comprehension
  • Orthographic transparency

Importance of Literacy

  • How does literacy affect everyday life?

  • Communication with friends

  • Employment opportunities

  • Access to housing

  • Statistics on Literacy in the UK:

  • 5.1 million people with low literacy skills

  • Only 52% own their home

  • 51% have no qualifications

  • 56% are in employment

  • Poor literacy costs the UK over £2 billion annually

Theories of Learning to Read

  • Stage/Phase Theories Overview:
  • Various models propose differing stages through which children progress in reading.

Frith's (1985) Stage Model

  1. Logographic Phase:
  • Recognition based on visual/contextual features.
  • Example: Recognizing words by salient graphic cues rather than letters.
  • Potential errors: Misreading words based on visual similarities.
  1. Alphabetic Phase:
  • Involves knowledge of phonemes and graphemes.
  • Reader decodes words letter by letter, can pronounce unfamiliar words.
  • Example: “Cat” sounded out as c – a – t.
  1. Orthographic Phase:
  • Recognition relies on abstract letter strings and morphemes.
  • Recognizing words by their structure rather than phonetic spelling.

Ehri’s (1999) Phase Model

  1. Pre-alphabetic Phase:
  • Reading through memorized visual clues and prediction. Errors often visual-semantic.
  • Study showed children learned words faster when associated with visual cues.
  1. Partial Alphabetic Phase:
  • Children can recognize some letters and sounds but still rely on sight and prediction for familiar words.
  • Typified by initial/final letter recognition leading to misreads.
  1. Full Alphabetic Phase:
  • Systematic analysis of graphophonemic units to read words; can decode new words.
  • Training in blending sounds significantly improves word reading accuracy.
  1. Consolidated Alphabetic Phase:
  • Readers consolidate information about recurring letter patterns.
  • Smaller groups of letters are recognized as single units, improving reading efficiency.

Influences on Learning to Read

  • Factors Affecting Learning to Read:
  • Decoding and comprehension skills
  • Socioeconomic status of children
  • Variance Between Languages:
  • Languages differ in orthographic transparency: the regularity between printed letters and speech sounds.
  • English is categorized as having an opaque orthography compared to languages like Finnish or Italian.

Decoding vs. Comprehension

  • Decoding:

  • The process of associating letters with speech sounds.

  • Key in recognizing both real and nonsense words.

  • Comprehension:

  • Understanding context and semantics behind words read.

  • Skills such as vocabulary knowledge and grammatical awareness are crucial for comprehension.

Summary of Key Findings

  • Longitudinal studies show that early phonological processing, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and grammatical skills predict later reading success.
  • Comprehension interventions demonstrate that oral language skills improve comprehension significantly more than phonological skills alone.

Conclusion

  • Learning to read is influenced by a variety of interconnected factors, including decoding skill development, comprehension, and the characteristics of the language being learned. Attention to each of these elements is crucial in teaching strategies for developing literacy skills among children.