Section III: Decoding and Word Study Teaching Reading Sourcebook 2nd Edition

Word Reading Skills To clarify how word reading skills contribute to proficient reading, two explanations of how the reading process works are: The Adams Model of Skilled Reading which describes the skilled reading process as a network of connections among four processors: orthographic, phonological, semantic, and context. Ehri’s Phases of Word Recognition Development which explains that word recognition develops in five phases: pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic, consolidated alphabetic, and automatic.

The Adams Model of Skilled Reading The orthographic processor accesses the visual information in print. The phonological processor contributes information from speech sounds. The semantic processor considers possible meanings and selects the correct one. The context processor constructs an ongoing and coherent interpretation of the text. For proficient reading to occur, all the processors must work together. This “connectionist” approach helps in the understanding of the complex reading process. The connection of the letter (orthographic information) with the sounds (phonological information) to form the words is decoding which allows the reader to access the word’s meaning (semantic information) and along with these the rest of the context provided in the text allows for comprehension.

Ehri’s Phases of Word Recognition Development Word recognition develops in five phases as students develop their sight word vocabularies. (Ehri defines a sight word as any word practiced enough to be read from memory.) In the Pre-Alphabetic Phase, before students recognize letters or their sounds, they depend on other visual cues to recognize words: pictures, logos, other visual features. In the Partial Alphabetic Phase, students know some letters and sounds. They use their limited sound/spelling knowledge to identify words. They may identify the first or last letter and guess the word. Few words can be identified reliably with this method. In the Full Alphabetic Phase, students have extensive knowledge of the alphabetic system and are able to decode accurately but typically slowly and laboriously. With practice, their decoding becomes more automatic, they recognize the most common letter/sound spellings and multi-letter patterns and recognize more words by memory. Students in the Consolidated Alphabetic Phase begin to rely more on multi-letter patterns or chunks within words. They begin to use analogy from known patterns to recognize words and their sight word knowledge increases. In the Automatic Phase, the majority of words a reader encounters are recognized automatically. To read those that are unfamiliar the reader uses multiple strategies to identify the words. This is the stage of fluent reading, which allows the reader to focus more attention on meaning of text.

Decoding The connection of the letters (orthographic information) with the sounds (phonological information) to form words is decoding. Learning to decode well and early is essential to proficient reading. Research has shown that much of the variance in ninth graders’ reading comprehension can be explained by first grade decoding skill.* *Connecticut Longitudinal Study (1992)