REading and Writing: an overview

Reading and writing are fundamentally oral language skills that rely on strong listening and speaking competence.  Together, they are referred to as “literacy skills.”

Unlike listening and talking, reading and writing are not innate to human beings. Nonetheless, they have become incredibly important skills to master for social, academic, and career success.

Reading and writing are unique abilities, but highly interrelated and involve the 5 language domains: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics of listening and talking.

reading

The ultimate goal of reading is comprehension. For comprehension, strong word level reading and oral language skills are required.

See below to learn more about what it takes to be a strong reader, signs and symptoms of a struggling reader, and management of reading difficulties.

COMPONENTS OF READING COMPETENCY

PHONEMIC AWARENESS is the core auditory skill for reading. It is the awareness of individual sounds in spoken words. To be a strong reader, one must be able to accurately and automatically blend, segment, and manipulate sounds in words. Manipulating sounds includes deleting sounds from words (e.g., Say “split” without /l/: “spit”) and substituting sounds in words (e.g., Say “brush” but use /k/ instead of /b/: “crush”).

DECODING, also referred to as “phonic decoding,” or “sounding out words,” is the ability to match a sound to a letter/letter pattern and blend the sounds to read an unfamiliar word.

ORTHOGRAPHIC MAPPING is the process in which each word becomes stored in the brain for effortless recognition in the future. In order to orthographically map words, one must have strong phonemic awareness, strong sound-letter knowledge, and ample opportunities to read words.

FLUENCY is the ability to read words accurately and automatically with appropriate expression, rate, and phrasing. It is important to know that fluency is a result of successful orthographic mapping. It is when words are automatically recognized by sight.

COMPREHENSION is the ability to construct meaning from written text.  Reading comprehension is the product of fluent, accurate word level reading and oral language proficiency. This includes knowledge of vocabulary, complex syntax, and an understanding of text structure. Background knowledge, application of executive function skills (e.g., monitoring for understanding, self-regulating), attention, and memory are other significant variables for success.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

A break down with any of the skills mentioned above can result in a struggling reader.  Children who have “unexpected” difficulty learning to read efficiently, despite rich early literacy experiences and adequate learning opportunities with evidence-based instruction, are identified as having reading disorders. (Pennington & Bishop, 2009)

PRESCHOOL

A skilled professional can identify reading challenges before a child enters school.  Early signs at preschool age may include difficulty rhyming, learning the alphabet, pronouncing multi-syllable words, and perceiving individual sounds inside words. These signs, combined with a positive family history of dyslexia or language-learning disorders, support a decision to seek professional advice and help. A weakness in rapid naming skills, which can be assessed by age four, would also serve as a “red flag” for future reading challenges.

ELEMENTARY

Most frequently, difficulties are identified in early elementary grades. Students may have weak phonemic awareness, the inability to hear the individual sounds in words. This is the listening piece of reading that does not require any letters. For example, how many and which sounds do you hear in the word “ship”? (3 sounds: /sh/ /i/ /p/); in the word “box”? (4 sounds: /b/ /o/ /k/ /s/). They may also have trouble mastering the sound-letter relationships, or phonics, of English. Without adequate phonemic awareness, it is difficulty to read an alphabetic language such as English. They may also have spelling difficulty.

Around third grade, as children move from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” comprehension issues can emerge.  When it is not due to poor word level reading, these difficulties are often related to weaknesses in listening comprehension. Please see our “listening” page for more information on this important oral language skill.

MIDDLE and HIGH SCHOOL

At times, it is not until middle or high school that reading difficulties become evident. Students who have weak or mediocre phonemic awareness, a “fuzzy phonics base,” and have relied on memory and oral language skills to read rather than decoding, have difficulty when unfamiliar academic vocabulary, formal syntax, and reading load increase. They may be slow, effortful readers who are overwhelmed by the demands of phonics because they have not yet automatized the process. As a result, reading is slow and effortful. They do not read for pleasure. They often spend more hours than peers on homework and in extreme situations, may just give up on reading and academics.