Writing systems[edit]

Main article: Writing system

Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that

one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the

text.[2] Once established, writing systems on the whole change more slowly than their spoken

counterparts, and often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the

spoken language. The great benefit of writing systems is their ability to maintain a persistent

record of information expressed in a language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial

act of formulation.[2]

Acquiring reading[edit]

A child's ability to learn to read, known as reading readiness, begins in infancy, as the child

begins attending to the speech signals in their environment and begins producing spoken

language.[3] Children make some use of all the material that they are presented with, including

every perception, concept and word that they come in contact with; thus the environment in

which a child develops affects the child's ability to learn to read.[3] The amount of time that a child

spends together with parents or other important caregivers while listening to them read is a good

predictor of the level of reading that the child will attain later in life.[3][4] As a child sits with a

caregiver, looking at pictures and listening to stories, he or she will slowly learn that all the

different lines on each page make different symbols and then that together these symbols refer

to words.[3] Taking time to read to children is the most important precursor to a

child's development of reading.[3] Preschool-aged children with limited exposure to books and

reading in their home, including limited experience of being read to, are at risk of reading

difficulties.[3] For example, these children tend to have less exposure to literary phrases, such as

"Once upon a time",[3] and have smaller vocabularies,[5][6] both factors that affect the ability to read

by limiting comprehension of text. The environment in which a child lives may also impact their

ability to acquire reading skills. Children who are regularly exposed to chronic environmental

noise pollution, such as highway traffic noise, have been known to show decreased ability to

discriminate between phonemes as well as lower reading scores on standardized tests.[7]

Thus, the ideal process of what is called emergent or early literacy[3] begins in the relationship

between hearing spoken language, seeing written language and feeling loved. The positive

feeling that arises from spending time with books in a loving context provides a strong foundation

and intrinsic motivation for the long and cognitively challenging process of learning to read.[3] However, reading to children and ensuring exposure to many books is not enough to prepare

them for reading.[8] Another critical skill is the ability to name letters or characters.[8]

Age to introduce literacy learning[edit]

Some scholars favor a developmental approach in which formal instruction on reading begins

around the age of 6 or 7, while others argue for literacy instruction to occur in pre-school and

kindergarten classrooms, so long as non-academic activities take place as well.[9]

In a discussion on academic kindergartens, professor of child development David Elkind has

argued that since "there is no solid research demonstrating that early academic training is

superior to (or worse than) the more traditional, hands-on model of early education" educators

should defer to developmental approaches that provide young children with ample time and

opportunity to explore the natural world on their own terms.[10] Elkind emphasized the principle

that "early education must start with the child, not with the subject matter to be taught." [10]

The PISA 2007 OECD data from 54 countries demonstrates "no association between school

entry age ... and reading achievement at age 15".[11] A German study of 50 kindergartens

compared children who, at age 5, had spent a year either "academically focused", or "play-arts

focused" and found that in time the two groups became inseparable in reading skill.[12] Suggate

concludes that the effects of early reading are like "watering a garden before a rainstorm; the

earlier watering is rendered undetectable by the rainstorm, the watering wastes precious water,

and the watering detracts the gardener from other important preparatory groundwork." [11]

Reading development[edit]

This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic

tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better

articles for suggestions. (July 2012)

There are five stages of reading development. They are the emerging pre-reader, novice reader,

decoding reader, fluent comprehending reader, and the expert reader. It is normal that children

will move through these different stages at different rates.

Emerging pre-reader[edit]

The emerging pre-reader stage, also known as reading readiness, happens when a young child

sits and listens to someone read to them. Emerging reading takes many years of language

experience, along with the increase of both conceptual and social development.[13] Showing that

this process starts early in a child's life is the fact that children typically produce their first few

words before their first birthday.[1] This emerging pre-reader stage usually lasts for the first five

years of a child's life.[13]

During the emerging pre-reader stage children will often "read" books and stories. They will tell

the story as they have memorized it and turn the pages appropriately. They call what they are

doing "reading" since they typically don't yet understand that their parents or caregivers are

decoding written words. To them, they are doing what they think their parents or caregivers are

doing when reciting the story.

One group of researchers in the United States found in the late 1990s and 2000s that the

traditional way of reading to children made little difference in their later ability to read, and

hypothesized this was because children spend relatively little time actually looking at the text.

They found that simple exercises during reading which directed children to pay attention to and

think about letters and words made a significant difference in early reading progress.[14]

Novice reader[edit]

Reading time at a primary school in rural Laos. Learning to read poses different challenges in Laos

compared to English-speaking countries. The written language follows clear phonetic rules, so the

mechanics of reading are easier than with English. However, children learn from a teacher with a

blackboard, and get little or no opportunity to improve their reading skills by reading for pleasure. Most

schools have no library and no books except textbooks; even fourth-grade students often cannot read a full

sentence. The daily reading period shown here uses books provided by Big Brother Mouse, which

promotes reading in Lao schools and villages.

The next step in the learning to read process is the novice reading stage[13] also known as

selective association.[1] This begins with the child learning to decode print and understanding the

meaning of what has been decoded.[13] To do this, the child must first figure out theAlphabetic

principle and master it in only a few years.[13] Most children know that the words on a page in

a book mean something, but do not readily understand how the letters code the meaning. They

know that these words are made of the sounds of their particularlanguage, and that letters

convey these sounds. Novice readers learn to hear and manipulate the smaller sounds into

syllables and words.[13] If a child is able to master this skill, called phonological awareness, it is

one of the best predictors of a child's success in learning to read.[13] One way that you can teach

children to become more aware of sounds within words is through such things as nursery

rhymesthat enhance the child's ability to hear and divide the structure of words. Another way to

teach a child to read is through little "games" in which the sounds in word are either clapped,

written or danced to a beat.[13] A novice reader will also memorize the most common letter

patterns in their own language and most of the frequent words that will not necessarily follow the

phonological rules such as in English the words "have" and "who".[13] It is in this stage that

children will develop a vocabulary of words that is between 2,500 to 5,000 words.[1]Children's

vocabularies continue to grow as they enter elementary school, since they will continue to learn

new words at a rate of about seven words per day.[1] This shows that at this stage in reading the

best piece of advice is to just practice, practice, practice or read, read more, and read again.

Decoding reader[edit]

The transition from the novice reader stage to the decoding stage is marked by the absence of

painful pronunciations and in its place the sounds of a smoother, more confident reader.[13] In this

phase of learning to read, the reader adds at least 3,000 words to what they can decode. For

example, in the English language, that readers need to now learn the variations of the vowel-

based rhymes and vowel pairs. It is essential during this stage, if a reader is going to become

fluent, the reader needs to acquire a sufficient repertoire of the letter-patterns and vowel-pairs

that help to make up words that go beyond the basic level.The faster a child can see that the

word "together" is "to-ge-ther", the faster the reader will become a more fluent reader. [13] As

children move forward with their reading skills, they learn a great deal about what is really inside

a word; the stem, roots, prefixes and suffixes that make up morphemes of the language.[13] By this

stage, children already know about the common bound morphemes such as "s" and "ed"

because these are attached to many words. Decoding readers become exposed to many types

of morphemes such as prefixes and suffixes, and it is when they learn to read these as "sight

chunks" that their reading and their understanding will speed up dramatically. Being able to read

at a fluent level is not only about how fast a child can read, but it is a matter of being able to

utilize all the special knowledge that they have about a word—its letters, letter patterns,

meanings, grammatical functions, roots, and endings—fast enough that they have time to think

and comprehend what they are seeing. The point of becoming a proficient reader is to fluently

read and comprehend what had just been read. Decoding readers are just beginning to

understand and learn how to use their expanding knowledge of language and their growing

powers of inference to figure out what they are really reading.[13]

In the beginning of the decoding stage a child will often be devoting so much mental capacity to

the process of decoding that they will have no comprehension of the meaning of the words being

read. This is most likely if the text being read is at or above their skill level. It is nevertheless an

important stage. Such decoding practice allows the child to improve their decoding skills with the

ultimate goal of becoming automatic as it is for most skilled readers with most text they

encounter. Like every skill, the more you do it the better you get. Though comprehension may be

poor at this stage, it is nevertheless an important step towards comprehension. As the skill of

decoding improves and the more automatic it becomes the more the child has mental capacity to

devote to comprehension. Therefore, understanding of what is being read increases.

It is also in the decoding phase that the child will learn to go beyond what is said in writing in the

story to get the underlying meaning of what the story is really about. In the decoding stage a child

also learns that if a sentence or paragraph is not understood, re-reading it a second or third time

may be necessary in order to fully understand the passage. Knowing when a text needs to be re-

read is a very important skill and can improve comprehension greatly.[13]

Fluent, comprehending reader[edit]

The next stage in reading development is the fluent, comprehending reader stage, in which

children shift from learning to read, to reading to learn. In this stage the reader builds up a

substantial background of knowledge of spelling.[13] It is during this time in a reader's development

that teachers and parents can be tricked by fluent-sounding reading into thinking that

a child understands everything that he or she is reading. As the content of what they are able to

read becomes more demanding, good readers will develop knowledge of figurative

language and irony which helps them to discover new meanings in the text. This will assist them

to understand the meaning of what they are reading beyond what is written on the page. While

learning to read, one of the most powerful moments is when fluent comprehending readers learn

to enter into the lives of imagined heroes and heroines.[13] Examples of books where these

imagined heroes and heroines could be found in include Harry Potter, Lord of the

Rings, Huckleberry Finn. The comprehension process grows while reading books like these,

where children learn how to connect prior knowledge, predict good or bad consequences, draw

inferences from every danger-filled corner, monitor gaps in their understanding, and interpret

how each new clue, revelation, or added piece of knowledge changes what they know. In

learning these new skills, they learn to unpeel the layers of meaning in a word, a phrase or

a thought.[13]

There are two ways in which increasing fluency can be supported. They include explicit

instruction in comprehension by a child's teacher and the child's own desire to read. Engaging in

conversation about what they are reading allows the beginning reader to ask critical questions,

facilitating a better understanding of the central meaning.[13]

At the end of this stage, before the reader becomes an expert reader, many processes are

starting to become automatic. This increasing automaticity frees up cognitive resources so that

the reader can reflect on meaning. With the decoding process almost automatic by this point, the

brain learns to integrate more metaphorical, inferential,analogical, background and experiential

knowledge with every newly won millisecond. This stage in learning to read often will last until

early adulthood.[15]

Expert reader[edit]

The final stage in learning to read, is the expert stage. When a reader is at this stage of reading,

it will usually only take them one half second to read almost any word.[16] The degree to which

expert reading will change over the course of an adult's life depends on what a person reads and

how much they read.[17] As a person matures, life experiences as well as the cognitive process of

reading text shapes reading comprehension. It is this interpretive response that adds depth to

reading and will often take the reader in a new direction from where the author intended.[17]

Methods of teaching reading[edit]

Alphabetic languages[edit]

Educators have argued for years about which method is best to teach reading to children. For the

English language, there are two major methods, Phonics and Whole Language, within which

there are subtypes Synthetic Phonics and Sight word respectively. Each method is employed at

differing rates depending on the country and the specific school division. Some educators are

beginning to use the two methods in conjunction to maximize the benefits of both methods.[1] Phonics is a teaching method that stresses character-sound correspondences,[18][19][20] specific

rules and their use in reading and spelling.[1][21] This helps beginning readers understand how

characters are linked to sounds (phonemes), patterns of letter-sound correspondences and

spelling in English, and how to apply this knowledge when they read to sound out words. Phonics

teachers present the spellings for different sounds in a specific order, introducing the simplest (or

most useful) patterns early on; these patterns are then practiced.[1] A disadvantage to phonics is

that in some languages like English, complex letter-sound correspondences can cause confusion

for beginning readers.[22]

Traditional phonics instruction has marked benefits. Early reading often involves significant

expansion of a child's mental lexicon, which includes all the words the child has been exposed to

and their meanings. By focusing on the principle of linking specific sounds and characters, the

child has the ability to recognize new words and derive meaning from them. Being able to adapt

what they know about language to new words they experience is crucial to expanding their

mental lexicon; this allows for productive reading that is the ability to read new words.[1][22] It also

produces higher achievement for beginning readers and the difference is the greatest for those

at risk of failing to learn to read. While some children are able to infer these rules on their own,

some need explicit instructions on phonics rules. Overall, children who are directly taught

phonics are better at reading, spelling and comprehension.[1]

Traditional phonics instruction can also have the unintended consequence of promoting

dysfluency. The difficulty lies in the coarticulated nature of speech; speech sounds are

overlapping,[23] while print is discrete and sequential. This can be appreciated if one shapes the

mouth in position to begin to produce the word cat compared to the word cot. The initial hard c is

colored by the subsequent vowel even before speech begins, i.e., the smiling position as one

prepares to say cat, and the more limp position as one prepares to say cot. As early readers

work from left to right, beginning with the onset consonant, they typically do not yet know the

vowel with which it must be coarticulated. The vowel sound itself cannot be known until the

remaining rime (the portion of the syllable beginning with the vowel and extending to its end:

e.g. ight in right) is fully encountered. For these reasons, teaching reading through orientation to

rime first and then adding the onset (ought-bought) can be helpful in promoting fluency through

supporting the phonological problems of coarticulation. Emphasis on the rime also supports the

development of an intuitive, and therefore more fluent, awareness of orthographic patterns. [24]

Synthetic Phonics is a method that is endorsed by the governments of the United Kingdom,[25] Australia[26] and Scotland.[27] It also has considerable support in the U.S.A.[28] and Canada.[29] In

Synthetic Phonics, the student first learns to say the sounds (phonemes) that are associated with

the character(graphemes) in isolation before the sounds are "synthesized" or blended together to

make a word. (e.g. /a/, /k/, /t/.) Then, when reading a word, he learns to say each sound in the

word (e.g. /k/ - /a/ - /t/); and to "blend" these sounds into a pronunciation of the word (e.g. "cat").

Synthetic phonics does not teach whole words as shapes; and does not involve guessing at

words from context, picture and initial letter clues.

There are other types of phonics, such as Analytical phonics, that differ in their approach based

on how a "chunk" within the word is defined (i.e. individual phonemes, syllables, or non-blended

units).

Whole Language is widely used in the U.S.A. and Canada. It is a reading and learning method

that trains students to focus on words, sentences and paragraphs as a whole rather than letters.

This method aims to make reading fun and keep children motivated, which is beneficial because

learning to read depends heavily on what the student does and not the teacher.[1] While the child

is typically very engaged in this method, many children struggle to infer the specific rules of the

language on their own, which causes the child's decoding and spelling to suffer during

development.[30]

One subtype is Sight word, which is sometimes called the "look-say" method. A sight vocabulary

of 50-100 words is first memorized[22] and subsequent words are learned as wholes, often by

seeing them used repeatedly in the context of a story.[1] It tells children to find meaning by

guessing, by recognizing whole words they have memorized, by looking at the pictures, and by

creating a context based on surrounding words. It encourages students to "construct their own

meaning" (with guidance from peers and facilitator of consensus process).[31] It relies heavily on

the child's experience with language as a whole. The following are some features of the whole

language philosophy:[32]

Children are expected to learn to read and write as they learned to talk, that is gradually,

without a great deal of direct instruction.

Learning is emphasized more than teaching; it is assumed that the children will learn to read

and write, and the teacher facilitates that growth.

Children read and write every day in a variety of situations.

Reading, writing, and spoken language are not considered separate components of the

curriculum or merely ends in themselves; rather they permeate everything the children are

doing.

There is no division between first learning to read and later reading to learn. (adapted from

Weaver, C. 1990)

Which style use in teaching reading has divided educators for years. It is now known that using

the two approaches together is more powerful than either program alone.[1] The technical skills

learned through phonics are important for many children when learning to read, spell, and

general language comprehension and engagement of children in the whole-language approach

is also important to keep the children motivated and excited to learn. Many teachers and schools

acknowledge this and say that they use multiple methods to teach children to read.

Logographic languages[edit]

Languages such as Chinese and Japanese are normally written in logograms (hanzi and kanji,

respectively), which represent a whole word or morpheme with a single character. There are a

large number of characters, and the sound that each makes must be learned directly or from

other characters which contain "hints" in them, such as, in Japanese, 民's on-reading being min

and 眠 which shares the same on-reading as 民, that being min. In the same way whereas the

right part contains the characters pronunciation, 員's on-reading is in and 韻 has exactly the

same on, however this is not true for all characters. Kun readings, on the other hand, have to be

learned and memorised as there is no way to tell from each character.

Ruby characters are used in textbooks to help children learn the sounds that each logogram

makes. These are written in a smaller size, using an alphabetic or syllabic script. For

example, hiragana is typically used in Japanese, and the pinyin romanization into Latin alphabet

characters is used in Chinese.

漢 かん

字 じor

かん じ

漢字

The examples above spell the word kanji, which is made up of two kanji characters: 漢 (kan,

written in hiragana as かん), and 字 (ji, written in hiragana as じ).

Textbooks are sometimes edited as a cohesive set across grades so that children will not

encounter logograms they are not yet expected to have learned.

Skills required for proficient reading[edit]

The examples and perspective in this section may not represent

a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this articleand

discuss the issue on the talk page. (July 2010)

According to the report by the US National Reading Panel (NRP) in 2000, [30][33] the skills required

for proficient reading are phonemic awareness, fluency,[34] vocabulary,[35] andtext comprehension.[28][36] More generally, proficient reading does not necessarily require phonemic awareness, as in

Latin Alphabets, but an awareness of the individual parts of speech, which may also include the

whole word (as in Chinese characters) or syllables (as in Japanese) as well as others depending

on the writing system being employed. Other important skills are: rapid automatized

naming (RAN),[37][38] a general understanding of the Orthography of the language,[13][39] and practice.[1][13]

Speech Awareness : The awareness of individual parts of speech as they apply to individual

written characters is crucial for understanding reading (as defined by translating written

characters into spoken language). Phonological awareness, which includes the manipulation

of rhymes, syllables, and onsets and rimes, is most prevalent in Alphabetic systems.[40] The

important part of speech depends on the Writing system employed.

Fluency : The ability to read orally with speed, accuracy, and vocal expression. The ability to

read fluently is one of several critical factors necessary for reading comprehension. If a

reader is not fluent, it may be difficult to remember what has been read and to relate the

ideas expressed in the text to his or her background knowledge. This accuracy and

automaticity of reading serves as a bridge between decoding and comprehension.[34]

Vocabulary : A critical aspect of reading comprehension is vocabulary development.[35] When

a reader encounters an unfamiliar word in print and decodes it to derive its spoken

pronunciation, the reader understands the word if it is in the reader's spoken vocabulary.

Otherwise, the reader must derive the meaning of the word using another strategy, such as

context. If the development of the child's vocabulary is impeded by things such as ear

infections, that inhibit the child from hearing new words consistently, then the development of

reading will also be impaired.[41]

Reading comprehension : The NRP describes comprehension as a

complex cognitive process in which a reader intentionally and interactively engages with the

text. Reading comprehension is heavily dependent on skilled word recognition and decoding,[42] oral reading fluency, a well-developed vocabulary and active engagement with the text.[36]

Rapid automatized naming : The ability to say quickly the names of letters, objects and

colors predicts an individual's ability to read. This might be linked to the importance of quick

retrieval of phonological representations from long-term memory in reading and the

importance of object-naming circuits in the left cerebral hemisphere that are recruited to

underpin a child's word-recognition abilities.[37][38]

Orthography  describes or defines the set of symbols used in a language, and the rules

about how to write these symbols. Orthographic Development proceeds in increasing

complexity as a child learns to read. Some of the first things to be learnt are the orthographic

conventions such as the direction of reading and that there are differing typefaces and

capitalization for each symbol.[13] In general, this means that to read proficiently, the reader

has to understand elements of the written language

includinghyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.[39]

Practice: repeated exposure to print improves many aspects of learning to read and most

importantly the knowledge of individual words. It increases the speed at which high

frequency words are recognized which allows for increased Fluency in reading. It also

supports orthographic development,[13] Reading comprehension and Vocabularydevelopment.[1]

Reading difficulties[edit]

Difficulties in reading typically involve difficulty with one or more of the following: decoding,

reading rate, reading fluency, or reading comprehension.

Decoding[edit]

Main article: Dyslexia

Difficulty with decoding is marked by having not acquired the phoneme-grapheme mapping

concept. One specific disability characterized by poor decoding is dyslexia, defined as brain-

based type of learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read.[43] These

individuals typically read at levels significantly lower than expected despite having normal

intelligence. It can also be inherited in some families, and recent studies have identified a

number of genes that may predispose an individual to developing dyslexia. Although the

symptoms vary from person to person, common characteristics among people with dyslexia are

difficulty with spelling, phonological processing (the manipulation of sounds), and/or rapid visual-

verbal responding.[43] Adults, can have either developmental dyslexia[44][45][46][47] or Acquired

Dyslexia which occurs after a brain injury, stroke [48] [49]  or dementia.[50][51]

Reading rate[edit]

Individuals with reading rate difficulties tend to have accurate word recognition and normal

comprehension abilities, but the reading speed is below grade level.[52] Strategies such as guided

reading, silent reading and modeled reading may help improve a reader's reading rate[33]

Reading fluency[edit]

Individuals with reading fluency difficulties fail to maintain a fluid, smooth pace when reading.

Strategies used for overcoming reading rate difficulties are also useful in addressing reading

fluency issues.[33]

Reading comprehension[edit]

Individuals with reading comprehension difficulties are commonly described as poor

comprehenders. They have normal decoding skills as well as a fluid rate of reading, but have

difficulty comprehending text when read. Increasing vocabulary knowledge, listening skills and

teaching basic comprehension techniques may help facilitate better reading comprehension.

See also[edit]

Analytical phonics

Balanced literacy

Dual-route hypothesis to reading aloud

Language

Comprehension

Phonics

Reading disability

Reading for special needs

Reading (process)

Spelling

Synthetic phonics

Vocabulary

Whole language