Reading Skills

Reading skills are mental skills that allow a person to decode, read, comprehend, and interpret the written word.

Reading is a fundamental but complex skill that children must acquire because they
must learn to read before they can read to learn. Some say reading is more than a skill;
it is an art in its own right. Unfortunately, many children never completely master this
essential skill or art form.

Before building a house, one needs to lay a foundation. In the same way, there are
preparatory and supportive skills that children must acquire before it becomes possible
for them to master the art of reading. We discuss the various types of preparatory and
supportive reading skills, the four stages of reading skills development, four types of
reading difficulties, and how to develop reading skills.

8 Types of reading skills

There are a variety of preparatory and supportive reading skills:

(1.) Decoding

To be a good reader, you have to be able to decode words. Decoding is the ability to
apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships and letter patterns and correctly
pronounce written words.

To decode a word,

(a.) you need to know which sound or sounds each letter makes, like how a g sounds
in game and how it sounds in gym;
(b.) how to take apart the individual sounds in a word and blend them, e.g., with man the
first sound is /m/, the next sound is /ă/, and the last sound is /n/; and
(c.) how groups of letters can work together to make a single sound, like sh in ship.

Understanding letter-sound relationships allow children to recognize familiar words

quickly and figure out unfamiliar words.
If attention is drained by decoding words, little or no capacity is available for the attention-
demanding process of reading comprehension. Therefore, the automaticity of decoding
is essential.

(2.) Phonological and phonemic awareness

Decoding relies heavily on phonological awareness, which refers to an individual’s

awareness of the sound structure of language. A listening skill, phonological awareness
is the ability to distinguish between speech units such as rhymes, syllables in words, and
individual phonemes in syllables.

Phonological awareness is often confused with phonics. The latter requires students to
know and match letters or letter patterns with sounds, learn spelling rules, and use this
information to decode (read) and encode (write) words. Phonological awareness relates
only to speech sounds, not alphabet letters or sound-spellings.

Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness that focuses on recognizing

and manipulating phonemes, the smallest sound units. Two crucial phonemic awareness
skills are segmenting and blending.

(3.) Reading fluency

Sounding out or decoding every word can take much effort. Fluency, defined as “speed,
accuracy, and proper expression,” gained prominence when it was included as one of five
essential reading skills in a national-level research synthesis on reading instruction.

To read fluently, readers need effective word recognition skills. Word recognition is the
ability to recognize whole words instantly by sight without sounding them out.
Reading fluency speeds up the rate at which they can read and understand text. Reading
fluency is also important when kids encounter irregular words, like one and the, which
cannot be sounded out.

When kids can read smoothly without making too many errors, they are “fluent readers.”

(4.) Reading comprehension

Reading fluency is seen as the ‘bridge’ between decoding and comprehension. A person
reading unevenly and slowly will have problems with comprehension.

Reading comprehension refers to a reader’s ability to successfully interpret a text and

connect the ideas in the text to their background knowledge. Since the purpose of all
reading is to gather meaning from the printed page, reading comprehension is the heart
and goal of reading. According to Duffy, if we do not understand the message, we are not
reading.

Readers with good reading comprehension can draw conclusions about what they read
– what is the main message, what is a fact, what caused an event to happen, and which
characters are funny. Thus comprehension involves combining reading with thinking and
reasoning.

(5.) Vocabulary

One big part of comprehension is vocabulary knowledge, i.e., knowing the meanings of
enough words.

Being able to pronounce a word correctly does not guarantee that one understands its
meaning. For example, pronouncing the word archipelago correctly will not be very
helpful when reading a passage about Lofoten, an archipelago in the county of Norland,
Norway; it is vital that one also understands the word’s meaning, i.e., an island group.
Decades of research have confirmed the importance of vocabulary skills in reading
comprehension and students’ overall academic success.

(6.) Memory

Short-term memory is the capacity for holding, but not manipulating, a small amount of
information in one’s mind in an active, readily available state for a short period. Working
memory is like a temporary sticky note in the brain. It holds new information so the brain
can manipulate it or connect it to other data or prior knowledge. It is an essential memory
system and one that most of us use daily.

Sentence comprehension depends heavily upon adequate working memory. Each

sentence is read, understood, associated, and integrated with the previous one, and so
forth. Eventually, after reading the entire paragraph, the reader continues to the next one.
By the end of the chapter, the reader needs to retain both the details and the main idea,
otherwise may recall isolated facts but may not know the sequence of events nor
understand the main idea.

Auditory, visual, and visual sequential memory, and visual long-term memory, especially
for details, have also been linked to reading.

(7.) Logical thinking

Logical thinking is the process in which one uses reasoning consistently to reach a
conclusion. Problems or situations that involve logical thinking call for structure,
relationships between facts, and chains of reasoning that “make sense.”
The relationship between logical thinking and reading is well established. It has been said
that “there is no reading without reasoning,” and even that reading is reasoning.

This reading skill helps the child tie their background knowledge to new knowledge, make
inferences, draw conclusions, and read between the lines.

(8.) Rapid naming

Rapid naming happens when you recognize something instantly and effortlessly and say
what it is. It can be anything. It can be objects, symbols, and colors at the most basic
level. At a higher level, this can include words and phrases.

Dyslexic readers frequently show weaknesses on tests of rapid naming ability. There is
an ongoing debate about whether the underlying deficit is visual or phonological.
However, the strong correlation between dyslexia and difficulties with rapid naming
justifies its inclusion in our list of reading skills.

Other reading skills

In addition to phonological and phonemic awareness, rapid naming, and working memory,
cognitive psychology has now linked several brain-based skills to reading deficits like
dyslexia:

 Executive function refers to a set of skills. These skills underlie the

capacity to plan ahead and meet goals, display self-control, follow multiple-
step directions even when interrupted, and stay focused despite
distractions.
  Visuospatial processing refers to the ability to perceive, analyze,
synthesize, manipulate and transform visual patterns and images.
 Processing speed involves one or more of the following functions: the
length of time it takes to perceive and process information and formulate or
enact a response.

4 Stages of reading skills development

Pre-alphabetic stage

Readers at the pre-alphabetic stage have no appreciation of the alphabetic principle.

Children attempt to translate the unfamiliar visual forms of print into familiar oral language
through visual clues. They might remember the word monkey by associating the
descending shape of the last letter with a monkey’s tail.

Partial alphabetic stage

Readers have now learned that letters and sounds are related, and they begin to use that
insight. However, they are still unable to deal with the full complexity of the sounds in
words, so they cannot make complete use of letter-sound relationships.

If readers at this stage learn that the letter sequence g-e-t is get, they may focus just on
the g and the sound it represents to identify the word. However, using this strategy of
focusing on the first letter, they may also read the letter sequences give, go,
and gorilla as get.
Fully alphabetic stage

At this stage, even though they may never have seen it in print before, if they know the
sounds commonly associated with the letters b-u-g, they can think about the sounds for
each of the letters and blend them to arrive at the pronunciation of the word.

As a result of encountering the printed word bug several times, children can eventually
accurately and instantly identify the word bug without attending to the individual letters,
sounds, or letter-sound associations.

Consolidated alphabetic stage

Readers who recognize whole words instantly have reached the fourth stage. They also
develop another valuable, attention-saving decoding skill. Not only do readers at this
stage store words as units, but also repeated encounters with words allow them to store
letter patterns across different words.

A multi-letter unit like –ent will be stored as a unit as a result of reading the
words went, sent, and bent. Upon encountering the word dent for the first time, a
consolidated alphabetic reader would need to connect only two units: d and –ent, rather
than the four units that the fully alphabetic reader would need to combine.

4 Types of reading difficulties

While becoming a fluent reader is essential, many children never acquire this skill.

According to Dr. Reid Lyon, approximately 20 to 30 percent of school-age children have

difficulties learning to read. About 15 million youngsters in the US do not have access to
the wonders of books and other kinds of texts for learning and enjoyment. While these
estimates are alarming, they are on the conservative side.

Poor decoding
Beginner readers may struggle when they meet new or unfamiliar terms, but typically,
decoding becomes easier with repeated practice of reading the text out loud. If a child
continues to struggle, there may be an underlying difficulty or a physical impairment that
does not allow them to hear the sounds or see the letters.

Poor fluency

To read fluently, readers need effective word recognition skills. Word recognition can be
a considerable obstacle for struggling readers. Average readers need to see a word four
to 14 times before it becomes a “sight word” they automatically recognize. Children with
dyslexia may need to see it up to 40+ times.

Poor comprehension

Someone can read fluently and still have poor comprehension, which has a clinical term:
Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit (SRCD). SRCD happens when a child’s
decoding skills are more developed than their ability to understand a text.
Mixed reading difficulties

Mixed reading difficulties include poor decoding, fluency, and difficulty with reading
comprehension. They have challenges when it comes to reading words, retaining
information, and understanding the text. These problems could be due to a reading
disorder like dyslexia.

Developing reading skills

Effective reading instruction teaches reading on three levels:

(1.) preparatory reading skills (e.g., phonological and phonemic awareness, rapid naming,
processing speed)
(2.) supportive reading skills (e.g., decoding, expanding, and learning new vocabulary)
(3.) reading strategies

Effective reading instruction is explicit and systematic.

Explicit teaching practices involve showing students what to do and how to do it.
Strategies emphasizing silent, independent reading have not been proven to improve
reading achievement.

Systematic teaching means skills and concepts are taught in a planned, logically
progressive sequence. For example, certain sounds — those that are easier to learn or
used more often — are taught before other sounds.

Are poor reading skills holding your child back?

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