Reading Acquisition

Reading Acquisition

1. Theorist

   • Jeanne Chall - 1983
     • identified 6 stages of reading development skills in children
       • Stage 0 : Pre-reading and pseudo reading - up to 6 years
         • Stage 1: Initial reading and decoding - 6-7 years
           • Stage 2 : Confirmation and fluency - 7-8 years
             • Stage 3 : Reading for learning - 9-14 years
               • Stage 4 : Multiplicity and complexity - 14-17 years
                 • Stage 5 - Construction and reconstruction - 18+ years

2. 3 main theories of how reading should be taught

   • Phonetics
     • teaches children the regular letter-sound relationships, encourages them to 'sound out' words they come across that they do not recognise
   • Whole word scheme
     • based on teaching children to recognise words as a WHOLE.
   • Psycholinguistic approach
     • sees reading as a natural development that comes from being in an environment where books are read, valued and available. Active approach where children are given responsibility to work t out from context or illustrations

3. Reading Cues

   • Graphophonic - shape of words
   • Semanitc - understand meanings of words in order to make connections to decode new ones
   • Visual - looking at pictures and using the visual narrative to interpret new ideas / unfamiliar words
   • Syntactic - apply word order + word classes to see if words seem right in contexts
   • Contextual - searching for understanding in the situation of the story

4. Key features of reading schemes

   • Lexical repetition
   • Syntactic repetition of structures - subject-verb-object order + simple sentences
   • Simple verbs
   • One sentence per line - helping children to say complete phrases
   • Anaphoric referencing - pronouns to refer to the names of the characters already used
   • Limited use of modifiers - makes graded reading schemes different from imaginative stories where adjectives add detail and description
   • Text-image cohesion - picture tells the story of the text on the page