Literacy Development: Reading

Literacy development — the acquisition of reading and writing skills — is a critical area of child language study. Unlike spoken language, which children acquire largely through immersion and interaction, reading is a skill that typically requires explicit instruction. This lesson examines the stages of reading development, the models that explain how reading works, and the debates surrounding teaching methods.

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Reading vs Spoken Language

An important starting point is the distinction between spoken language and reading:

Feature	Spoken Language	Reading
Acquisition	Acquired naturally through immersion and interaction	Requires explicit instruction and practice
Evolutionary basis	Humans have evolved to speak — speech is a biological capacity	Writing is a cultural invention (approx. 5,000 years old) — no evolved biological mechanism
Universal?	All human cultures have spoken language	Not all cultures have written language; illiteracy is common worldwide
Age of onset	First words around 12 months	Reading typically begins at 4–6 years
Modality	Auditory — processed through the ear	Visual — processed through the eye

Key Definition: Literacy — the ability to read and write. Unlike spoken language acquisition, literacy typically requires explicit teaching and sustained practice. It involves learning to decode written symbols (graphemes) and map them onto sounds (phonemes) and meanings.

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Chall's Stages of Reading Development

Jeanne Chall (1983) proposed an influential model of reading development comprising six stages:

Stage	Name	Age (approx.)	Key Features
0	Pre-reading / pseudo-reading	0–6 years	Child "pretends" to read; recognises familiar logos and signs (e.g. McDonald's); understands that print carries meaning; may know some letters
1	Initial reading / decoding	6–7 years	Learning letter-sound correspondences (grapheme-phoneme relationships); can decode simple, regular words; reading is slow and effortful
2	Confirmation and fluency	7–8 years	Reading becomes faster and more fluent; child reads familiar material with greater confidence; still relies heavily on decoding
3	Reading to learn	9–14 years	Reading shifts from "learning to read" to "reading to learn"; child uses reading to acquire new knowledge; can handle longer, more complex texts
4	Multiple viewpoints	14–18 years	Reader can handle texts presenting different perspectives; critical reading develops; can analyse and evaluate arguments
5	Construction and reconstruction	18+ years	Reader can synthesise information from multiple sources; reading for personal and professional purposes; expert-level comprehension

Key Definition: Chall's stages (1983) — a six-stage model of reading development from pre-reading (Stage 0) to expert reading (Stage 5). The model describes the progression from learning to decode individual words to using reading as a tool for learning, critical analysis, and synthesis.

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Goodman: Reading as a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game

Kenneth Goodman (1967) proposed that reading is not a precise, letter-by-letter decoding process but rather a "psycholinguistic guessing game". According to Goodman:

• Skilled readers do not process every letter or word individually
• Instead, they make predictions about what comes next based on their knowledge of language and the world
• Readers use three types of cue (see below) to make these predictions and check them as they read
• When a reader makes an error (a miscue), it often reflects the reader's use of meaning and context rather than a failure of decoding

Key Definition: Psycholinguistic guessing game (Goodman, 1967) — a model of reading that emphasises the role of prediction and context in comprehension. Readers are seen as active meaning-makers who use their knowledge of language, text, and the world to anticipate and interpret written text.

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Reading Cues

Both beginning and skilled readers use multiple types of cue to decode and comprehend text:

Cue Type	Description	Example
Graphophonic	Using knowledge of letter-sound relationships to decode words	Sounding out the letters in "c-a-t" to pronounce "cat"
Semantic	Using knowledge of meaning to predict or check words	Knowing that "The dog chased the ___" is likely to be followed by a noun referring to something a dog would chase
Syntactic	Using knowledge of grammar to predict or check the word class	Knowing that "The big ___" must be followed by a noun, not a verb
Contextual/pragmatic	Using knowledge of the wider context — illustrations, genre, topic	Using a picture of a beach to help decode "sandcastle"

Goodman argued that effective readers use all four types of cue simultaneously and flexibly. Beginning readers tend to rely more heavily on graphophonic cues, while skilled readers make greater use of semantic and syntactic cues.

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Bottom-Up vs Top-Down Models of Reading

The debate about how reading works can be framed as a contrast between bottom-up and top-down models:

Bottom-Up Models

Bottom-up models (e.g. Gough, 1972) argue that reading proceeds from the smallest units to the largest:

1. The reader identifies individual letters (graphemes)
2. Letters are converted into sounds (phonemes) — grapheme-phoneme correspondence
3. Sounds are blended to form words
4. Words are combined to form sentences
5. Sentences are combined to form meaning

Top-Down Models

Top-down models (e.g. Goodman, 1967; Smith, 1971) argue that reading proceeds from meaning to detail: