Research Conclusions Crucial to the Teaching of Reading

1. Proficient and experienced readers typically read many words automatically and easily, which facilitates the processing of text for meaning.

2. Proficient readers also use context and their prior knowledge and experience to think ahead as they read; to identify words and notice letters by just sampling parts of the individual letters; to monitor comprehension; to notice when there is a need for correction; and to help them correct, as needed.

3. Thus, learning to read involves developing strategies for making sense of text, and this in turn means developing letter-sound knowledge and the ability to use it along with context and prior knowledge, in order to think ahead and to use "fix-it strategies," as needed.

4. Children as well as adults tend to read unfamiliar print words in pronounceable chunks, not letter by letter. We read unfamiliar print words by analogy with the parts of familiar words.

5. Decoding skills alone are often not adequate to get the pronunciation of unfamiliar print words; most of the time, context alone is even less adequate for getting the exact word; and therefore, the most proficient readers use everything they know to get words and meaning from texts.

6. Phonemic awareness and learning to read facilitate each other.

7. Decodable texts are more difficult for children to read than texts with natural language patterns and a wider range of vocabulary.

8. Many children develop and use phonics skills -- decoding skills -- without very much explicit instruction, but other children need more help.

9. Many children develop and use effective reading strategies without very much explicit instruction, but others need more help.

10. Children learning to read benefit from what is often called "scaffolding." That is, they benefit from temporary support in their reading of texts and words.

11. Studying or even demonstrating a reading skill in isolation does not guarantee its use in practice.

12. On the other hand, it is not necessary to demonstrate a skill in isolation in order to use it in practice.

13. Children who spend a lot of time doing skills work typically read less well than children who spend their time reading instead. Extensive phonics becomes a gatekeeper, preventing children from reading.

14. Children who are consigned to lower reading groups seldom move out of them.

15. Of course students need to develop reading strategies and skills, but these can be taught effectively -- and for many children, most efficiently -- in the context of reading and writing whole texts and in the process of becoming literate individuals who not only can read and

write, but who want to.

16. About 15 to 20 percent of our children need more help with phonemic awareness, phonics, and/or strategies for reading and comprehending. With individual tutoring help, virtually all children can learn to decode words adequately in context and to use this skill in reading for meaning.

17. The more time children spend reading, the better readers they become. Indeed, one can become a highly competent reader through extensive reading, even while continuing to have problems with word recognition and decoding -- when, that is, reading is defined as getting meaning.

Prepared 8/97 by Constance Weaver, Professor of English, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. For inclusion in subsequent reprintings of Constance Weaver, Lorraine Gillmeister-Krause, and Grace Vento-Zogby, Creating Support for Effective Literacy Education (Heinemann, 1996).

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