What is Reading?

I know this may sound like a silly question but it really is the key to helping someone (of any age), learn to read. So... ask yourself the question: What is reading? In order to answer the question, sit down and think about exactly what you are doing when you are reading a book, a note, an email, a grocery list, a document or any other type of printed word.

If you really think about it, you are using your own background information (pragmatic cueing system) to help you to read the words. You are also using your understanding of how the language is put together to form complete thoughts and sentences (syntactic cueing system). You are using your own knowledge of the sounds letters make to form words (graphophonic cueing system) or you may have already memorized hundreds or thousands of whole words; and lastly you are using your understanding of the context of the language and the meaning of various words (semantic cueing system) to understand the message of the text. Right?

Okay, well that should help you to be able to now define reading! I define reading as the ability to decode or interpret the symbols on the page and understand the message of the author. I believe the end goal of reading is true understanding, or in teacher-speak, it is reading comprehension. I don't think there would be any argument there. So now, how does all of this fit together so that we can teach someone to read? Well first let's connect the skills you need to read into a small graphic to show how important each skill is to the ultimate goal of comprehension.  If you broke it into pieces, here's what it would look like:

 You'll see that as these various cueing systems work together, the overlapping center of the diagram found above is reading comprehension! Next time, we'll talk more about how to develop these skills and use the cueing systems to teach reading.

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