Foundations of Reading and Literacy
What this domain tests
Foundations of reading and literacy covers the models and cognitive underpinnings of reading development: how word recognition and language comprehension grow, why the alphabetic principle is not acquired naturally, and how language systems and print exposure shape literacy. Questions connect theory to instructional decisions.
Core rules and concepts
- Simple View of Reading: reading comprehension is the product of decoding and linguistic comprehension. If either factor is near zero, comprehension is limited; a strong decoder with weak oral language is not a strong comprehender.
- Scarborough’s Rope: word-recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, sight recognition) and language-comprehension strands (vocabulary, background knowledge, language structures, verbal reasoning, literacy knowledge) intertwine toward skilled reading.
- Ehri’s phases: pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic, consolidated alphabetic. Orthographic mapping-binding sounds to letters in memory-requires phonemic awareness plus letter-sound knowledge, not visual memorization.
- Language systems: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and orthography. Reading draws on all of them.
- Alphabetic principle: speech is segmented into phonemes and mapped to graphemes; this mapping is conventional and must be taught explicitly.
Worked example
A second grader reads ship as sip but retells a story accurately after listening. Decoding is the weaker side of the Simple View; comprehension is relatively intact. The appropriate next step is phonemic and phonics work on /sh/ versus /s/, with blending and spelling-not a comprehension strategy lesson. If the same student decoded accurately but could not answer oral questions, the focus would shift to language comprehension.
Traps that cost marks
Do not treat phonics as the whole of reading; do not call phonological awareness “phonics”; do not assume a strong decoder automatically comprehends; avoid treating stage theories as rigid grade levels.