Foundational Skills and Knowledge about Reading
The big picture
Reading development is best understood through the Simple View of Reading: comprehension is the product of decoding (word recognition) and linguistic comprehension. Scarborough's Reading Rope adds the strands that become increasingly intertwined-phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, background knowledge, syntax, and comprehension strategies. Candidates should also know the language systems: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Concepts to master
Distinguish phonological awareness (sounds of speech broadly: syllables, rhymes, onset-rime) from phonemic awareness (isolating and manipulating individual phonemes). Phonics connects letters to sounds and depends on the alphabetic principle. Orthographic mapping explains how readers bond spellings, pronunciations, and meanings to recognize words instantly. Fluency includes accuracy, rate, and prosody-not speed alone. Ehri's phases (pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic, consolidated alphabetic) describe word-reading growth. Concepts of print and letter knowledge are early foundations.
Traps
Questions often conflate phonological and phonemic awareness, treat sight words as whole-shape visual memorization, or equate fluency with fast reading. Another trap is assuming phonemic awareness requires printed letters-it does not. Also watch for the claim that phonics is only for struggling readers; systematic phonics benefits beginners too.
Rule of thumb
If the task manipulates individual sounds orally, it is phonemic awareness; if letters are involved, it is phonics. Example: the teacher says /m/ /a/ /p/ and the child responds "map"-that is phoneme blending, an oral phonemic-awareness task. If the child sees m-a-p and blends the letters, that is decoding.
Key points
- Comprehension = decoding × linguistic comprehension.
- Phonological awareness is broader than phonemic awareness.
- Orthographic mapping builds automatic sight-word recognition.
- Fluency has three components: accuracy, rate, prosody.
- Oral sound play without print is phonemic awareness, not phonics.