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Learning how to read is a fundamental part of learning, as it allows students to understand things written down.

The foundations for reading start with hearing or viewing stories, where young learners make connections between words and images. The next level is learning to read and retain information through the written word. There’s a reason educators start with teaching students how to read – it’s the language of learning. Learning to read helps students build up a vocabulary and improve their ability to understand when listening to things.

The process of reading has been studied, codified, and improved upon over decades to make it easier and more effective to glean insight through the written word. This is known as the science of reading, and it’s a wide-reaching body of scientific research that spans multiple disciplines to learn more about reading, writing, and associated issues.

In this article, we will learn about the science of reading, why it’s important, and other useful insights about the inner workings of the written word.

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What is the science of reading?

The science of reading is the accumulation of scientific knowledge that looks into reading, writing, and various issues pertaining to the reading process. It’s a vast body of research that spans multiple disciplines and has brought together researchers from across the globe. Over 50 years, researchers have performed countless studies to understand better the importance of reading and how it works from a scientific perspective.

It’s a discipline with many different aims, from understanding why some learners struggle with the process to how reading and writing develop in the brain. It’s an inherently useful pursuit that also benefits students by finding the most effective ways to facilitate learning to read and the best ways to teach this skill. By understanding the process, educators are better equipped to support learners on their reading journey and navigate any difficulties in reading.

What are scientific fields concerned with the science of reading?

The science of reading is a popular field that attracts researchers from various disciplines. These disciplines look to glean insights surrounding reading comprehension and development in different ways, but they’re all advancing the body of knowledge around the science of reading. Some of the main disciplines concerned with this body of study include:

  • Cognitive psychologists
  • Communication scientists
  • Developmental psychologists
  • Education researchers
  • Special education researchers
  • Implementation scientists
  • Linguists
  • Neuroscientists
  • School and academic psychologists

What has the science of reading shown us?

Many findings have improved our understanding of reading, ranging from how our brains develop when we learn to read to what constitutes reading comprehension. For example, research into the science of reading has highlighted that dyslexic learners use the same processes to learn to read as non-dyslexic learners.

Another interesting research on the science of reading has outlined what it takes to become a skilled reader. This includes the Big 5, a collection of essential components to our reading comprehension development. These include:

  • Phonemic awareness is the ability to interpret the smallest units of sound found in spoken words, known as phonemes, and manipulate them into words. This broad category also includes understanding sounds, words, syllables, onsets, and rimes.
  • Alphabetic principle: The alphabetic principle is the knowledge and skills required to pair letters with sounds when reading and spelling.
  • Fluent text reading: Fluency in reading means reading phrases and sentences accurately, at a suitable rate, and using the correct expression.
  • Vocabulary: Vocabulary is the understanding of different words and their meanings. This helps readers understand words, phrases, and sentences clearly.
  • Comprehension: Comprehension is the ability to understand what is written, and it’s the primary outcome of learning to read.

Why scientific findings are essential for improved reading instruction

The science of reading has become integral to helping learners with reading instruction and comprehension. When looking into causal relationships between reading instruction and comprehension, the science of reading brings in experimental research. Other approaches, such as qualitative studies and brain imaging experiments, help to understand reading instruction from a non-causal perspective.

For educators, the science of reading illuminates two main things. Firstly, identifying the best practices for reading instruction incorporates causal claims by championing one teaching method over another. Secondly, educators must learn how the experimental approach’s logic helps support any causal connections.

The science of reading follows the scientific method

At its core, the science of reading looks to follow the scientific method when researching reading. In other words, it looks to advance the existing body of knowledge over time through experimentation. This process has yielded useful results regarding reading development, learning to read, and the best way to provide reading instructions.

Any work from the multiple disciplines concerned with the science of reading works together to inspect research, validate findings and improve our overall understanding of the reading process. Rather than leaning into theories or ideologies, this body of work benefits from the rigorous science behind reading to find the best practices around reading. This, in turn, helps learners and educators alike by making reading instruction more effective.

How does the brain process reading?

The vast body of research around reading has provided us with greater insight into how the brain processes reading. We now know, for example, that the brain processes multiple sources of information at once when reading. Neuroscientists have pinpointed specific brain areas that process things like print, speech sounds, language, and meaning when reading a text.

As neural connections and synapses take time to develop through learning to read, they don’t exist in the brains of people who cannot read. So the research has given us the tools to understand the most effective ways to study, teach and practice reading.

We know the brain works across different regions to read using multiple processes effectively. Research using brain imaging techniques has shown us where activity spikes during different parts of reading comprehension. For example, experienced readers use different parts of the left hemisphere of the brain when reading, including:

  • The temporal lobe: This brain region helps decipher sounds and lets us understand how syllables are structured to give us words. The occipital-temporal region stores images and word meanings, which helps with fluent reading, while the parietal-temporal region breaks words into sounds.
  • The angular and supramarginal gyrus: This region of the brain links different parts of the brain together to make reading possible. It connects on a letter-by-letter basis to form words, which we can then use to read aloud.
  • The frontal lobe: This brain region creates speech sounds when reading. This is useful because it allows readers to think about how written words sound when pronounced. It helps with reading fluency, grammar, and speech production.

The science of skillful reading

When looking at how a learner grows from a novice reader into a skilled one, the science of reading focuses on two main theoretical frameworks: the simple view of reading and Scarborough’s reading rope. Below is a breakdown of these two frameworks:

The simple view of reading

The simple view of reading is a framework studied across hundreds of academic papers and journals. It outlines that reading comprehension is the product of two different processes – word recognition and language comprehension. Reading comprehension is impeded if either of these processes is diminished or poorly understood. In other words, a lack of comprehension in one area cannot be overcome with skill in the other.

As the name suggests, the simple view of reading is a framework that is simple in its outlook. Scarborough’s reading rope is helpful for a more in-depth understanding of reading comprehension.

Scarborough’s reading rope

Scarborough’s reading rope is a visual metaphor to understand better the development of skills over time that aids in skilled reading. Originally coined by Hollis Scarborough, the reading rope summarises eight core components found in reading. These five components must be honed to become a skilled reader. The visual metaphor works well as each component has a strand of rope, which, when woven together, create a single piece of rope.

The eight components in the reading rope are categorized into two groups: language comprehension and word recognition. The processes found in the language comprehension category include:

  • Background knowledge, such as facts or understanding concepts.
  • Vocabulary, including word precision, links, and breadth.
  • Language structures such as syntax and grammar.
  • Verbal reasoning, such as the ability to understand metaphors.
  • Literacy knowledge, including understanding what genres are.
  • The other category, word recognition, has three processes which include:
  • Phonological awareness, or the ability to understand syllables and phonemes.
  • Decoding, such as the ability to use spelling-sound correspondences.
  • Sight recognition, or the ability to identify familiar words.

Why is the science of reading important?

The main driving force behind understanding the science of reading is to make learning to read more achievable, accessible, and easier for learners and educators alike. By understanding how people learn to read and what is happening during the process, we can work towards finding the best processes and learning strategies for reading using evidence-based practices.

Educators must carry the torch and champion the science of reading and all it can show us. Teaching young people how to read is essential to integrating and connecting with society. So, to give young learners the best start in life, overcoming the obstacles surrounding reading comprehension is an excellent place to start.