Theories of Learning to Read
  1. Stage Theories in reading acquisition. There are a number of stage theories of learning to read. Such theories view the child's progress in learning to read as stages in which different word reading strategies get applied.

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    1. Jean Chall's Stages
0: Pre-reading; signs etc
      1. Initial reading; accuracy
      2. Fluency
      3. Reading to learn
    1. Notice that this theory does not include a description of the alphabetic principle. Where does this fit? Stage 1 is about accuracy, but what happens on the way to this stage?

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    2. Frith's (1985) Stage Theory of Learning to Read. A particularly interesting one is that of Uta Frith (1985), because this theory assumed that writing and reading developed in tandem, with one pushing the other to the next stage. It also has a role for the alphabetic principle.

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      1. Logographic (Reading first)
      2. Alphabetic Decoding (writing first)
      3. Direct Access
    1. Gough's Stage Theory (see chapter by Gough and Juel).
      1. Selective Association
      2. Cipher Stage

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    2. Ehri's Stages (see chapter by Ehri)
      1. Pre-reading environmental print
      2. Phonetic Cue reading; names of letters used

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    3. Nonstage theories. An incremental theory that focuses on acquiring word representations is an alternative to stage theories. One theory is Perfetti (1991). Emphasis on Quality of Word Representations.
      1. Specificity
      2. Redundancy

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  1. Acquiring fluency