From Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Pp. 46-47)

From Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (pp. 46-47):

THE SIMPLE VIEW OF READING

The simple view of reading is a practical framework researchers use either explicitly or implicitly to organize the most useful findings from a vast amount of reading research (e.g., Aaron, Joshi, Gooden, & Bentum, 2008; Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006; Nation, 2005; Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004). Yet the simple view of reading is not just for researchers. School psychologists, teachers, and curriculum coordinators will also find it to be a practical and insightful framework for understanding the reading process, pinpointing the sources of reading difficulties, and guiding lesson planning. In fact, in recent years, the British government has incorporated the simple view of reading into its national reading strategy (Department of Education and Skills, 2006; Stuart, Stainthorp, & Snowling, 2008), suggesting it may be worth considering when developing instructional programs.

Philip Gough and colleagues first presented the simple view of reading in 1969 (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1969). It begins with the axiom that the purpose of reading is to understand what one reads. The simple view of reading proposes a logical distinction between two broad skills that are required for reading comprehension: decoding and linguistic comprehension, that is, the ability to transform print into spoken language (orally or silently) and the ability to understand the spoken language. The simple view says that if a student can quickly and effortlessly read the words in a given passage, and if that student can understand that same passage when it is read to her, it follows that the student should be able to comprehend that passage when she reads it to herself. While this may seem rather obvious, it runs counter to the most common way that literacy has been taught for the past two or three decades in the United States.

New Information / What my brain had to do

Source:

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley & Sons, Inc.