DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES

IN EARLY READING SKILLS

Scott G. Paris 2011

Presented by :
Primasari Nurul Mardiana - 1006896
Keywords

• Constrained skill
• Trajectories
• Intercepts
• Prosody
• Codependent
 THE OUTLINE
6 stages of progressive knowledge •
The Theories about 3 strands of skills •
Reading Development “simple view” (the 2 main factors) •
5 essential components •

The consideration of
traditional models of
skills development
• The 3 claims
Paris’s views toward
growth model
Reading Development • The accuracy of conventional

Implication and
Conclusion
 Five essential components of reading
development (Reading First legislation, part of
No Children Left Behind (NLCB; 2002)

1. The alphabetic principle

2. Phonemic awareness
3. Oral reading fluency
4. Vocabulary
5. Comprehension
Gough and Tunmer (1986) proposed a “simple
view” of reading that posits that reading is
composed of two main factors:

1. The ability to decode words efficiently

2. The ability to comprehend language
 Stahl, Kuhn, and Pickle (2006) proposed a
model of reading development that included
three strands of skills. They are:
• First strands: Print concepts, awareness, purpose, and strategic
knowledge

• Second strands: phonemic awareness, decoding knowledge, sight

word knowledge, fluency, and word recognition

• Third strands: background knowledge, vocabulary, language

knowledge, and comprehension
Chall’s (1966) six stages model emphasizes
progressive knowledge:
1. Print and books
2. Phonics
3. Fluency
4. Reading to learn
5. Comprehension with analysis
6. Comprehension with synthesis

•Those stages can be condensed to the development of two basic

tasks:
learning to read (stages 1-3) and reading to learn (stages 4-6).

•The first stages are mastered in grades 1-3, the development of skills
in the second stages is open ended.
The consideration of traditional models of
skills development:

•Concept of growth: monotonic and continuous until some

level is attained –most common outcome variable is the
intercept.

•The outcomes across ages can be compared to identify

cross-sectional developmental changes.

•The approach of skill intercepts is similar to the

analysis of physical growth.
 Paris (2005) questioned the accuracy and
usefulness of the conventional growth model.
The reasons are:
Some reading skills do not develop continuously: stage1 or
strand1 skills learned early and entirely, in contrast vocabulary
knowledge and comprehension and skills develop
continuously throughout life.

The period of growth is briefer for stage 1 skills compared to

vocabulary comprehension.

The discontinuous and brief growth periods for some skills are
only fit to a small set of knowledge and less complex nature of
the skills.
 CLAIM 1 : SOME SKILLS ARE
MASTERED UNIVERSALLY TO THE
SAME INTERCEPT
A. The Alphabetic Principle
Universal mastery of the alphabetic principle learning vocabulary
 
The empirical evidences elaboration:
 The letter names that are the easiest to learn occur early in the alphabet and
may occur in the child’s name.
 The letter sounds are the easiest to learn when the sounds of the letter is in the
letter name and when letters usually occur in the initial position of words, rather
than in the final position.
(Mc Bride-Chang, 1999)

B. Concepts of Print
Including: children’s understanding of letters, words, sentences, punctuation,
and directionality of reading (Chall, 1996; Clay, 1979)
Master all the concepts about print: 7 to 8 years of age *not their final
knowledge
 cont’d
C. Phonological Awareness (PA)
The understanding of the sound structure of spoken language: syllables, onset-
rime patterns, and phonemes. (Gillon, 2004).
 
Examples of sub skills in PA:
 Children learn distinction among larger phonological units before smaller units
(Anthony & Lonigan, 2004).
 Children can identify consonant before vowel sounds and initial consonant sounds
before medial and final consonants.
 They can identify rhyming words before they can segment and blend syllables or
phonemes within words (Rathvon, 2004).
 
Phoneme identification while reading usually begins by age 4 and is often highly
skilled by age 8 (Adams, 1990).
 

Alphabetic knowledge, print knowledge, & PA vocabulary and comprehension:

1. Constrained knowledge and skills are relatively small and discrete sets
2. They can be taught directly
3. They are mastered nearly entirely by 9 years of age by most children learning to
read
 CLAIM 2: SOME SKILLS EXHIBIT
DISCONTINUOUS AND NON LINEAR
GROWTH
Universally mastered skills are discontinuous because the growth is complete
when the intercepts is attained.
Non linear growth is also evident in phonemic awareness (PA) and oral reading
fluency (ORF)

A. Phonological Awareness
PA includes variety of skills and knowledge
Loningan and colleagues (1998) said, “The pattern of results indicates that the
development of phonological sensitivity is not a continuous function represented
as a steady increase in ability with increasing age. However, the growth in
phonological sensitivity was accelerated in older groups. (the groups age: 2-5
years old).”
cont’d
B. Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)

Fluency includes reading text quickly, accurately, and with intonation. (Kuhn
&Stahl, 2002)

ORF scores display greater growth during the school year in early grades,
about 30-40 wcpm compared to 18-23 wcpm in grades 6-8.

It relates to prosody. Prosody is a feature of oral reading that is

not evident in beginning readers, but it is evident to a high
degree of proficiency among skilled readers. Thus prosody is
related reasonably to reading accuracy (as a part of ORF),
rate(wcpm), and proficiency.
 CLAIM 3: SOME SKILLS ARE
TEMPORARILY CODEPENDENT ON
OTHER SKILLS
Claims 1 and 2 contain a reconceptualization of different
developmental trajectories of constrained and unconstrained skills.

Claim 3 posits that developing relations among skills can be

temporarily codependent.

A. Alphabetic Principle

Letter-name knowledge is correlated with letter-sound knowledge but not

subsequent word-reading skills (Rathvon, 2004).
 
Letter-name knowledge precedes and facilitates letter-sound knowledge, and
letter-sound knowledge in turn directly promotes phonemic awareness, decoding,
and word recognition (Treiman & Bourassa, 2000).
 
 cont’d
The developmental sequence of acquisition for seven reading skills:
beginning consonant
alphabetic knowledge concept of words in text
awareness

contextual word spelling with beginning and ending phoneme

reading ability recognition consonants segmentation
Morris and colleagues (2003)

B. Phonemic awareness (PA)

PA is directly related to the print. Children who are poor readers generally
have poor phonemic awareness.

Wilson and Rupley (1997) : PA is related strongly to comprehension in

grades 2 and 3, but the relation diminished in upper grades. In contrast,
PA reflects broader phonological knowledge and may be related to
phonological processing over a longer age range.

Metsala & Walley (1998) : vocabulary growth helps children restructure

words into segments. Vocabulary size may influence phonemic
awareness most during preschool years.
cont’d
C. Oral Reading Fluency

Stahl & Hiebert (2005):

There seems to be a stronger relation between word recognition, accuracy, and
prosody and comprehension in the first and second grades. This relation
appears to diminish in the third and fourth grades.

Non fluent readers could not easily read many words so they read more slowly
and with less expression than the majority of children who were more fluent
readers. Conversely, the fluent readers were not necessarily always fast and
accurate.

Asymmetrical relation: Lack of prosody is related to lack of accuracy and slow

reading BUT high levels of fluency do not entail accurate and speedy reading.
IMPLICATION AND
CONCLUSION
The traditional analysis about constrained skill needs to be reconsidered
and re-evaluated:
claims that young children’s alphabetic knowledge, print knowledge,
phonemic awareness, and fluency predict future reading achievement must
be more guarded and acknowledged as limited to times of partial mastery.
  
Keep the development of skills related to decoding in perspectives. So the
skills are not only focus on instruction or assessment for beginning
readers (Paris, 2009)
 
Understanding trajectories among skills and broader goals of motivated
reading for learning in multiple media in multiple purposes should
reinforce the importance of early instruction on a broad set of language
and literacy experiences for children.
THANK YOU