Common Reading Terminology
When your child starts out learning to read, you may be hearing a lot of unfamiliar terminology used in articles, by teachers, etc. Get familiar with some basic terms.
Reading terms you need to know
Common terms you may hear used to describe your child’s efforts to learn to read.
Alpha to Omega
Structured linguistic, phonetically-based program to teach the spelling patterns and grammar of English
Automatic Reading
Automaticity is a general term that refers to any skilled and complex behavior that can be performed rather easily with little attention, effort, or conscious awareness. These skills become automatic after extended periods of training. Examples of automatic skills include driving a car through traffic while listening to the radio, sight reading music for the piano, and reading orally with comprehension. With practice and good instruction, students become automatic at word recognition, that is, retrieving words from memory, and are able to focus attention on constructing meaning from the text, rather than decoding.
Balanced literacy
An approach to reading instruction that strikes a compromise between Phonics approaches and Whole Language approaches — ideally, the most effective strategies are drawn from the two approaches and synthesized together.
Blending
Combining parts of a spoken word into a whole representation of the word. For example, /p/ /oo/ /l/ can be blended together to form the word POOL.
Decoding
Using knowledge of the conventions of spelling-sound relationships and knowledge about pronunciation of irregular words to derive a pronunciation of written words.
Diphthong
A gliding monosyllabic speech sound that starts at or near the articulatory position for one vowel and moves to or toward the position of another. For example, oy in TOY or ou in OUT.
Dyslexia
A difficulty in learning to read despite traditional instruction, average intelligence, and an adequate opportunity to learn. It is impairment in the brain’s ability to translate images received from the eyes or ears into understandable language. It does not result from vision or hearing problems. It is not due to mental retardation, brain damage, or a lack of intelligence.
Dyslexic students
Dyslexia can go undetected in the early grades of schooling. The child can become frustrated by the difficulty in learning to read, and other problems can arise that disguise dyslexia. The child may show signs of depression and low self esteem. Behavior problems at home as well as at school are frequently seen. The child may become unmotivated and develop a dislike for school. The child’s success in school may be jeopardized if the problem remains untreated.
Educational Software
Any software application that is intended for educational purposes and meets some established standards and objectives for teaching a particular subject.
English as a Second Language
The study of English by students whose mother tongue is a language other than English.
ESL
An acronym for English as a Second Language.
Fluent Reading
Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with proper expression and comprehension. Because fluent readers do not have to concentrate on decoding words, they can focus their attention on what the text means.
Home schooling
The practice of teaching children in the home as an alternative to attending public or private elementary or high school. Teaching reading in home school is a major part of home school curriculum.
Homophone
A word which is spelled differently from another word, but which is pronounced identically. For example, HOARSE versus HORSE; or TWO versus, TO, versus, TOO.
Letter identification
Ability to correctly identify letters within small groups of letters.
No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2002, has expanded the federal role in education and set requirements for every public school in America. At the core of NCLB are measures designed to close achievement gaps between different groups of students.
Orton-Gillingham method
This approach is language-based, multisensory, structured, sequential, cumulative, cognitive, and flexible. Its breadth, perspective, and flexibility prompt use of the term approach instead of method.
Phoneme
The vocal gestures from which words are constructed in a language; the smallest unit of speech that serves to distinguish one utterance from another (e.g. PAT and FAT are distinguished by the initial phoneme).
Phonemic awareness
A subset of phonological awareness; the knowledge that spoken words consist of a sequence of individual sounds, and the understanding that phonemes are rearranged and substituted to create new words. There are a finite set of phonemes which are arranged and rearranged to create an infinite set of spoken words.
Phonetics
The system of sounds of a particular language.
Phonics
An approach to reading instruction that emphasizes letter-sound relationships and generalized principles that describe spelling-sound relationships in a language.
Phonological awareness
Covers a range of understandings related to the sounds of words and word parts, including identifying and manipulating larger parts of spoken language such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. It also includes phonemic awareness (see above) as well as other aspects of spoken language such as rhyming and syllabication.
Phonological memory
The phonological memory, component of work memory is responsible for processing phonological information and is involved in the temporary retention of the verbal material. Children with phonological disorders present alterations in the language phonological component, characterized by the difficulty in organizing and classifying the sounds of speech which occur contrastively in the language, without a known etiology.
Reading Intervention
A program for addressing the needs of students who are reading below the proficient level.
Sight word
A word in a reading lesson containing parts that have not yet been taught, but that is highly predictable from the context of the story or which the child has memorized.
Sound-Symbol Association
This is the knowledge of the various sounds in the English language and their correspondence to the letters and combinations of letters which represent those sounds. Sound-symbol association must be in two directions: visual to auditory and auditory to visual.
Speech Recognition Technology
An alternative to traditional methods of interacting with a computer, it allows you to speak into a microphone that is attached to the PC and the computer is enabled to interpret the speech. Highly useful for dyslexic people.
Vocabulary
The words a reader knows. Listening vocabulary refers to the words a person knows when hearing them in oral speech. Speaking vocabulary refers to the words we use when we speak. Reading vocabulary refers to the words a person knows when seeing them in print. Writing vocabulary refers to the words we use in writing.
Whole Language
An approach to reading instruction that de-emphasizes letter-sound relationships and emphasizes recognition of words as wholes.
