ReadingReading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling), alphabetics, phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and motivation. Other types of reading and writing, such as pictograms (e.g., a hazard symbol and an emoji), are not based on speech-based writing systems.
Balanced literacyBalanced literacy is a theory of teaching reading and writing the English language that arose in the 1990s and has a variety of interpretations. For some, balanced literacy strikes a balance between whole language and phonics and puts an end to the so called reading wars. Others say balanced literacy, in practice, usually means the whole language approach to reading.
Synthetic phonicsSynthetic phonics, also known as blended phonics or inductive phonics, is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words. Synthetic phonics refers to a family of programmes which aim to teach reading and writing through the following methods: Teaching students the correspondence between written letters (graphemes) and speech sounds (phonemes).
Whole languageWhole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Great Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.
PhonicsPhonics is a method for teaching people how to read and write an alphabetic language (such as English or Russian). It is done by demonstrating the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters or groups of letters (graphemes) or syllables of the written language. In English, this is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code. While the principles of phonics generally apply regardless of the language or region, the examples in this article are from General American English pronunciation.
