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What is the Science of Reading?

Decades of scientific research in education, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience has revealed the components required to learn to read as well as how the brain best learns to read. Phonics, the ability to match the speech sounds in words to the letters in print, and phonemic awareness, the ability to access and manipulate sounds in words, have been proven to be the foundation to all reading instruction. 

Explicit, systematic decoding instruction, incorporating phonemic awareness skills and utilizing a speech first approach, provides a solid foundation to accurate automatic reading in connected text. This foundation, in addition to instruction that facilitates vocabulary and background knowledge acquisition, leads to improved fluency, increased comprehension, and higher levels of reading achievement.  

Key Components of Reading Instruction:
Phonics, Phonemic Awareness, Comprehension

Phonics

Almost all educators agree that phonics instruction is imperative to reading instruction. However, there are many types of phonics instruction that differ in degree, intensity, and how they are delivered.

Structured Linguistic Literacy:

Speech to Print Approach

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Structured Literacy

Print to Speech Phonics

Analytic Phonics

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Embedded Phonics

Phonemic Awareness

To most effectively learn phonics, students must acquire phonemic awareness, or sound awareness. Phonemic awareness includes managing the smallest unit of sound or phoneme  in a word with three specific skills:


Blending

Pushing sounds together in words


Segmenting

Pulling sounds apart in words

Phoneme Manipulation

Removing or substituting sounds in words

Listening vs. Reading Comprehension

Listening Comprehension

Teachers everywhere aspire for their students to understand what is read to them as well as what they read independently. Listening or language comprehension is the ability to understand the vocabulary and grasp the meaning of text that has been read aloud to you and reading comprehension is understanding what you read to yourself.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is a much heavier cognitive load for a learner so is more difficult than listening comprehension. If a student can understand what is read to them but they don’t understand when they read to themselves, they have a word reading deficit, meaning they are not reading words accurately or are pulling words from memory, slowing down their reading and impacting comprehension.

Bridge from the Science to Teaching Students

Providing a bridge that connects the decades of research in reading to classroom instruction with students is the ideal for teachers. A simplified Structured Linguistic Literacy apporach leads with speech-first instruction for decoding and encoding. This aligns with the science of reading, providing the most effective, efficient avenue to help teachers assist their students in reaching their highest potential in reading, writing, and spelling. The EBLI difference will equip teachers with what they need to both learn the research base and teach it to their students.

Additional Resources

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– by APM Reports

– by APM Radio
– EBLI Founder Nora Chahbazi is featured

– by The Reading League

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