In grade 7, the children were found to be unusually good at pronouncing lists of words presented in isolation, 3.6 years ahead of norms. But they weren't nearly as impressive on tests of reading comprehension, scoring only three months above the expected level.

The children's superior ability to read words out of context did not translate into better reading comprehension ability. In fact, the children were farther above norms in reading comprehension in grade 2 than in grade 7.

Is Decoding Proficiency Part of Learning to Read?

The results of these studies suggest that a high level of proficiency in decoding is not a preliminary step in learning to read. One could argue, however, that intensive decoding practice is only the first step, necessary but not sufficient, and it needs to be followed by a great deal of practice in applying the principles learned.

Heavy Skills Instruction not Necessary

If instruction in decoding is necessary as a first step, the results of other studies indicate that heavy, systematic phonics instruction of the kind supplied by Reading First is not necessary. These studies show that children who have been given the opportunity to do a great deal of interesting, comprehensible reading and have less decoding instruction perform as well as or better than children in decoding-emphasis classes on decoding tests, and typically score higher on tests that test what really counts in reading: comprehension (Morrow, O'Conner and Smith, 1990, Eldridge, 1991; Klesius, Griffith, and Zielonka, 1991). There are also many attested cases of children who learned to read on their own with little or no explicit decoding instruction and who appear to be able to decode quite well (e.g. Goodman and Goodman, 1982, McQuillan, 1998).

In summary: Those who receive only intensive instruction in decoding do not do well on tests of reading comprehension, but those who learn to read by reading, by understanding what is on page, do well on tests of both decoding and reading comprehension.

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