As you read these definitions, remember that someone learning to read will learn these skills at the same time, not one after another. Tutors need to focus on all these skills in each session. The final section of this unit, Putting It All Together, will help tutors learn how to do this.

The components of reading instruction

Phonemic awareness training teaches a learner to detect, think about and manipulate the individual small sound-parts within words. This in turn helps a learner understand how the words in our language are represented in print. It moves from an understanding of rhymes through an awareness of words in a sentence to an awareness of syllables. Research shows that some struggling readers need to learn to hear the sounds we make in speech. This can be quite difficult to teach, and those with a reading difficulty may never hear all the sounds we make.

Decoding instruction includes teaching a learner about phonics and sight words. Phonics is the correspondence between our language’s sounds and the letters we use to represent those sounds. Phonics instruction teaches the sound of each letter as well as teaching about syllables, prefixes and suffixes. Research shows that some students need to be taught phonics directly. Sight words are words that we learn as a complete unit, by automatic recognition.

Fluency development is learning to read as easily as we speak. It involves knowing all the words in a printed text and being able to focus on meaning instead of decoding each individual word.

Vocabulary development builds knowledge of the words used in a language and expands the range of words known to an individual.

Comprehension strategies help learners to actively understand what they read.

Tutoring tips for teaching phonics and phonemic awareness

• Tutors should teach phonics and phonemic awareness together. It’s important for learners to know not only the sound of a letter but how it sounds in a word. In other words, tutors should not try to teach sounds in isolation, without connecting them to words.
• It’s a good idea for tutors to develop methods of assessing the learners’ strengths and weaknesses. They can use simple tasks to determine the areas to work on, and so avoid getting bogged down in teaching phonemes and phonics the learner already knows. For example, if a learner cannot read words with blended sounds, it’s clear that blended sounds are an area to teach. (Nonsense words really test a person’s ability to read phonetically.)
• Remind tutors that although there may be lots to teach, they should focus on one or two particular areas of need in each session and provide an opportunity for practice. For example, focus just on short vowel sounds and blends, and let the learner work with them long enough to really understand and know them before moving on.