Understanding the Reading Pyramid for Developing Strong Literacy Skills

Reading is an essential component of all sorts of learning, especially language acquisition. It precedes and strongly determines the quality of the most essential skills, the writing skills. Proper development of proficient reading skills ensures a solid foundation for writing. However, reading is not always easy and many still fail to appreciate the skills as the act of reading and digesting the contents of reading materials is complex and dynamic. It requires the integration of numerous cognitive processes and often involves the interpretation and deciphering through multiple layers of the author's explicit and implicit contexts and meaning. To read any text, our brain must comprehend not just the actual words, but also their connection to one another, the context behind the words, how nuanced language and vocabulary use may exert influence on the emotion and meaning behind the text, as well as how the material fits together as a broader, cohesive whole.

Research on second language reading emphasises that reading is a dynamic, complex, and strategic meaning-making process in which readers adopt multiple techniques to sort out ideas and information from many accessible references. L2 reading scholars have made numerous efforts to identify the various reading methods that constitute good comprehension. Over the last two decades, research on reading has documented a vast array of reading methods practised by readers. The list of reading strategies includes well-known techniques such as skimming, scanning, and inference, as well as more recently conceptualised ones such as asking questions, envisaging, stimulating schemata, monitoring comprehension, assessing strategy use, using mental images and identifying text structure (Ghosh and P, 2012).

THE PYRAMID READING

In 1997, the National Reading Panel conducted a research study and found that students will have better literacy skills when all five components in “The Five Pillars of Reading” were effectively taught—phonemic awareness, phonic, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Each pillar has its own distinguishing features to mould the minds of learners to earn them the ability to read and comprehend written English and develop strong literacy skills.

With an eye toward achieving the reading pyramid’s summit, a strong and solid base must first be established. The pyramid begins with phonemic awareness as a basic base skill for learners to master. Phonic and fluency skills are at the second and third base of the pyramid these two abilities constitute a big part of what we have learned and covered in primary schools, and the last two bases of the pyramid, vocabulary and comprehension, are the skills that continuously being polished for learners to progress to higher reading levels and attain reading comprehension. There are ample teaching methods and approaches educators can use to implement these five fundamental elements in the reading classroom. Here, we will understand every essential component of the reading pyramid in an effort to assist learners to read accurately and rapidly to achieve greater reading comprehension.  

UNDERSTAND THE ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF THE PYRAMID READING

i) Phonemic Awareness 

Phonemic awareness is generally described as the idea that a spoken word consists of separate sound units that are joined together when the word is uttered (Learning Point Associates, 2004). According to the National Reading Panel (n.d.), introducing phonemic awareness to young learners has evidently proved that it can increase their later reading achievement. The finding of the study is recognised by other researchers, including Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler (1998) whereby asserted that phonemic awareness is an essential part of reading and has the potential to be an indicator to gauge and predict young learners’ reading outcomes. To ensure the learner has a broad exposure to phonemic awareness, the teacher can emphasise phoneme segmentation where the words are breaking down into individual component sounds or, connect phonemic awareness to reading and writing so the young learners can see and understand clearly the impacts they will have in reading achievements (Wierman, 2021). 

ii) Phonics 

Phonics is the pillar that makes a real shift towards reading. This is where the learner understands the process of associating the sounds of spoken English with particular letters (individual letters) or letter combinations (group of letters). For instance, the letter k may be written as c, k, ck, or ch. Teaching learners to combine the sounds of letters enables them to decipher new or unfamiliar words by sounding them out. Phonics instruction helps readers to  emphasise and understand how letters correlate to sounds and apply the knowledge to reading and writing. The objective is to assist learners to comprehend that written letters and spoken sounds have a systematic and predictable connection (Antunez, 2002). The English language features many pitfalls notably for non-native speakers. When it comes to spelling, learners will encounter that many English words are spelt in a manner that the letters and sounds do not match. This tricky and complicated aspect is known as irregularly spelt words. To ensure learners can spell and read words rapidly and accurately, an effective phonics lesson should be implemented. Phonics lessons provide learners with a resource or act as a memory box to help them to recall and apply generalisations and rules for matching letters and sounds. Consequently, they can have the skills to read, spell, and identify words immediately (Wierman, 2021). 

iii) Fluency

Reading fluency means reading smoothly, and accurately at a good rate with expression and understanding, what you read or in the essence is the ability to automatically retrieve the words that he or she is reading without struggling over decoding issues. Practising fluency as learners read helps them make meaning so they will have stronger comprehension in which they understand what they read and be able to talk about it. According to Nevo, Vaknin-Nusbaum, and Brande et al. (2020), reading comprehension and oral reading fluency are interrelated in young readers because of emotional factors such as reading motivation. When learners struggle to pronounce words and letters, reading may become tedious and arduous, and they may find the reading activity a waste of time. There are four key parts to reading fluency according to Elish-Piper (2010), speed, expression, accuracy and comprehension. Every component is essential, but no single component can stand alone. A fluent reader can synchronise all four components of fluency to reach their end goal—reading comprehension. As the learner develops greater fluency, they should also learn to break down the text into smaller chunks of information to get a better idea of the reading contents, and know pause, intonation and tone during reading, too (Wierman, 2021). To assist students in developing and honing reading fluency, teachers can expose learners to repeated reading and guided repeated oral reading as these two forms of approaches have shown evidence to enhance vocabulary and word articulation ability (NICHD, 2000 as cited in Learning Point Associates, 2004).

iv) Vocabulary 

Vocabulary is a term that refers to words that have functions for communication purposes (Time4Learning, 2019). Vocabulary development is a vital stage for novice readers because it gives them knowledge and skills in multiple aspects of language and literacy. In the reading aspect, vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read whereby the readers need to know the words they sound out so they can understand what they read. When a learner pronounces a word, he or she is basically utilising their oral vocabulary pronunciations to help them identify words in print so they know whether or not the word can make sense based on their comprehension of the meaning of words. If the learner has no knowledge of the words they pronounce, it would be a difficult time for them to discern if the word is in their oral vocabulary, let alone to determine the meaning of the sentence and phrase. It’s also a means to gauge a learner's reading comprehension. Thus, by understanding the entirety of a text, or at least getting a grasp of the majority of words in it, only then the reader is able to understand the content of the material they read. To ensure the learner can robust their vocabularies and enhance reading fluency and comprehension, direct instruction of explicitly taught vocabulary can be implemented in the English classroom (Wierman, 2021).

v) Comprehension

Comprehension is the completion of all the prior four skills being developed and is the highest level in the reading pyramid for learners to achieve. Having a good comprehension means that learners can genuinely understand information, analyse the reading materials they read, make inferences and think deeper about what they have read. Learners who have achieved a greater comprehension, cultivate a lifetime reading habit and become proactive readers. A proactive reader frequently employs metacognitive approaches when they are reading as Fries-Gaither (2009) claimed real reading begins with metacognition. Metacognitive skills allow the reader to explore the purpose of what they are reading and evaluate the reading material for its relevance to their needs. This enables them to identify and define the areas in which they lack knowledge, and later apply the specific strategies to procure that new concept of ideas and knowledge. Thus, comprehension is an important milestone for all learners in their literacy skills development journey.

CONCLUSION

Teaching learners to read is an onerous obligation. Teachers who have a comprehensive grasp of the five key components of the reading pyramid can teach learners to read using instructional techniques and resources that have been shown to be effective. The five fundamental components of successful reading teaching describe elements necessary for learners to acquire reading skills. Effective teachers are able to put together these elements in the right proportions to fulfil each student’s needs. With the knowledge of the functions of phonemic awareness and phonics in the development of word-recognition abilities, they are able to recognise and address learners’ deficiencies in these areas. They also can identify that less emphasis will be placed on these two core components as learners improve in reading. Effective teachers are also aware of the relationship between fluency and comprehension and are able to employ research-based tactics to help learners become proactive readers. Through a range of word-learning tactics, teachers will consistently assist to expand learners’ vocabulary and their capacity to understand the meanings of new words. With a deep understanding of every component in the reading pyramid, teachers will be able to create an effective reading instruction plan, identify reading problems and teach in a way that resolves those problems, assess reading resources, improve teaching methods, and share their good practice and tips on teaching reading to other language educators.