What Is the Simple View of Reading?

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Margaret Goldberg: One of the really great explanations for the role of word recognition and of language comprehension comes in the form of the simple view of reading, which was introduced by Gough and Tunmer many years ago, and it's been validated by over 150 studies since. It doesn't say that reading is simple. We all know reading is a complex cognitive process, but it is composed of some pretty simple parts we can look at. We can look at decoding, which is efficient word recognition. It's being able to see the words on the page and to pronounce them. It's also composed of language comprehension, and that's the ability to understand what those words mean. The simple view of reading is a multiplication formula. It's decoding times language comprehension equals reading comprehension (D x LC = RC). Language comprehension becomes reading comprehension, when the meaning that we're getting from those words comes from print that's on the page.

So the formula for the simple view of reading is decoding times language comprehension equals reading comprehension. And we can actually calculate the amount of reading comprehension we can expect a child to have if we know the skills that they have in decoding and language comprehension are in place to be able to make sense of the print on the page. We're going play a little bit of a game. We're going try to describe the reader. Picture a child who has all of the decoding skills necessary and all of the language comprehension skills necessary to read the book that's in front of them. Imagine that they have the phonics needed to be able to pronounce the words, and they know what those words mean. They've got the background knowledge, they've got the vocabulary, all the decoding skills times all the language comprehension skills needed. It's going equal all the reading comprehension we would want a child to have.

What you're picturing unfold in front of you is a fluent reader who has good comprehension. That's what we want for all kids. But now picture a different kid. Picture a child who's got only half of the decoding skills necessary to pronounce the words that are on the page. They've got all the language comprehension to understand the text. If we just read it out loud to them, they would know what it means. But they're stymied by the letters that are on the page. If they've got half the decoding skills times all of the language comprehension skills, the simple view of reading tells us that we can expect only half the reading comprehension from that child. And if you imagine, well, what does this child look like? Is this a big kid who reads really slowly and haltingly? Maybe they like to avoid reading. Any time it's silent reading, they want to get up and go do something else rather than have to sit alone with a text in front of them.

Or maybe what we should be picturing is pretty much every kindergartener and first grader. They come to us with a whole lot more language ... they've been speaking and hearing language around them for years before they show up in school, and so their decoding skills are not as strong as their language comprehension skills. Now, let's imagine another type of child. Let's imagine a kid who has all of the decoding skills necessary to pronounce the words on the page, but they only have half the language comprehension. If you've got all the decoding skills you need and you multiply that by only half the language comprehension, again, we can only expect half the reading comprehension. It's a multiplication formula. So, anytime any component is missing, we're going to see that impact in reading comprehension that's less, uh, strong than we'd want it to be. Then let's picture the child who has half the decoding skills necessary to read the words on the page and only half the language comprehension. This is kind of like a fourth grade math problem ... we've got one-half decoding times one-half language comprehension, and the results ... is only a quarter when it comes to reading comprehension. If you're struggling to be able to pronounce the words on the page, and you're also struggling to know what those words mean, chances are you're only going to have about a quarter of the reading comprehension we'd want you to have.