The Scarborough Rope and The Simple View of Reading

Decades of research has shown us what happens in the brain as we learn to read. In order to explore this concept, we'll begin by engaging in two mini-experientials to deepen our understanding of what science tells us about how the brain processes text.

Mini Experiential #1

This passage is from a third grade-level text entitled The Wind in the Willows. Try reading this passage with some of the code removed.

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Then click here to reveal what the passage says.

As you can see, when you don’t have access to using all the code when reading, it interferes with your ability to process the words on the page.

Mini Experiential #2

Now try reading the passage below and then summarize it.

“…Australia failed to fully capitalise on the second-wicket stand of 182 between Smith and Finch, as Michael Clarke’s men were stunted by the off-breaks of Ravichandran Ashwin and a curious collective failure against back-of-a-length bowling.”

Now click here for commentary on the experiential above.

It is upon us as educators to ensure that our students have the background knowledge for proficient reading.

The Scarborough Rope

Now, let’s take a look at The Scarborough Rope, a model designed to help us understand the intricate nature of the reading process.

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Source: “Connecting Early Language and Literacy to Later Reading (Dis)abilities: Evidence, Theory and Practice,” Holly S. Scarborough. In Susan B. Newman’s & David K. Dickinson’s (Eds.) Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Guilford Press, 2001.

As illustrated by this model, skilled reading is like a rope composed of multiple strands. Language comprehension and word recognition twist together to form the rope.

Comprehension is twisted together from background knowledge, vocabulary, grammar, semantics, verbal reasoning, and knowledge about literacy itself.

Word recognition is woven (derived) from awareness of the sound structure of words, also known as phonological awareness; the decoding skills acquired through the knowledge and application of the alphabetic principle and sound-spelling correspondences; and sight recognition of familiar words. The Word Recognition strand becomes increasingly automatic with practice until fluency is achieved.

As with a real rope, weakness in any of the strands impacts the strength of the rope as a whole. These foundational skills are not an end in and of themselves; rather, they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines.

The Simple View of Reading

In 1986, Gough and Turner published a theory called The Simple View of Reading, as you see below. As you may notice, their model reads like a multiplication problem. The number of words that a reader can decode multiplied by their language comprehension equals their reading comprehension. And like any multiplication problem, if one of the factors is zero, then the product is zero. In other words, if decoding or language comprehension skills are missing, then comprehension is negatively impacted.

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Both of these models we have just looked at essentially seek to answer the question: How do you get meaning from text? In “simple” terms, they show that you need to convert written words to speech and you need to understand that speech. All these processes are interwoven and interplay and must be explicitly developed. When we think about the Foundational Skills in reading, these components exist mostly within the Word Recognition side of the rope, and that is going to be our focus for this course.

Core Knowledge Foundation. (2015). Reading comprehension: There's no workaround for knowledge. Retrieved from https://www.coreknowledge.org/blog/reading-comprehension-theres-no-workaround-for-knowledge/

Gough, P. B., & Tumner, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6-10.

Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.) Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 97–110). New York: The Guilford Press.