Skills Emphasis
(Bottom Up, Code Emphasis)

Skills Emphasis Philosophy

• Literacy begins with acquiring specific skills to decode the words being read
• Words are dissected into phonemes
• Readers use their knowledge of phonemes and letter-sound relationships to build from sounds to blends, blends to words, words to phrases, and so on
• Comprehension comes later and relies on these skills to occur

Text Examples

Jeanne Chall

• Stages of Reading Development, 1983
• Used a vote count process based on available research to examine code emphasis against meaning emphasis
• Code-emphasis was more effective for developing reading proficiency
• Did not find any particular system of the many available code-emphasis methods to be superior

Marilyn Adams

• Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print, 1990
• Examined the role of phonemic segmentation, letter-sound relationships, and orthographic learning in reading proficiency
• Favored skills emphasis approach with the caveat that its role should be limited
• Concerns about boredom

National Reading Panel

• Meta-analysis of existing studies of phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency
• Found that ten minutes of daily, explicit phonics instruction was effective in grades K-1, but not in later grades
• Critics argued that the methodology was flawed

National Reading Panel, continued

• Formed the basis for the Reading First program, which was included in the No Child Left Behind legislation
• Reading First was later defunded when the outcomes were counter to its purpose