The Five Components of Reading

Learning to read is one of the most important skills children can learn. When your child takes their first
steps in their learning to read journey, it’s important to keep in mind the five essential components of
reading that every child needs in order to grow into a confident and fluent reader.

There are many fun, play-based activities you can do at home to build your child’s skills in these five core
areas of reading.

Reading Eggs is designed by experts to cover all five components of reading instruction for children aged
3–13. If you don’t have an account yet, register online here for a free trial.

Here are the five key aspects of reading for every child:

1. Phonics

five aspects of reading phonics

Phonics is the process of mapping the sounds in words to written letters. This is one of the earliest
reading skills children should develop, because it introduces them to the link between letters and
sounds, known as the alphabetic principle.

A lack of phonics instruction in early childhood can lead to reading difficulties further down the track. It’s
important that children can grasp the concept that printed text represents the sounds of spoken words.
There are many phonics activities that you can do with your child at home, which will help your child to
develop early phonics skills, although it’s important to remember that these activities should always be
complemented with regular reading.

2. Phonemic awareness

five aspects of reading phonic awareness

Children develop phonemic awareness by learning about sounds (phonemes), syllables and words.
Every word in the English language is made up of a combination of individual units of sound, known as
phonemes. For example, the word ‘crab’ is made up of four individual units of sound; c/r/a/b. Phonemic
awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate these individual units of sound. It is one of the
most fundamental skills children need to acquire in order to learn how to read. By playing word games,
engaging in language play, rhyming, and simply listening to a parent read to them, your child can
develop phonemic awareness from an early age. Why not complete the first few lessons in Reading Eggs
with your child now to start building key skills in phonemic awareness?

3. Vocabulary

five components of reading vocabulary

Having an ever-increasing vocabulary is a fundamental part of academic and reading success. The more
words we know, the better we become at reading and understanding the texts that we read.

Every child approaches reading with varying abilities. The larger a child’s speaking and listening
vocabulary, the more words they will be able to add to their reading and writing vocabularies with
relative ease. Reading a wide variety of books is one of the best ways for a child to grow their
vocabulary. Some of the most fundamental words that a child will learn when starting to read are sight
words. These include high frequency sight words such as ‘on’, ‘I’, ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘is’, ‘an’ and ‘be’. The first
100 sight words make up more than fifty per cent of most texts for early readers, and are therefore
extremely beneficial for your child to learn early on in their reading journey.

4. Fluency

five components of reading fluency

There is a range of different skills that build reading fluency in young children. These include strong
phonic decoding skills, an expanding bank of high frequency words recognised at sight, and the amount
of time that children spend reading books at an appropriate level. The more children read, the better
they are at understanding and reading with speed and accuracy.

Fluency enables readers to quickly span the gap between recognising a word and understanding its
meaning. Since fluent readers no longer need to concentrate on decoding the words on a page, they can
enjoy the freedom of focusing on the *meaning* conveyed by words and sentences. Fluency is
something that comes as a child develops their phonemic awareness, phonics skills and vocabulary.
Regular reading practice is essential to developing reading fluency. It’s also helpful to note that by
reading aloud regularly to your child, you can provide them with a vocal model to help them understand
what fluent reading sounds like.

You can choose from over 2000 children’s books in the Reading Eggspress Library, which are all sorted
by reading age and Lexile level. Log in now to start reading or register for a free trial here.

5. Reading comprehension

five components of reading comprehension

Great readers are deeply immersed in the stories they read. They visualise the characters, they hear the
dialogue in their heads, and they imagine details beyond the borders of the page. Great readers think
about what is happening in a story and share the emotional journey of the characters.

In nonfiction books, great readers gain new information, increase their vocabulary, and link what they
read with other sources of information in order to deepen their level of understanding of new concepts
and topics.

These are all indicators that your child has a full and rich comprehension of the texts they read. It is a
complex skill that requires time and practice to develop fully, but inevitably reaps great rewards. It’s no
secret that reading for meaning is the ultimate goal of learning to read. Comprehension is a skill that will
not only affect a child’s future reading ability, but also their academic ability throughout school and
beyond. Encouraging your child to talk about what they read is a great way to both monitor how much
they understand and improve their comprehension skills. Read how you can build your child’s reading
comprehension skills here.

Reading Eggs is the multi-award winning online reading program designed by experts to make learning
to read easy and fun. It covers all five essential components of reading instruction for children aged 3–
13. Start your free trial here today.

List Of Eight Different Types Of Writing Styles

1. Descriptive Writing
People often assume that descriptive writing is about using fancy and flowery phrases. However, strong
descriptive writing is much more than that.

Descriptive writing provides details about things such as an event, a setting, or a group of characters.
More often than not, these writings are personal, short, and subjective.

The main goal of descriptive writing is to make the readers feel like they’re experiencing everything in
the storyline themselves. For that, you need to provide a vivid image of the story to the readers.

You can use this writing style to set the scene and add some spice to your writing. However, make sure
that you don’t end up overusing it.

2. Persuasive Writing

Let’s say you want to write a book about the significance of eating green vegetables. One way to
convince people to adopt this idea is by using a persuasive writing style.

Persuasive writing is used to convince the readers to believe in an idea (and implement it). This writing
style is grounded in logical reasoning and works well for appealing to the reader on an emotional level.

This writing style is usually used in advertisements, reviews, recommendation letters, cover letters,
company brochures, business proposals, and opinion columns.

You can also use it to gain support for a noble cause, such as using environmental-friendly products or
updating obsolete company policies.

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Read more: Proposal Writing: Everything You Need to Know!

It is very easy to bore a reader with facts, figures, and examples that they can’t relate to. That’s where
narrative writing comes in. You might find it in novels, biographies, poems, memoirs, and more.

Narrative writing is all about stories, connecting facts, teaching without explaining, and helping readers
relate to the content. It often has a very clear beginning, middle, and end.

Occasionally, writers also use flashbacks and foreshadowing as tools to engage with the audience, while
some even use characters and dialogues to tell the story.

All in all, narrative writing is great for keeping the audience hooked till the end. After all, we all love
stories and we’re hard-wired to pay attention to them.

4. Expository Writing

Expository writing gives the readers important information and instructions about a topic. It’s entirely
based on facts and doesn’t include a writer’s personal opinions on the subject.

You can find this writing style in textbooks, newsletters, educational articles,
business/technical/scientific writing, recipes, newsletters, and more.

As expository writing is all about facts and figures, it does not always make the best hook. However, as
they say, there are exceptions to every rule.
For instance, if you begin your write-up with a shocking stat, it is bound to grab a reader’s attention. You
can even use it along with persuasive and narrative writing, adding the power of logic to your stories.

5. Review Writing

This writing style aids the reader in deciding whether they should invest in a product/experience or not.
It involves both subjective and objective thoughts in order to relay the authors’ experience.

Review writing doesn’t always include persuasive writing, as the reader might or might not recommend
the subject matter for both factual and personal reasons.

Reviews could be about anything – be it books, food, movies, video games, theme park experiences,
toys, restaurants, places, or even a movie character.

However, no matter what you’re reviewing, make sure that you describe the physical flaws (example:
low-quality plastic), perks (example: easy to set up), and experiential opinions (example: a breathtaking
view).

6. Technical Writing

Most of us don’t have the time to scour highly technical and scientific writings (instructional manuals,
white papers, scientific papers) to get the information that we need.

Well, technical writing is here to save the day! It takes complex technical and scientific content – and
simplifies it for the average reader. The purpose is to communicate knowledge and instructions in the
easiest way possible.
You can use technical writing to educate your employees on how to conduct safety procedures, or to
break down the research data into accessible text.

You can also use this writing style to teach consumers how to assemble a product, or to explain the
complex product features to them. The use-cases are endless!

7. Objective Writing

The word ‘objective’ describes something that’s purely factual and not influenced by personal feelings.
So, objective writing is something that can be verified through facts and evidence.

In objective writing, the author is supposed to remain neutral and unbiased and let the readers form
their own opinions. In short, objective writing means sticking to facts instead of opinions.

This writing style tends to lack vagueness and is very to-the-point. For example, rather than ‘almost
everyone voted for her’, it will be ‘83% of the residents voted for her’.

Another important thing that you need to keep in mind here is: try not to over-exaggerate your writing.
Don’t use words like ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘really’, or ‘very’. They can make your writing appear weak.

8. Subjective Writing

Subjective writing is opinion-driven writing. It expresses feelings, opinions, beliefs, perspectives, and
judgments – and lacks factual statements and evidence. Hence, it can’t be verified.

Subjective writing originates from the personal experience and observation of the writer, and it gives
the reader an insight into the author’s thinking process.
This writing style often makes the readers feel like someone’s speaking to them personally. The words
“I’, “you”, “us’, and “we are added throughout each line.

You can find subjective writing in personal journals, blogs, speeches during informal events, literary
work such as poems and stories, social media posts, and more.

Now, let’s learn a few tips you can follow to improve your writing style and make sure that you’re
sending a clear (and accurate) message that the readers can comprehend.

FIVE QUALITIES OF GOOD WRITING

FOCUS An essay should have a single clear central idea. Each paragraph should have a clear main point
or topic sentence.

DEVELOPMENT Each paragraph should support or expand the central idea of the paper. The idea of each
paragraph should be explained and illustrated through examples, details, and descriptions.

UNITY Every paragraph in an essay should be related to the main idea. Each paragraph should stick to
its main point.

COHERENCE An essay or paper should be organized logically, flow smoothly, and "stick" together. In
other words, everything in the writing should make sense to a reader.

CORRECTNESS A paper should be written in generally correct standard English, with complete
sentences, and be relatively error-free.

One additional quality, not part of this list, but nevertheless, very important, is creativity. The best
writing carries some of the personality and individuality of its author. Follow the above guidelines, but
always work to make your writing uniquely your own.

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