Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
FRITHS 3 STAGE MODEL - Coggle Diagram
FRITHS 3 STAGE MODEL
Ramus (2004)
Unlike language, reading is not one of those 'natural' human skills that may have evolved under the pressure of natural selection.
The bare essentials of reading are a set of external symbols that represent words of the language, which, in order to be understood and verbalised, need to be mentally represented, and connected to the corresponding items of the mental lexicon.
Each child starts with two lexicons, one storing the meanings of words and one storing the forms of words (the phonological lexicon, where phonology is an abstract representation of speech.
Frith's model postulates that the child goes through three main stages, called logographic, alphabetic and orthographic respectively. Between two stages, new representations are set up and new connections are established between representations.
-
Repeated exposure to the same words leads the child to store whole-word grapheme sequences to constitute an orthographic lexicon.
Reading aloud can proceed directly through the phonological lexicon without going through grapheme-phoneme conversion.
-
Friths model assumes a particular class of teaching methods, based on explicit phonics instruction.
Although the huge controversy as to whether phonics is an essential component of good teaching, Some children become fluent readers without receiving phonics tuition.
-
Orsolini et al (2007)
According to the developmental model proposed by Frith, reading acquisition starts with a logographic stage in which children use salient visual cues to build a sight vocab which allows them to instantly recognise familiar words.
Recent studies have shown that for some children reading starts with a partial use of letters as phonetic cues of a word sound.
A step towards phonological recoding is determined by learning to write. When children are taught to write they learn the alphabetic principle underlying the orthographic system and start to apply it to reading as well. Children decode grapheme by grapheme in a left-to-right systematic fashion and assemble phonemes to generate a words pronunciation.
-
At some stage, children draw a reading process from the initial logographic strategy that is based on accessing visual memories and, at the same time, retain from alphabetic reading sophisticated attention to sequential graphemic structures. Merging logographic and alphabetic reading results in the instant word recognition typical of lexical reading.
When children acquire lexical reading they can deploy orthographic memories to retrieve rather than assemble a word's phonological representation. It is from lexical memories that word pronunciation is generated.
An alphabetic phase followed by lexical reading phase does not easily accomomdate evidence of studies showing that lexicality effects in reading regular words co-exist with difficulties in deploying lexical reading with exception words,
Lexical reading is not likely to develop as a function of merging a visual and a phonological pathway to word recognition - as originally claimed by Frith, but as a function of repeated and effective phonological recoding of specific orthographic strings.
-
Troeva (2016)
Decoding appears to be a major component of reading development in both developmental models of reading.
Ehri and Frith pinpoint decoding and mastering of the alphabetic principle as the two major gateways to reading acquisition.
The three stages are sequential, and each is built on the previous one. That would mean that decoding skills and knowledge of the phoneme-grapheme correspondence precede the acquiring of sight words.
Frith poses that in order to have dyslexia, there has to be a neuro-developmental disorder, a 'biological origin leading to cognitive deficit and resulting in a particular pattern of behavioural signs' with environmental factors affecting all these levels.
-
Frith posits that the progress of children with and without dyslexia is different in two different aspects. Children who have difficulties proceeding from the logographic stage, develop compensatory strategies and logographic skills to a greater extent than that of other children. The excessive focus on phonics instruction may help them develop alphabetic skills but these will require much more effort than in other children and may not be maintained under stress.
3 Stages
Logographic - word shape, characteristic of beginning readers
-
Orthographic - Clusters of letters representing clusters of sounds recognised as orthographic units (7 +)
Each strategy happens sequentially, with later strategies building on earlier ones.