The Science of Reading is a large body of research that helps answer a key question about the human experience: How do people learn to read?
It also helps answer a fundamental question for educators: How should we teach reading?
The Science of Reading draws on decades of research from fields like cognitive science, neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, and education. This vast (and still growing) body of research describes our up-to-date understanding of what reading requires, and therefore shapes our approach to effective literacy instruction.
Two frameworks are widely used to capture and communicate those core takeaways:
- The Simple View of Reading
- The Reading Rope
In this overview, we’ll walk you through both.
Why reading needs science
Spoken language develops naturally. Children typically learn to understand and use language simply by being around other people who talk.
Reading, on the other hand, works differently. Written language is a human invention; our brains did not evolve to read. When we are born, the parts of our brain that see letters are completely separate from the parts that hear sounds. So to become readers, students require explicit instruction. They have to be taught specifically to build new connections between what they see on the page and the language they already know.
For a brain to read words, it needs to create new pathways that connect letters with sounds. For example, when a child sees the letter “f” and connects it to the /f/ sound in “funny,” their brain builds a new bridge between the areas that handle sight and sound. Reading actually rewires the brain, bringing together the regions for vision, speech, sound, and meaning into one coordinated reading system.
The Science of Reading explains what those new connections involve—and why some students need more support than others to build them.
The Simple View of Reading
At the heart of the Science of Reading is one of the most widely accepted frameworks in reading research: the Simple View of Reading, first proposed by experts Philip Gough and Bill Tunmer in the 1980s.
The Simple View answers a basic question: What has to be in place for a reader to understand a text?
According to the Simple View, reading comprehension depends on two essential components:
- Decoding: the ability to turn written words into spoken language
- Language comprehension: the ability to understand the meaning of that language
Both are necessary, and neither works on its own. One reader may decode words accurately but struggle to understand what they read, while another may understand spoken language well but be unable to read the words on the page. In either case, comprehension breaks down.
The Simple View captures this core finding of reading research: Skilled reading depends on both word reading and language understanding working together.
Decoding: Reading the words on the page
Decoding involves learning how letters and letter patterns represent sounds. This task is complex in alphabetic writing systems like English, where many letters represent more than one sound, and many sounds can be spelled in different ways.
When children begin learning to read, they already understand a great deal of spoken language. What they don’t yet understand is written language. Letters and printed words are unfamiliar in a way that speech is not.
As students practice decoding, they become more accurate and more fluent. Over time, decoding becomes increasingly automatic.
And this automaticity matters—when students no longer have to focus most of their attention on reading the words, they can devote more mental energy to understanding what the text means.
Language comprehension: Understanding what you read
Language comprehension includes vocabulary, knowledge about the world, and an understanding of how language works across sentences and texts.
Research shows that what readers already know plays a major role in comprehension. As shown in the baseball experiment, students understood and remembered more when the text described a familiar activity—even when their reading skills were relatively weak.
When students read about unfamiliar topics, comprehension becomes more difficult. This is true even for students who can read the words on the page accurately.
So what’s the best way to teach reading comprehension? Combine both elements of the Simple View. In other words, reading comprehension grows alongside vocabulary and knowledge, and exposure to a wide range of topics supports reading development.
The Reading Rope
The Simple View of Reading identifies what reading requires, while the Reading Rope reflects how those requirements develop and become integrated over time.
The Reading Rope organizes reading into two broad strands:
- Word recognition, which includes phonological awareness, decoding, and fluent word reading
- Language comprehension, which includes vocabulary, background knowledge, and the ability to make meaning from text
Each strand of the Rope is made up of multiple interconnected skills. With effective instruction and practice, these skills become more coordinated and more automatic. As that happens, reading becomes smoother and less effortful, allowing readers to focus more fully on meaning.
The Reading Rope builds on the Simple View by showing how skilled reading emerges as these components strengthen and work together.
Instructional practices: Putting it all to work
The Science of Reading is the broad body of research on how reading develops, and the Simple View of Reading and Reading Rope capture the core takeaways of that research.
Together, they show that skilled reading depends on both accurate word reading and strong language comprehension, and that these abilities develop through explicit and systematic instruction, practice, and growing knowledge over time.
For educators, this understanding provides the strongest possible foundation for reading instruction. When students become skilled readers, new possibilities open up—in their classrooms today, and for the rest of their lives.
