How Children Recognize Written Words

According to Linnea Ehri’s research, there are five different ways a reader can recognize a written word.

1. By identifying and blending together the individual phonemes in words
   
   
   /c/ /a/ /t/
   
   
2. By noticing and blending together familiar spelling patterns, which is a more advanced form of decoding
   
   
   /s/ /ight/
   
   
3. By recognizing words as whole units, or reading them “by sight”
   
   
4. By making analogies to other words that are already known
   
   
   "can" and "her" to identify "banter"
   
   
5. By using clues from the context to guess a word’s identity
   
   
   i.e. pictures on the page or meaning of the passage