When students have mastered the process of decoding, they read with such speed and automaticity that we may forget about the decoding process all together. Teachers and parents may take this ability to combine sounds to create words for granted. The child's reading sounds so fluent and effortless that decoding support is not needed.
How can we identify the children that are struggling? And how can we determine that their struggle is with the decoding process?
The best way to determine if a child is struggling to decode is to listen to the child read a list of words or sentences. If their reading sounds choppy, slow, and laboured a decoding deficiency may be the problem. Teachers and parents can try to identify which of the child’s decoding skills are weak. For example does the child struggle with short vowels or ending sounds? Or is it their ability to hear and separate syllables that is lacking? Students who struggle to decode will have trouble sounding out words. They may struggle to make the sounds of the individual letters or they may have trouble putting the sounds together to say the final word. Their attempts at decoding will sound laboured with frequent starts and stops. Students who have a decoding difficulty will repeatedly misidentify familiar and phonetic words. They will also struggle to recognize words out of context. Children who lack decoding skills will usually be reluctant to read (Lyon, 1997).