Reading can be understood as a process of using background knowledge to form predictions about a text and sampling the text to confirm or revise those predictions. While top-down processing is useful, it requires automaticity in basic skills like letter recognition and word identification. Weak readers may develop strategies to find answers without fully comprehending the text, such as searching for keywords without understanding the context around them. Phonics links reading, writing, and speaking as interconnected skills rather than viewing reading as a separate ability.

1. By Khalil Azmi

2.  Reading was thus construed as a process of
‘sampling’ the text in order to confirm or
revise the top-down predictions suggested by
the schemata. Research backed up this view
by showing "that good readers just pass their
eyes quickly across the text, focusing on a
few letters or words here and there and
forming predictions based on background
knowledge" (Birch 2002:60)

3. One common, but far less prominent
perspective in the literature acknowledged
the usefulness of top-down processing
strategies, but adds the caveat that a top-
down approach can only be effective once a
learner has achieved a degree of automaticity
in the bottom-up skills of letter recognition
and word identification.If this is not in place,
readers can remain perpetually ‘word-
bound’.

4. Weak readers often develop a whole range
of strategies for getting the right answer
without necessarily engaging with the text
appropriately. A typical example is a student
who spots an unusual word in the question,
locates it in the text as though doing a word
search puzzle, and simply copies the
information around it. In actual fact, little
comprehension may be involved.

5. Unlike top-down approaches that see
reading as a unique and separate skill,
phonics links reading (decoding) to writing
(spelling) and speaking (pronunciation).