Identifying the primary skills that require development among students with dyslexia is critical in reading acquisition. Using the reading development four-phase model, Ehri argues the central stepping stone in the reading acquisition is decoding. The alphabetic principle corresponds to how word-printed maps onto the phonemes in spoken words are represented.
The stages in reading development follow the pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic, consolidated alphabetic stages, and automatic. At the emergent stage, the child begins to comprehend words and letters. Partial alphabetic fluency is where the child becomes comfortable with letters and words.
The full alphabetic stage is where the child develops stronger reading skills. The consolidated alphabetic is where the child begins to depend less on the educational crutches necessary to learn new words. Lastly, the automatic or advanced stage is where the child has full fluency in literacy development.
The result of sight word vocabulary assumes a central platform in Ehri’s model. In people with dyslexia, the causal dyslexia model poses that word recognition is the principal difficulty and acknowledges accompanying comprehension deficits possibility.