Three Reading Theories “Cheat Sheet”
Subskill Theory
Interactive Theory
Transactive Theory
Automaticity is crucial.
A combination of top-down (readerbased) and bottom-up (text-based)
processing.
Rosenblatt is associated with this
theory.
Beginning readers may read slowly
and in a choppy manner because
they must focus on word
recognition.
Readers simultaneously process
information from the text and from
their schemata.
Readers use knowledge from
experiences to help them make
connections to the new material.
Readers must master various
subskills before larger skills until
they can integrate those subskills
automatically.
A reader who lacks background
knowledge about a topic may have
difficulty comprehending text that
focuses on that topic.
No two readings of a text, even by
the same person at different times,
will be identical.
Beginning readers switch attention
back and forth from decoding to
comprehension.
A reader who cannot use clues
from the sentences or pictures to
aid in determining the meaning of a
key word in the text may have
difficulty comprehending the text.
Readers may use an efferent
stance and focus on obtaining
information from the text.
Teachers must remember that
learning subskills is a means to an
end; thus, practice of skills should
be with meaningful materials.
Readers may use an aesthetic
stance and focus on the feelings
and images evoked, and the
memories aroused, by the text.
Meaning is constructed and the
readers’ schemata are changed
due to reading the text.
Readers use graphophonic
(phoneme/grapheme), semantic
(meaning), and syntactic (grammar)
cues to recognize unknown words.