Although presented almost three decades ago, the Simple View of Reading is still unknown to many classroom educators. In 1986, researchers Gough and Tunmer presented the Simple View of Reading, a formula that reveals two essential components of reading: word decoding and language comprehension.1
Gogh and Tunmer presented this view to clarify the role of decoding in reading comprehension. The key idea is that both the ability to decode and language comprehension are necessary for reading comprehension. Some educators believed, and still believe, that decoding skills are not necessary if a child has strong language capabilities.
When decoding skills are not explicitly taught, students tend to compensate for weak decoding by guessing or using picture clues to interpret meaning. But when students have strong decoding skills, they can sound out unfamiliar words to read accurately and fluently. If we agree that the ultimate goal of reading is to understand and comprehend what we read, then decoding and language comprehension are two important factors to achieve this goal.