The influence of decodability in early reading text on reading achievement: a review of the evidence

This review synthesizes the existing research on decodability as a text characteristic examining how reading decodable text impacts students’ reading performance and growth. Collectively the results indicate that decodability is a critical characteristic of early reading text as it increases the likelihood that students will use a decoding strategy and results in immediate benefits, particularly with regard to accuracy. The studies point to the need for multiple-criteria text with decodability being one key characteristic in ensuring that students develop the alphabetic principle that is necessary for successful reading, rather than text developed based on the single criterion of decodability.