V A bottom-up reading model emphasizes

a single-direction, part-to-whole
processing of a text.
V In the beginning stages it gives little
emphasis to the influences of the
reader's world knowledge, contextual
information, and other higher-order
processing strategies. (Dechant 1991).
V A bottom-up reading model is a reading
model that
À emphasizes the written or printed text
À says reading is driven by a process that
results in meaning (or, in other words,
reading is driven by text), and
À proceeds from part to whole.
V part to whole model
 Oere are some proponents of the bottom
up reading model:
V Flesch 1955
V Gough 1985
V LaBerge and Samuels 1985
V According to Leonard Bloomfield

¦ ½he first task of reading is learning the

code or the alphabetic principle by
which ´written marks...conventionally
represent...phonemes.µ (Bloomfield and
Barnhart 1961)
¦ ½he meaning of the text is expected to
come naturally as the code is broken
based on the reader's prior knowledge
of words, their meanings, and the
syntactical patterns of his/her language.
(McCormick, ½. 1988)
¦ Writing is merely a device for recording
speech. (Bloomfield and Barnhart 1961)
V According to Emerald Dechant

¦ ´Bottom-up models operate on the

principle that the written text is
hierarchically organized (i.e., on the
grapho-phonic, phonemic, syllabic,
morphemic, word, and sentence levels)
and that the reader first processes the
smallest linguistic unit, gradually compiling
the smaller units to decipher and
comprehend the higher units (e.g.,
sentence syntax).µ (Dechant 1991)
V According to Charles Fries
¦ ½he reader must learn to transfer from the
auditory signs for language signals...to a set
of visual signs for the same signals. (Fries
1962)
¦ ½he reader must learn to automatically
respond to the visual patterns. ½he
cumulative comprehension of the
meanings signaled then enable the reader
to supply those portions of the signals which
are not in the graphic representations
themselves. (Fries 1962)
V Learning to read...means developing a
considerable range of habitual
responses to a specific set of patterns of
graphic shapes. (Fries 1962)
V According to Philip B Gough
¦ ºeading is a strictly serial process: letter-
by-letter visual analysis, leading to
positive recognition of every word
through phonemic encoding.
(McCormick, ½. 1988)
¦ Lexical, syntactic and semantic rules are
applied to the phonemic output which
itself has been decoded from print.
(McCormick, ½. 1988)
V A widely accepted instructional program
that incorporates several bottom-up
principles is the phonic approach to
reading.
Bottom-up advocates believe the reader
needs to

V identify letter features

V link these features to recognize letters
V combine letters to recognize spelling
patterns
V link spelling patterns to recognize words,
and
V then proceed to sentence, paragraph and
text-level processing.
£ Anderson 1990
£ Bloomfield and Barnhart 1961
£ Dechant 1991
£ Finn 1990
£ Fries 1962
£ McCormick, ½. 1988
£ Weaver, C. 1988
£ Wildman and Kling 1978