Bottom-Up Approach
- Discriminate each letter
- Sound these out
- Match the written symbol to the aural equivalent
- Blend these together to form words
- Derive meaning (final step)
"READING" without understanding
Top-Down Approach
- One begins with a set of hypotheses or predictions about the meaning of the text.
- Sample the text to determine whether or not one´s predictions are correct.
- Reading is a process of reconstructing meaning rather than decoding form.
- The reader resorts to decoding if the other means fail.