ABSTRACT
Nevertheless, skill at word recognition is so central to the total reading process that it can serve as a proxy diagnostic for instructional methods. That is, while it is possible for adequate word recognition skill to be accompanied by poor comprehension abilities, the converse virtually never occurs. It has never been empirically demonstrated, nor is it theoretically expected, that some instructional innovation could result in good reading comprehension without the presence of at least adequate word recognition ability. Since word recognition skill will be a by-product of any successful approach to developing reading ability-whether or not the approach specifically targets word recognition-Iack of skill at recognizing words is always a reasonable predictor of difficulties in developing reading comprehension ability.
