ABSTRACT
Jean Chall distinguished between acquiring reading skills (learning-to-read) and using them to acquire information (reading-to-learn) (Chall, 1983). Learning-to-read referred to mastering the basic tools of reading, including symbol—sound relationships (phoneme—grapheme correspondence) and print-based competencies such as word recognition and basic sentence understanding. Reading-to-learn meant using the basic tools to acquire information about the physical, social, and personal world from print-based sources of information. In the United States, the transition from learning-to-read to reading-to-learn was pegged at third or fourth grade (eight or nine years of age).
