Reading skill acquition

Main article: Reading skills acquisition

Literacy is the ability to use the symbols of a writing system. To be able to interpret the information symbols represent, and to be able to re-create those same symbols so that others can derive the same meaning. Illiteracy is not having the ability to derive meaning from the symbols used in a writing system.
Dyslexia refers to a cognitive difficulty with reading and writing. The term dyslexia can refer to two disorders: developmental dyslexia which is a learning disability; alexia or acquired dyslexia refers to reading difficulties that occur following brain damage.
Major predictors of an individual's ability to read both alphabetic and nonalphabetic scripts are phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming and verbal IQ.^[4]

[edit] Skill development

Both the Lexical and the Sub-lexical cognitive processes contribute to how we learn to read.

Sub-lexical reading

Sub-lexical reading,^[5][6][7][8] involves teaching reading by associating characters or groups of characters with sounds or by using Phonics learning and teaching methodology. Sometimes argued to be in competition with whole language methods.

Lexical reading

Lexical reading^[5][6][7][8] involves acquiring words or phrases without attention to the characters or groups of characters that compose them or by using Whole language learning and teaching methodology. Sometimes argued to be in competition with phonics methods, and that the whole language approach tends to impair learning how to spell.
Other methods of teaching and learning to read have developed, and become somewhat controversial.^[9]
Learning to read in a second language, especially in adulthood, may be a different process than learning to read a native language in childhood.
There are cases of very young children learning to read without having been taught.^[10] Such was the case with Truman Capote who reportedly taught himself to read and write at the age of five. There are also accounts of people who taught themselves to read by comparing street signs or Biblical passages to speech. The novelist Nicholas Delbanco taught himself to read at age six during a transatlantic crossing by studying a book about boats.^{[citation needed]}