This stage is regarded as a very visual, pictorial stage, where a child’s brain retains an image of a word, but doesn’t yet understand letter-sound correspondence.

In this stage, a learner may recognise a tiny number of significant words – their name, for example -  from the word’s overall shape.  They’re likely to confuse similar-looking words and would not be able to decode an unknown word, as they don’t yet understand letter-sound correspondence.  

The main reading strategy in this stage is visual recognition of words.

This stage is where the learner is developing phonemic awareness and phonic knowledge.   Students learn to apply these to decode and encode unknown words.   They can be expected to read unknown words – providing they are reasonably regular – and write unknown words.

Errors are likely to be phonetically correct:

In this stage, the main strategy for reading is conscious decoding, using the main decoding areas of the brain, particularly Broca’s Area and the parietal-temporal area.

This is the final stage in reading, where a fluent reader is able to recognise words instantly.  The words have been stored in the occipito-temporal area of the brain, often known as the Visual Word Form Area, and they can be retrieved instantly without conscious decoding.   

When an unknown word does occasionally pop up, the reader has the phonological skills and phonic knowledge to decode it with no difficulty.  The word is then stored in the Visual Word Form Area and the next time it’s seen, it will be instantly recognised.