According to the Simple View of Reading, reading comprehension relies on two main components.

• A. Word recognition and language comprehension
• B. Phonological awareness and fluency
• C. Vocabulary and grammar knowledge
• D. Decoding and spelling accuracy

Answer: (A)

The key idea here is that reading comprehension comes from two parts working together: recognizing words in print (decoding or word recognition) and understanding language (language comprehension). Decoding involves turning letters and sounds into spoken words, while language comprehension covers knowing vocabulary, grammar, and the background knowledge and reasoning needed to make sense of what the text means. If you can read the words but don’t understand them, comprehension will be limited by language understanding. If you understand the ideas but can’t decode the words, you can’t access the text well, so comprehension suffers there instead. The two components together explain how both access to the text and understanding of its meaning drive comprehension.