What are word-attack skills designed to assist with?

Word-attack skills are primarily designed to enhance phonetic awareness in reading. This set of skills helps students decode unfamiliar words using various strategies, such as phonics, context clues, and structural analysis. By focusing on phonetic awareness, students learn how to break down words into their component sounds and syllables, enabling them to read new words more effectively and independently. This foundational ability is crucial for developing proficiency in reading, as it allows individuals to tackle complex texts by making educated guesses about word pronunciation and meaning based on their knowledge of phonetic principles.

While improving vocabulary and comprehension is certainly important in reading, word-attack skills are more directly related to the phonetic decoding process rather than the broader skills of comprehension and vocabulary enhancement, which involve different strategies and knowledge bases.