English spelling is highly inconsistent in terms of simple sound-to-spelling correspondences but is more consistent when context is taken into account. For example, the choice between "ch" and "tch" is determined by the preceding vowel ("coach," "roach" vs. "catch," "hatch"). We investigated children's sensitivity to vowel context when spelling…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development and piloting of reading comprehension measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fifth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks underlying the…

One goal of this longitudinal study was to examine whether the predictors of reading skills in Grade 3 would differ between English as a second language (ESL) students and native English-speaking (L1) students. Phonological processing, syntactic awareness, memory, spelling, word reading, and lexical access skills were assessed in kindergarten and…

In this study, utterances of prepubertal children. were examined for the purpose of limiting and isolating linguistic factors which may be important for aural perception of sex. The subjects were 43 third grade children, 21 boys and 22 girls, who ranged in age from eight years, four months, to nine years. Each of the children produced 19 types of…

This study examined the interaction between speech perception and sentential context among 13 poor readers and 49 good readers in grades one to three. Children's performance was examined on tasks assessing expressive and receptive vocabulary, reading skill, phonological awareness, pseudoword repetition, and phoneme identification. Good readers…

By taking the time to read to and with their children, fathers can play an important role in helping children learn to read. "Dad's Playbook" tells the stories of 20 dads from different walks of life who are giving their kids the best shot at a bright future by helping them learn to read. This National Institute for Literacy Partnership for…

Two studies--one quasi-experimental and one randomized experiment--were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of supplemental instruction in structural analysis and oral reading practice for second- and third-grade students with below-average word reading skills. Individual instruction was provided by trained paraeducators in single- and…

The role of information processing deficits in poor readers of nonalphabetic scripts such as Chinese is not well documented. Here, we examined perceptual processing in good and poor readers of Chinese. Specifically, two groups of third grade children comprising 20 "good readers" and 19 "poor readers," drawn from a larger pool of 254 students, were…

Study 1 retrospectively analyzed neuropsychological and psychoeducational tests given to N = 220 first graders, with follow-up assessments in third and eighth grade. Four predictor constructs were derived: (1) Phonemic Awareness, (2) Picture Vocabulary, (3) Rapid Naming, and (4) Single Word Reading. Together, these accounted for 88%, 76%, 69%, and…

Besides phonotactic principles, orthographies entail graphotactic rules for which the reader must convert a phonological representation on the basis of spelling adaptation rules. In the present study, the learnability of such rules will be investigated with reference to Dutch. Although Dutch orthography can be considered highly regular, there are…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development alternate forms of three types of early literacy measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks underlying…

Semitic writing systems such as that used to write Arabic are unique among st alphabetic writing systems in that in Semitic systems short vowels are represented as diacritics on consonant letters, and not represented at Allin text intended for skilled readers. Arabic is unique here in that the letter used to represent a consonant differs in shape…

The present study examined associations of levels of phonological awareness to word recognition in Korean and English in a 1-year longitudinal study of 91 children from Masan, Korea. With performances on tasks of speeded naming, vocabulary, and Korean Hangul in 2nd grade statistically controlled, only Korean syllable deletion predicted unique…

Second- and 3rd-grade children with poor word-level skills were randomly assigned to 8 months of explicit instruction emphasizing the phonologic and orthographic connections in words and text-based reading or to remedial reading programs provided by the schools. At posttest, treatment children showed significantly greater gains than control…

Spelling pronunciations are hypothesized to be helpful in building up relatively stable phonologically underpinned orthographic representations, particularly for learning words with irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In a four-week computer-based training, the efficacy of spelling pronunciations and previewing the spelling patterns on…