This action research project was developed in order to increase student literacy, particularly in the area of reading, for students who were considered at-risk. The targeted student population was 2nd grade students who were served within a primary cross-categorical special education program. The classroom was housed in an elementary (K-2) school,…

This study had a two-fold purpose. It was concerned both with the effect of programed articulation therapy on Spanish-speaking subjects and with the role that distinctive features play on the phonological rules that affect articulation of three English phonemes. Fourteen adult Spanish-speaking subjects were involved and each demonstrated a…

The auditory reassembly ability of 160 children drawn from the total third- and fifth-grade populations of three public elementary schools was investigated as a function of grade level and reading ability. The stimuli were temporally segmented consonant-vowel-consonant monosyllables with interphonemic intervals of 100, 200, 300, and 400…

A testing instrument, the Experimental Phoneme Sequence Test (EPST), was devised to collect baseline information for studying receptive knowledge of phoneme sequencing in normal articulating kindergarten and elementary school children. One hundred kindergarten through fourth-grade children, five male and five female subjects at each half-year…

This report describes a program for increasing phonemic awareness in the primary grades. The targeted population consisted of first and second grade students from middle class communities located in the Midwest. Research indicated that students who enter primary grades without phonemic awareness might have reading difficulties. Lack of phonemic…

Children, four, six, eight, and twelve years old, and adults participated in a study of judgments of syllable similarity. Subjects listened to a disyllabic nonsense unit (the standard) followed by two comparison stimuli; they were then asked to choose the comparison stimulus "most like" the standard. Changes between the comparison stimuli and the…

This report describes phonics programs that will increase students' fluency and independent reading skills. The targeted population consisted of second grade students in a growing affluent community and first grade students in a large metropolitan city. The first and second grade students demonstrated a lack of awareness between phonemes and their…

This research is an analysis of the French and Spanish phonological, phonetic, and graphemic systems. A contrastive analysis is used to show the differences that can create problems to the Spanish speaker learning French. For the benefit of Spanish speakers, all of the materials included have been prepared in Spanish. The first chapter defines the…

A sample of 270 first, second, and third graders participated in this study of the pronounceability of the 119 phonograms identified in the Glass Analysis for Perceptual Conditioning Program for poor decoders. Each subject was asked to pronounce each of the phonograms. Subjects were cross-classified by grade level, sex, and reading ability as…

The role of visual imagery in the learning of letter-sound combinations was investigated using such mediating images as two scoops of ice cream for the letter "m." In a preliminary study, high-, medium-, and low-strength mediating images were determined for each letter-sound combination. The 216 kindergarten subjects in the main study were…

This paper describes a program for improving reading skills at the beginning of first grade so that a rapid acquisition of skills will enhance students' ability to succeed in their respective basal programs. The targeted population used a first grade in a suburban school (Site A) and a first grade in a mid-sized, Midwestern city school (Site B).…

The main purpose of this study was to structure and compare two series of grapheme-phoneme correspondence and phonics generalizations. The first series of correspondences and generalizations is designed for seriously disabled readers in grades 3-9 and was derived through a phonemic analysis of the first 1,500 words of the Heritage list ( The…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a meaning-emphasis or a code-emphasis method of teaching beginning reading to first-grade children was most efficacious. The following procedures were employed: establishment of a workable definition of the reading process, development of an experimental design in which the control of natural…

The purposes of this study were to analyze the pronunciation of pupils and teachers to determine the deviation from the expected pronunciation for each group, and to determine the influence of dialect on reading performance of pupils. A random sample of 20 first grade pupils and 20 elementary teachers from four small, rural, all-white elementary…

This thesis examined variations in the word decoding skills of children with reading disabilities. These variations were related to possible cognitive, developmental, and environmental causes of reading disability. Possible implications for educational interventions were also analyzed in the five studies. The thesis critically examines the…