Argues that by encouraging children in their early writing efforts, adults can help them develop into confident and comfortable writers. (FL)

Study results do not demonstrate that early reading is made possible by precocity in speech-sound segmentation, blending, or discrimination ability, but that the complex skill involving the manipulation of sounds in temporal order may be more closely related to early reading ability. (AEA)

The development of four-year-old children's knowledge of letters and printed words was studied to determine if preschool children begin reading, and if so, how. A natural hierarchy of knowledge was noted. (MKM)

Explores children's ability to segment utterances into syllables and phonemes, and their skills in the recall of sentences of low and high complexity. (HOD)

Discusses a study designed to determine whether early reading instruction constitutes a positive factor in the cognitive development of children. The subjects for this study were 25 children in a nursery school in Macerata, Italy. (CFM)

Reports on research conducted over a six-year period on the relationship between children's art and reading levels. Provides an overview of literature on children's development in and through their art, examining the reading-art connection. Presents findings from one study in Grenada primary schools and three in Ontario, Canada. (CMK)

This research review concludes that precocious reading ability is a complex skill, and levels of specific subskills vary widely among individuals. Precocious reading ability is moderately associated with general intelligence and with academic achievement. Parents may encourage the early development of reading through natural and mutually enjoyable…

This study compared 56 early and nonearly readers (matched individually on sex, age, and preschool and kindergarten attended) in terms of their language concepts and skills, as well as their reading achievement, in kindergarten through second grade. The early readers were found superior to nonearly readers on preschool measures of general language…

Examines the responses of preschoolers to a number of print design features in various genres of alphabet picture books. Discusses the authors' personal stance on the language learning and language teaching that occurs during these encounters with alphabet books. Ponders the published criteria presented by children's literature experts for…

Discusses research on home literacy environments, the values of reading aloud, independent reading, literature and writing, and literature in the language arts curriculum. (RS)

The authors of this article report on a preliminary study of 18, 4- and 5-year-old children, followed by a longitudinal study of 44 children, who were tested in the first, second, and third grades. The children's ability to detect the ambiguity of lexically ambiguous sentences (e. g., "The children saw the bat lying by the fence") and…

For children whose everyday speech differs greatly from the School English (SE) they encounter in academic materials and settings, it was hypothesized that greater familiarity with SE would be associated with more successful early reading acquisition. Sentence imitation and reading skills of 217 urban African American students in kindergarten…

This study examines how measures of articulation rate, verbal short-term memory (STM), naming speed, and phonological awareness tasks administered in kindergarten and again in Grade 1 jointly and uniquely predict word reading and passage comprehension variance in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Results from regression and commonality analyses indicated that…

This paper reports a study that followed the development of reading skills in 72 children from the age of 8.5 to 13 years. Each child was administered tests of reading, oral language, phonological skills and nonverbal ability at time 1 and their performance on tests of reading comprehension, word recognition, nonword decoding and exception word…

The present 9-month longitudinal study investigated relations between Chinese native language phonological processing skills and early Chinese and English reading abilities among 227 kindergarteners in Hong Kong. Phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and short-term verbal memory differed in their relations to concurrent and subsequent…