One of the most important skills for children to develop in the kindergarten year is the recognition that letters and sounds are related. It is often called "the alphabetic principle"--the notion that speech sounds can be connected to letters in a predictable way. To grasp the alphabetic principle, children need to understand that: (1) letters…

Elaborates the view that phonological recoding, or print-to-sound translation, is a self-teaching mechanism enabling learners to acquire the orthographic representations necessary for visual word recognition. Discusses developmental properties of phonological recoding, reviews evidence on the importance of cognitive abilities underlying the…

The irregularity of English spelling rules, dialect differences, and an inability to identify sound segments within a single syllable are three important reasons teachers and students have difficulty teaching and learning reading using phonics. Within the same language, phonics rules may need to be adapted to fit the dialect of the student or of…

Describes the concept of phonemic awareness and offers suggestions to classroom teachers on how to enhance phonemic awareness in their students. (PRA)

Argues that learning how to read in an alphabetic system requires children to understand the complex relationship between print and speech. Suggests that prereading and beginning reading instruction should be designed to facilitate the acquisition of phonemic awareness. Recommends specific practices for reading instruction. (RS)

Large differences exist among individuals in their ability to process speech sounds within syllables and words, and this ability is crucial for reading and spelling alphabetically beyond a very elementary level. The conception that speech is made up of segments (phonemes) is natural to those who read and spell alphabetically, but arguably: (1)…

Reports that by combining a phonetic writing system with instruction in carefully selected clusters of related Chinese characters, Chinese schools can start children on productive reading at an early age with texts closer to their developed cognitive levels. (FL)

Proper application of the alphabetic principle rests on an awareness of the internal phonological (and morphophonological) structure of words that the alphabet represents. Unfortunately for the would-be reader-writer, such awareness is not an automatic consequence of speaking a language, because the biological specialization for speech manages the…

Reports that after more than 50 years of argument as to whether children should be taught the names of letters as part of learning to read, American researchers have begun to suggest that letter name instruction and phonics instruction interact for better learning. (FL)

This paper considers the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), long out of use in the United States. It was developed by Sir James Pittman in England in 1959 as a plan of reading instruction with a simplified phoneme-grapheme correspondence that stressed consistency between symbol and sound. The paper lists the advantages and disadvantages of the ITA…

Provides information concerning the value of letter names in the teaching of reading and spelling. Presents specific discussions about the importance of letter names to prereading phonics abilities, the phonemic values in letter names, and the use of letter names in word analysis, semantic word recognition, and semantic spelling. (MKM)

Argues that literacy teachers should take letter play seriously in conjunction with invented spelling to help their students learn how letters and sounds relate. (RS)

Explains new research findings about how children learn letter-sound correspondences, relates the findings to whole-language reading instruction, and outlines a theory for how children acquire the letter-sound system without direct instruction in phonics. Describes recent findings on phonological processes involved in learning letter-sound…

The criteria of 75 percent utility for phonetic rules to be used in reading instruction may be based on faulty logic. Once children achieve approximate pronunciation by applying phonetic rules, they usually can infer proper pronunciation. This supports teaching children to find and pronounce little words in larger unknown words. (MCK)

Focusing on phonograms and generalizations about phonics, this paper presents a comprehensive letter-sound study. The first chapter discusses the phonogram component of phonics, the Arthur Gates study of phonograms in l928, the phonics generalizations studies of the l960s, and the lack of a comprehensive study of the letter-sound relationship. The…