Reviews formal and informal reading achievement and diagnostic tests, evaluating them to see how they measure reading and spelling abilities within the framework of component-view of reading. Discusses recent attempts to develop alternate assessments. Concludes that school psychologists and reading specialists should be familiar with these…

The author writes about the importance and timeliness of systematic changes in the spelling of English and considers the wide range of learning needs of language users as well as the traditional assumptions that account for the resistance to spelling change. (Author/CT)

Introduces the articles in the special issue as sharing a concern with the role of morphological skills in the learning of alphabetic orthographies. Discusses how the articles offer a cross-section of different perspectives, techniques and populations. Notes several pieces of evidence that morphological awareness, while related to phoneme…

One of a series dealing with current issues affecting language arts instruction, this paper focuses on spelling. The paper begins with the observation that when people complain that students cannot write, too often they mean that when the students do write, they misspell a few words. After noting that spelling improvement comes from using words in…

Spelling, a basic component of information technology, has been investigated for its efficiency as a means of communication, with some researchers claiming that English spelling is close to ideal for really literate people to read fast and efficiently. Evidence about human abilities to obtain meaning from the printed word has come from studies of…

Intended for those who want to encourage children to read, this book deals with children learning to read at different stages and explores four assumptions: reading is an important thing to do; reading is learned by reading; what beginning readers read makes all the difference to their view of reading; and to be successful, teaching and learning…