Children who enter school not yet reading need some systematic phonics to get them started, but cannot be expected to cope with the whole alphabet or more than a subset of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and grapheme-phoneme correspondences at that stage. So phonics schemes necessarily adopt some sequence for the introduction of graphemes and…

Substantial evidence exists suggesting that access to articulatory gestures during instruction improves students' phonological awareness skills, but researchers have yet to explore the role of articulatory gestures in initial phonics instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine if visual access to articulatory gestures (i.e., mouth cues)…

From 2006 the British government strongly favoured synthetic phonics as the principal approach for the teaching of initial literacy in state-funded primary schools in England, and since 2010 has made it mandatory. In 2007-2013 just over 100 commercially published phonics schemes were available, and in that same period the government maintained a…

Prior research indicates that first language (L1) orthography can adversely affect second language (L2) phonological acquisition, yet studies on orthographic interference and pedagogical strategies to mitigate these effects remain sparse. Addressing these research gaps, this study investigates the impact of orthographic interference on L2 German…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the verbal interventions produced by teachers to support pupils' development of orthographic knowledge through invented spelling in three research-based intervention conditions: conventional (C condition), proximal (P condition), and progressive complexification (PC condition). We recorded six…

The authors investigated the influence of teaching letter names and sounds in isolation or in the context of storybook reading on preschool children's early literacy learning and engagement during instruction. Alphabet instruction incorporated paired-associate learning of correspondences between letter names and sounds. In decontextualized…

The ability to pronounce consonant clusters is essential for the communicative processes of a language. The SQ4R teaching model, normally employed in reading comprehension development studies, could be adapted to benefit a speaking classroom. The purposes of the study were (1) to investigate the effects of the SQ4R technique on Thai students'…

Background: Despite evidence that synthetic phonics teaching has increased reading attainments, a sizable minority of children struggle to acquire phonics skills and teachers lack clear principles for deciding what types of "additional" support are most beneficial. Synthetic phonics teaches children to read using a decoding strategy to…

The objective for beginning writers is to learn how to generate alphabet-letters which are recognisable and easy to read. This study investigated the accuracy of Year 1 and 2 children's alphabet-letter-writing by evaluating their alphabet and orthographic knowledge, following evidence which identifies these skills as important for correctly…

Graphophonemic (GP) knowledge of a language represents the foundation of a good learning start point. In the English as a foreign language (EFL) context, many learners lack adequate GP knowledge of English, resulting in difficulty to master the language skills even at the tertiary level. Thus, this study investigated first-year university,…

The current study examined the effectiveness of a reading curriculum of explicit instruction on the letter-sound knowledge of a sample of elementary-aged students with Down syndrome. The procedures were adapted from prior research (King et al., 2020; Lemons et al., 2018; Lemons et al., 2015). Three participants between 9 and 11 years old…

This study investigated the influence of teaching letter names and sounds in isolation or in the context of storybook reading on preschool children's early literacy learning and engagement during instruction. Alphabet instruction incorporated paired associate learning of correspondences between letter names and sounds. In Decontextualized…

Background: Research acknowledges the importance of phonological processing and orthographic processing for reading and spelling in both consistently and inconsistently written languages. While the focus has tended to be on the role of phonological processing in languages with consistent orthographies, the role of orthographic processing,…

This study explored whether a daytime nap aids children's acquisition of letter-sound knowledge, which is a fundamental component for learning to read. Thirty-two preschool children in Sydney, Australia (M[subscript age] = 4 years;3 months) were taught letter-sound mappings in two sessions: one followed by a nap and the other by a wakeful period.…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a brief experimental intervention that integrated spelling practice into a systematic phonics approach to initial reading instruction for at-risk children. The effects of this intervention were studied by means of a randomized controlled trial design that compared the experimental…