The present study investigated the relative contributions of experiential and ability factors to second language (L2) passage comprehension and L2 vocabulary retention. Participants included a cross section of 99 adult learners of Spanish as a foreign language enrolled in beginning through advanced level university Spanish courses. Participants…

The authors reviewed studies on teaching reading comprehension to students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) with a focus on text (academic reading) comprehension and sight word (functional) comprehension. Eleven of 754 studies met the inclusion criteria: participants with ASD, published in English in a peer-reviewed journal, and use of an…

A theoretical perspective on acquiring sight vocabulary and developing meaningful vocabulary is presented. Dual Coding Theory assumes that cognition occurs in two independent but connected codes: a verbal code for language and a nonverbal code for mental imagery. The mixed research literature on using pictures in teaching sight vocabulary is…

An alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness of activity-based intervention and didactic instruction to teach sight word reading to four young children with developmental delays attending an inclusive child care centre. Following the collection of baseline measures, the two interventions, counterbalanced for word lists…

Six pairs of moderately or severely handicapped adults were taught to identify sight words, with those words directly taught to one student serving as words indirectly presented to the other. Results of probes revealed that most of the adults learned incidentally presented words and maintained performance across sets of words. (Author/CL)

When 99 elementary school learning disabled and normal children participated in one of four conditions (word identification and meaning aids, sentence aids, purpose setting aids, and prior knowledge aids), sentence aids were significantly more effective in improving comprehension than prior knowledge for both learning disabled and similarly…

This article provides a case study perspective of one child's literacy learning over the first semester of first grade. This young learner moves from creating stories for picture books to reading, and from stringing letters to using letter names and spelling sight words. Drawing from this data, a cross-analysis of "what was going on at the same…

Sight word lists have been used since prior to 20 B.C. and have changed forms many times. Today sight word lists are numerous and are widely and variously used. They differ in source, intended purpose and/or audience, and criteria for including specific words. Despite the differences, there is much agreement that they do reflect the most basic…

Six mentally retarded students (12-22 years old) were taught to name sight words during token-exchange periods of a token-reinforcement system. Sequential teaching of new sets of sight words via a multiple-baseline design evaluated the procedure. Five of the 6 students acquired sight-word vocabularies. Data support the educational use of…

An ABAB withdrawal design was used to investigate the effects of explicit timing on accurate oral reading rate of sight word phrases of four elementary students demonstrating difficulty with reading. During baseline the students were exposed to flash cards with sight word phrases and asked to read them out loud and were not made aware that they…

Eleven mildly handicapped elementary students were taught to spell new words by using spelling patterns from known words. Control Ss learned to read and spell sight word vocabulary. Experimental Ss were significantly superior in spelling high-frequency sight words and untrained transfer words. (Author/CL)

A model is described for generating Quick Word Tests to assess the sight recognition vocabulary of secondary students along with a high utility list of 596 words to screen automatic recognition sight vocabulary for native speakers, second language and special education students, and adults in basic education and literacy classes. (Author/CL)

The study involving four trainable mentally retarded elementary school students investigated the effects on sight word recognition of a teaching approach employing a small number of stimulus items at a given time, high repetition rates, and high density reinforcement. A second approach used a picture-word association technique. (SB)

Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT) scores, taken at the kindergarten level were correlated with the acquisition of sight vocabulary and later measures of reading achievement (Stanford Achievement Test scores). Correlation coefficients ranged from .61 to .87. (Author/GK)

It was found, among other things, that pictures whose names had probably been acquired earlier were named more accurately and faster by retarded adolescent Ss than were pictures whose names had probably been acquired later. (Author/DLS)