Research has demonstrated the positive effects of systematically teaching phonemic awareness and phonics in kindergarten and first grade, but many commonly used reading curricula do not adequately incorporate these foundational skills. In this study, we examined the efficacy of an instructional program ("UFLI Foundations") in…

We examined the relation between home literacy environment (HLE), parents' reading skills, and children's emergent literacy skills (pinyin letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary) and reading (word reading and reading comprehension) in a sample of 168 Chinese children (M[subscript age] = 74.26 months) followed from kindergarten to…

Definitions of dyslexia typically make reference to unexpected poor reading, although how best to operationalize unexpected remains an issue. When operationally defined as reading below expectations based on the level of oral language, cases of unexpected poor reading make up fewer than half of cases of poor reading, and cases of unexpected poor…

The ultimate goal of reading is to comprehend written text, and this goal can only be attained if the reader can decode written words and understand their meanings. The science of reading has provided compelling evidence for the subskills that form the foundation of decoding. Decoding words requires understanding of the alphabetic principle and…

This study examined the relation between exposure to shared book reading and Spanish-speaking English learners' (ELs'; n = 102) narrative production and comprehension skills in kindergarten (mean age = 6.12 years). Audio- and videotaped book-reading sessions in Spanish were coded in terms of teachers' extratextual talk and gestures. Using a silent…

The aim of this five-year longitudinal study was to examine whether 13 Greek precocious readers' performance on a variety of reading, spelling, and phonological-awareness tasks from kindergarten through the fourth grade was different from that of 12 Greek nonprecocious readers and, if there were differences between the two groups' performances,…

Two case studies of adult GED (General Education Diploma) students and their kindergarten-aged children are presented. The construct of "capital," as described by Pierre Bourdieu (1986), is applied specifically to the children's and adults' reading practices. These case studies are analyzed in terms of various forms of official…

Examines a program in Denmark that uses metalinguistic games and exercises to stimulate preschool children's discovery of the phonological structure of language. Concludes that phonological awareness can be developed outside the context of the acquisition of an alphabetic writing system, and that this awareness facilitates subsequent reading and…

Evaluates and compares English graphophonic and word knowledge of anglophone children in French immersion (FI) programs with those of children in regular English (ENG) classrooms. Reveals no differences between the FI and ENG children in kindergarten, but ENG students scored higher at the end of Grades 1 and 2 on most measures. (NKA)