The purpose of this investigation was to determine if beginning readers with accelerated sight word vocabularies would identify more functional spelling patterns than beginning readers not making the same progress. (HOD)

Examines the degree to which teaching beginning readers to use various types of analogies helps them pronounce new words and nonwords. Finds that, although beginning readers can use analogies, they rely to a large extent on correspondences between individual phonemes and graphemes to decode new words. (RS)

Two blending strategies for decoding words (pausing and not pausing between successive sounds) were compared with nine preschool children. Once mastered, segmenting by not pausing engendered high and sustained levels of word identification. Other findings indicated that sound identification abilities were necessary but not sufficient for decoding.…

Focuses on the effect of word-recognition instruction on later reading success for all students, particularly students experiencing difficulties with early reading. Instructional principles are offered for teaching essential elements of word recognition: letter-sound correspondence, regular word reading, story reading, irregular word reading, and…

Hypothesizes that developing an understanding of the connections between oral and written language rather than phonemic awareness per se, is essential to learning to read. At the macrolevel this involves an understanding that written words represent words in oral language, and at the microlevel that letters in written words stand for phonemes in…

Reports on a study of Grade 5 children who had been trained in phoneme identity six years earlier. Results reveal that these children were superior to untrained controls on irregular word reading and on a composite list of nonwords, regular words, and irregular words. Preschool instruction in phonemic structure had modest but detectable effects on…

A study explored the effectiveness and feasibility of phonological awareness (PA) training with and without beginning decoding components for 25 kindergartners with disabilities in inclusive schools. Students with special needs participating in PA with beginning decoding instruction did better than those just receiving PA and controls. (Contains…

The authors examined the views of parents and teachers regarding beginning reading instruction using the questionnaire Approaches to Beginning Reading and Reading Instruction (ABRRI). Parents also rated the importance of 9 developmental areas, including literacy, and the extent to which home and school were responsible for each. Two components…

Most word learning studies conducted over the past decade have shown that methods of word instruction that emphasize the graphic or phonic features of words presented alone (word alone method) affect learning rate more positively than do methods that emphasize meaning through oral, written, and pictorial cues (context methods). To compare the…

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…

The student reader-workbook, third part of the "Ch'al" series, presents activities to be done orally or by writing. Pages of the workbook are divided into two or three frames; each activity for a given frame should be completed before moving on to the next frame. A total of 23 words (14 consonants and 15 vowels) in the Navajo language are…

A sample of 270 first, second, and third graders participated in this study of the pronounceability of the 119 phonograms identified in the Glass Analysis for Perceptual Conditioning Program for poor decoders. Each subject was asked to pronounce each of the phonograms. Subjects were cross-classified by grade level, sex, and reading ability as…

The eight popular commercial reading programs examined in this study were selected on the basis of their use with compensatory education students and the fact that they represent different instructional approaches. The study examined how readers are taught to break the letter/sound code, what correspondences are taught, and how correspondences are…

A great deal of time could be saved in all grades and for all content areas if a truly phonic alphabet were developed. This alphabet would have only one symbol for each sound and only one sound for each symbol so that beginning readers could learn to pronounce any word they could see and spell any word they could pronounce correctly. Such an…

The phonological information provided by written words may be used by the reader as a convenient temporary storage medium and as a way of gaining access to the lexicon. Beginning readers should be able to exploit the sound-based patterning of the orthography in reading single words and to bypass it on occasion. Some words do not conform to English…