Three hundred children from two metropolitan areas were studied for 1 year to determine (1) the relationship between letter-name knowledge and reading success, (2) the relationship between letter-name learning and phonic learning, and (3) the ease and efficiency of vowel identification. The study concluded that the sooner a child learns the letter…

Using made-up words to teach sound-symbol relationships eliminates student guessing at familiar words. (Author/SP)

In this article, we describe the development and evaluation of a beginning spelling intervention for young children at risk of reading disability. We first summarize the literature that supports beginning spelling as an ideal method for strategically integrating the beginning reading big ideas of phonemic awareness and alphabetic understanding. We…

The rationale, development, and implementation of a reading program designed to teach disadvantaged children the skills prerequisite to learning to read are discussed in this paper. Of particular importance are skills in the recognition and manipulation of basic speech sounds, phonemes. The first of the program's three parts takes two and one-half…

Discusses some of the reasons why basal readers confuse two long u sounds. (RB)

Two groups of grade school children were tested for their ability to use orthographic rimes as functional units of reading by reading pseudowords. The results suggest that the size of the orthographic rime frequency effect reflects the operation of two factors: vocabulary size and grapheme-phoneme conversion skill. (SW)

This article focuses on a concept that has rarely been studied in beginning reading research--a child's concept of word in text. Recent examinations of this phenomenon suggest that a child's ability to match spoken words to written words while reading--a concept of word in text--plays a pivotal role in early reading development. In this article,…

Information processing theory suggests that sublexical fluency skills are important to word reading development, but there are few supportive data. This study investigated if sublexical fluency (letter name fluency, letter sound fluency, and phoneme segmentation fluency) contributed to the development of word reading and spelling in 92…

An extensive research base on beginning reading acquisition and reading difficulties, developed over the past few decades, has important implications for the teaching of reading. Unfortunately, much of this research does not appear to be reaching teachers, whose knowledge is essential for scientific findings about reading to benefit children. This…

THE SPELLINGS OF ALL MONOSYLLABIC WORDS IN THE CORE VOCABULARY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH WERE ANALYZED TO DETERMINE THE DEGREE OF CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN A PHONEME AND A SINGLE GRAPHEMIC REPRESENTATION IN THIS SET OF WORDS. A PHONEMIC CLASSIFICATION WAS DEVISED, AND COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY WAS USED TO ANALYZE THE PHONEME-GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCE OF THESE…

Discusses the use of syllabication in teaching decoding to beginning readers. (RB)

Seeks to identify particular phonological skills that precede and facilitate the development of reading. Assesses preliterate children during and at the end of their first school year. Finds (1) phonological awareness comprises a cluster of related skills; (2) diversified developmental paths; and (3) letter knowledge was a more potent predictor of…

Investigates the effect of teaching kindergarten children orthographic analogies based on onset and rime units. Finds that analogy training specifically based on onset-rime units is an effective method to assist children as they move into reading, benefiting children differently depending on their prior segmentation level. (SR)

Explores early stages of reading acquisition, specifically the relation of phoneme blending and letter recoding to individual differences in word decoding. Examines the ability to recode letters, blend phonemes and decode words in Dutch children. Indicates that results are consistent with the self teaching hypothesis and other theories that imply…

Twenty children with mental retardation (MR), age 7-12, completed a phonological reading skills program over approximately 10 weeks. As a result of the instruction, they were better able to sound out learned and transfer words compared to a control group matched on age, IQ, nonword reading, language comprehension, and phonemic awareness. Final…