The present research investigated the relationship between Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) performance, letter-string reading measures of sight vocabulary (SV) and phonetic decoding (PD), and lexical decision. Criterion-based naming rates were obtained from three types of RAN tasks: digits, letters, and letter sounds. Latency measures were obtained…

Parsimonious models of word recognition and reading comprehension were validated in a sample of third-grade readers. Word recognition was modeled as phonological awareness, decoding skill, and word processing rate. This model demonstrated the importance of unitization of letter clusters for efficient word reading. A curvilinear relation between…

This study sought to add to the evidence on predictable texts by asking two questions: (1) What type of reading do predictable texts produce? and (2) How do predictable texts influence sight vocabulary acquisition and decoding? Subjects, six black male students selected from a first-grade classroom in an urban setting, had minimal or no sight…

A study compared the effects of a modified whole language approach with those obtained from a pure whole language approach on the decoding abilities of 20 kindergartners, assessed using Darrell Morris's Early Reading Screening Instrument. Subjects were selected from two similarly composed schools located in Albemarle County, Virginia. Ten students…

Reviews recent investigations that analyze the word-recognition responses of children taught by different methods and reanalyzes the results of W. Wiley's 1928 naturalistic experiment in order to deduce the nature of the process underlying the learning of words. (Author/CS)

Test results show that children who are skilled comprehenders are more rapid at oral word decoding than are less skilled comprehenders. (Author/DEP)

Taking a psycholinguistic approach, this paper presents an overview of vocabulary and word identification instruction. Sources for instructional procedures are discussed rather than detailed suggestions for teaching procedures. Five approaches to word identification are examined: sight vocabulary development, phonic analysis, structural analysis,…

Noting the limitations of recent word recognition research, this paper suggests ways that these limitations might be overcome and then extends these suggestions into a framework for distinguishing between good and poor readers' ability to comprehend words. The paper begins by reviewing the major models of word recognition and discussing their…

This report summarizes studies of perceptual, decoding, and lexical stages of processing in reading. Using a letter identification task, it was found that subjects who were low in overall reading ability scan a visual image more slowly than do high ability readers and are slower in identifying letters when they do not occur in a familiar sequence.…

The history of teaching people to read is explored from the introduction of the Greek alphabet about 3,000 years ago to the present renewed interest in sound symbol relationships. Greek schoolboys were required to learn first the alphabet in order, next commonly used syllables, and then words. English was first written in the Latin alphabet using…

This paper presents instructional outcomes and student exercises related to the student's acquisition of the reading skills minimally required for comprehension in the SWRL Reading Program. The two outcome areas of the reading comprehension program are the development of word decoding skills and the development of skills necessary for sentence and…

Recent research has shown that spelling-to-sound correspondences in English are less irregular than has been thought in the past and that a large percentage of irregularities consists of irregularly spelled words which recur in various derived and compound words. In order to determine the degree to which irregularities occur in multiple-derived…

This study evaluated the decoding skills acquired by low readers in an experimental project that taught low readers in regular class through the use of clinical procedures based on a synthetic phonic, multisensory approach. An evaluation instrument which permitted the tabulation of specific decoding skills was administered as a pretest and…

A word attack program that begins with phonics and incorporates various aspects of a linguistics approach is described in this paper. Regardless of the material that is used, there are 13 consonant sounds which are easier to learn than others: b, d, j, f, k, p, t, l, m, n, r, v, and z. W and h would be introduced next because in isolation they…