Background: Reading development in agglutinating African languages is a relatively underresearched area. While numerous studies highlight the low comprehension levels among learners reading in African languages in South Africa, little has been done to probe beneath this 'comprehension iceberg' in terms of decoding skills. Aim: As a tentative step…

German orthography has highly consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences, whereas the consistency of phoneme-grapheme correspondences is much lower, but morphological consistency is very high. After giving a short description of German language and orthography, the current article reviews earlier findings on early spelling acquisition, showing…

Purpose: It is generally accepted that adults use visual cues to improve speech intelligibility in noisy environments, but findings regarding visual speech benefit in children are mixed. We explored factors that contribute to audiovisual (AV) gain in young children's speech understanding. We examined whether there is an AV benefit to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the profiles of nonresponders among native Chinese-speaking students struggling in English reading before and after an intensive intervention in phonological awareness as well as letter knowledge. Struggling English learners (n = 72) were screened from 668 Grade 4 students based on their English word…

Determining later academic achievement, early literacy skills are all of the prerequisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for successful reading and writing during formal education. Early literacy skills consist of several sub-skills including phonology knowledge that determine primary-level reading. The present article is prepared for…

Background: The role of phonological awareness (PA) in successful reading attainment in Northern Sotho has received some attention. However, the importance of developing an awareness to the different phonological grain sizes that underlie decoding (i.e. to different dimensions of PA) has not been established in this language. Aim: This study…

Children are known to be fast learners due to their neural plasticity. Learning a non-native language (L2) requires the mastering of new production patterns. In classroom settings, learners are not only exposed to the acoustic input, but also to the unfamiliar grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the L2 orthography. We tested how 9-10-year-old…

According to a language-integrated view of spelling development, learning to spell involves the same language-learning skills across alphabetic systems. A prediction based on this view is that the same spelling training should be equally effective for learning to spell in a shallow (Italian, native language) or an opaque (English, additional…

Technology-assisted instruction has potential for helping students improve their reading skills. In the current studies, "PowerPoint" software was used to supplement teacher-led reading instruction for elementary-aged students with disabilities who struggled with phoneme blending to read words. The effectiveness of the intervention was…

Considerable evidence supports that close to two thirds of all fourth-grade students read at less than adequate levels on reading achievement tests and that the problem has persisted for decades. This study of 1,064 third-grade students at risk for reading failure uses path analytic techniques to measure a hypothesized model linking developmental…

There is some evidence that reading and spelling are complementary processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which contextualized spelling (i.e., spelling activities within the context of reading instruction) is used to support reading in first-grade core reading programs. Analysis of 75 lessons across five programs…

We assessed the Swiss-German version of GraphoLearn, a computer game designed to support reading by training grapheme-phoneme correspondences. A group of 34 children at risk for dyslexia trained three times a week during 14 weeks, on top of their standard school instruction. The sample was divided into two groups of 18 and 16 children, who started…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Build a Word-Easy Spelling with Phonics, an electronic application of the word box intervention, on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of letter-sound correspondences for Learners of English as an Additional Language (LEALs). A single-subject multiple probe experimental design…

In this study, we examined the learning of letter-speech sound correspondences within an artificial script and performed an experimental analysis of letter-speech sound learning among dyslexic and normal readers vis-à-vis phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, reading, and spelling. Participants were provided with 20 min of training…

Purpose: This study examined the performance of Gulf Arabic-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) on a Gulf Arabic nonword repetition (GA-NWR) test and compared it to their age- and language-matched groups. We also investigated the role of syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity in light of NWR theories.…