Four topics covered in this volume include a pedagogical grammar of Tboli (Vivian M. Forsberg), Bantoanon phonology (Heather Kilgour and Gail Hendrickson), demonstratives in Aklanon narratives (Kristine Jensen and Rodolfo Barlaan), and behavioral discourse strategy in Eastern Bontoc (Takashi Fukuda). Tboli is a language spoken by people living in…

An interactive/cognitive model can account for the acquisition of a graphophonemic system by young children and be compatible with the cuing explanation, which posits that readers use their graphophonemic knowledge in coordination with their knowledge of language and the world to make sense of print. Explanations in the research literature of how…

A phonemic analysis of the Meitei language of Manipur, India, is presented. The vowel and consonant system is analyzed by the classical phonemic method, but with morpheme structure rules formulated according to the principles of generative phonology in order to generalize the pattern of various sounds and specify the allophonic distribution of…

The purpose of this study was to examine which of three instructional modalities was more effective in enhancing the ability of nonnative English speaking children to read during the first grade. In this study, sixty-three first-grade children were randomly selected from four first grade classes from two primary schools in a university town in a…

This study examined the effects of visual aids and word structure on kindergarten children's learning of phonemic segmentation--a skill which correlates with reading achievement. Visual aids were the counters, squares, and pictures previously utilized by Soviet researchers. Squares contributed to segmentation of two-phoneme words. Error patterns…

Examines the development of grapheme-phoneme conversion ability in normal and reading-age matched dyslexic readers. Thirty-six normal readers (mean age 9.5 years) and 18 children diagnosed dyslexic (mean age 12.1 years) served as subjects. (MP)

Compared reading development among kindergartners in Hong Kong and the United States using measures of word recognition, phonological awareness, speeded naming, visual spatial skill, and processing speed. Found that models of early reading development were similar across cultures. The strongest predictor of reading was phonological awareness.…

Assesses illiterate and semiliterate speakers of Serbo-Croatian on reading, writing, phonological, and control tasks. Three groups, categorized with respect to the subjects' ability to identify the letters of their Cyrillic alphabet, differed on phoneme deletion and phoneme-counting tasks, but not on syllable-counting, picture vocabulary, or…

Examines the success of phonemic tone-marking for Dschang, a Grassfields Bantu language that uses tone to distinguish lexical items and some grammatical constructions. Participants from a variety of different age groups and educational backgrounds, and having different levels of exposure to the orthography, were tested on location in the Western…

Groups of seven- to nine-year olds learning to read in English and German were given three types of reading tasks. Whereas reading time and error rates in numeral and number word reading were very similar across the two orthographies, the German children showed a big advantage in reading the nonsense words, suggesting adoption of different…

Discusses findings in the first part of a research project on Hong Kong English (HKE) phonology, including the underlying phonemic system of HKE speakers. Subjects were 15 undergraduates at Hong Kong Baptist University. Using spectrographic analysis, it was found that the typical HKE speaker operates with a considerably smaller set of vowel and…

Two studies investigated the importance of phoneme awareness relative to other predictors in the development of reading and spelling among children learning a consistent orthography (Czech) and an inconsistent orthography (English). In Study 1, structural equation models revealed that Czech (n=107) and English (n=71) data were fitted well by the…

In 2 experiments, the authors examined the electro-physiological auditory responses of monolingual French listeners to American English vowel contrasts as a function of the surrounding vowel context. The context was determined on the basis of behavioral results (C.Meunier, C. Frenck-Mestre, T. Lelekov-Boissard & M. Le Besnaris, 2003, 2004). In…

The Ministry of National Education in Turkey initiated a new early reading instruction method in 2004. Analytical approach (Whole Language), as defined in the curriculum, was abandoned and phoneme based approach (Phonics) was introduced. This research has a two year longitudinal perspective and aims to collect the opinions of teachers about the…

Testing English listening skills involves a variety of skills. Sounds are sometimes difficult to discriminate in a language that is not one's native tongue, so testing phoneme discrimination, the ability to tell the difference between sounds, is important. Picture choice items are a good way to select among alternatives to demonstrate…