This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

This article queries whether consonant sonority (sonorant vs. obstruent) and status (coda vs. onset) within intervocalic clusters influence syllable-based segmentation strategies. We used a modified version of the illusory conjunction paradigm to test whether French beginning, intermediate, and advanced readers were sensitive to an optimal…

Purpose: This study had 2 principal aims: (a) to examine whether children who spoke Nonmainstream American English (NMAE) frequently in school at the end of kindergarten increased their production of Mainstream American English (MAE) forms by the end of first grade, and (b) to examine concurrent and predictive relations between children's NMAE use…

This study attempted to provide a systematic framework for phonics instruction for beginning readers in literature-based classrooms based on relative frequency of phoneme-grapheme occurrences found in three distinct corpora. The first corpus contained an academic word list. The second corpus contained the running text from 363 books identified as…

This study examined the validity of Nonsense Word Fluency as an index of beginning reading proficiency for students in kindergarten through second grade. Validity evidence for Nonsense Word Fluency is addressed in the context of research-based instructional practices implemented on a large scale. Technical adequacy data are presented for all…

The emphasis on reading in a Miami elementary school curriculum is having a good effect in lessening the amount of dropouts. (GB)

Decoding unknown words when reading text is a necessary tool of skilled readers. Beginning readers need repeated opportunities to develop decoding ability. We investigated whether explicitly teaching essential components of beginning reading instruction promoted first graders' skill in decoding pseudowords. We employed a multiple- baseline design…

Reflects on the possible factors that enabled the author's child to learn to read at the age of five. (MKM)

Administers three measures of phonological processing to Chinese first graders. Notes that earlier research indicates a strong relationship between children's phonological processing skills and early reading ability in alphabetic orthography. Finds that this relationship is not specific to reading an alphabetic orthography--the relationship…

To examine the effects of whole language and language experience approaches on beginning reading achievement, a quantitative synthesis was performed on two databases: 5 first-grade studies of the United States Office of Education and 46 additional studies comparing basal reading approaches to whole language and language experience approaches. (SLD)

Among the CRAFT project total population of 1,378 disadvantaged urban children, 58, or 4 percent, were identified at the beginning of first grade as early readers on the basis of their ability to identify words in print. All children in the study were taught to read by either the Skills Centered or the Language Experience Approach. Achievement…

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 68 first graders to identify what ideas young readers hold about the reading process. Specifically, the study questioned whether good and poor readers held the same views about how they learned to read, what they and others did as they read, their reading ability, and why people read. The responses of…

This selective bibliography is one of nine documents compiled to provide titles and descriptions of useful and informative reading documents which were indexed into the ERIC system from 1966 to 1974. The 131 entries in this section of the bibliography concern reading readiness and are arranged alphabetically by author in one of the following eight…

Describes a course that linked first-grade students using emergent writing skills with university early-childhood majors studying the process of emergent literacy, and, in so doing provided an authentic and meaningful learning context for both groups. Suggests that the pen-pal project demonstrates the value of interactive writing exchanges.…

An examination is made of proposals for early reading in terms of the best time for beginning instruction and the effects upon children. In any discussion regarding early reading one must distinguish between prereading activities and formal reading instruction and must determine whether formal instruction is intended for all children or for those…