A twelve-hour spelling class was held over one weekend at California State University, Dominguez Hills. During this course, students were helped to discover their own spelling difficulties and were introduced to a wide variety of materials and strategies, including spelling nonsense words, effective dictionary use, vocabulary building, the study…

The phenomenon of "invented spelling" in young children, observed in many preschool age children who produce written messages using words that are generated through an original system of orthography, was researched with Spanish-speaking children. The following conclusions were made from previous research with English-speaking children concerning…

This study focuses on the relationship between blending ability and reading comprehension among 80 prereading children from three private preschools. Three methods of instruction were tested: One group was instructed with an auditory method; the second group was instructed with an auditory-visual method; and the third group practiced the basic set…

The nature and use of contractions and abbreviations in beginning reading is discussed and applied to the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Mod 2 Reading Program, a four-year program (K-3) for teaching reading skills to primary-grade children. The contractions and abbreviations are listed and sequenced for the reading program. The results of…

In order to investigate whether the reading process develops similarly in languages where grapheme-phoneme relationships are more consistent, or where there is less word-order constraint, than in English, oral-reading-error analysis was extended to a language other than English. Errors evaluated were made by five Colombian second graders and six…

Describes research on decoding and reading strategies involving three six-year-old migrant children learning to read in French. (AM)

A highly reproducible scale of difficulty of word identification tasks was identified for both good and poor readers: consonant-vowel combinations and short vowel words were learned first. Long vowel words, special rule words, and nonsense words were more difficult. Reading instruction should parallel this sequence since it follows learning…

Discusses how language cues are used in the reading process, describes a means of evaluating a learner's effectiveness in processing these cues, and suggests ways to help foster more effective reading strategies. (Author/RK)

Supports the view that letter-name knowledge aids the child in learning to read. (RL)

Discusses the steps involved in and the preparation necessary for learning to read (decode) and to comprehend what is read. (JM)

Synthesizing a diverse group of studies, author argues that reading disability is not a unitary phenomenon but can result from deficiencies in different psychological processes. Based on the points at which an individual's reading breaks down, she presents a fourfold classifications scheme capable of categorizing all poor readers. (Editor/RK)

The criteria of 75 percent utility for phonetic rules to be used in reading instruction may be based on faulty logic. Once children achieve approximate pronunciation by applying phonetic rules, they usually can infer proper pronunciation. This supports teaching children to find and pronounce little words in larger unknown words. (MCK)

Outlines interesting approaches and exercises for pronunciation instruction in the French class. The focus is on auditory discrimination, integration, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, and creativity with sounds. (MSE)

Presents a study of the process and the product in the early writing attempts of two children. Examines some of the strategies they use during the intermediate or invented spelling stage. (HTH)

This report describes phonics programs that will increase students' fluency and independent reading skills. The targeted population consisted of second grade students in a growing affluent community and first grade students in a large metropolitan city. The first and second grade students demonstrated a lack of awareness between phonemes and their…