The foundation of all learning is rooted in the development of language and literacy abilities. Literacy development begins well before children enter school and can accelerate in an early childhood classroom setting. Teacher educators often hear about the importance of literacy development. In particular, the significance of phonological…

"We cannot allow the quality of special services to preclude conquering reading disabilities (Horne, 1978, p. 582)." This study was conducted to explore how teachers' spelling abilities relate to student outcomes. The results indicated that the students enrolled in classrooms where the teachers had the lowest knowledge of phoneme-grapheme…

The purpose of this study was to determine the development of four specific letter-sound patterns from second through sixth grade: invariant consonants, long and short vowels, "c," and"g." A 69-item list was presented to second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade subjects in one of two random orders. Oral responses were tape recorded, transcribed by…

Five subskills in learning to read are identified, and their place in the methods of teaching reading and their relations to each other are discussed. It is concluded that phonemic segmentation must be the most important and the most difficult task in learning to read. (Author/LMO)

Elaborates the view that phonological recoding, or print-to-sound translation, is a self-teaching mechanism enabling learners to acquire the orthographic representations necessary for visual word recognition. Discusses developmental properties of phonological recoding, reviews evidence on the importance of cognitive abilities underlying the…

Several national reports have suggested the usefulness of systematic, explicit, synthetic phonics instruction based on English word structure along with wide reading of quality literature for supporting development in early reading instruction. Other studies have indicated, however, that many in-service teachers are not knowledgeable in the basic…

This report is an evaluation of the "Read, Write & Type!"[TM] Learning System, a software program with supporting materials designed to teach beginning reading skills by emphasizing writing as a way to learn to read. The program was developed for six- to nine-year-old students who are just beginning to read and for students who are…

Although the recent publication of the Rose Report appears to draw a line in the sand that privileges synthetic phonics over other methods in the UK, history indicates a pendulum swing of preference between whole-word and phonics since the advent of mass education. Suggesting that the current "victory" for exponents of synthetic phonics…

There are at least two kinds of phonetic knowledge: phoneme synthesis and analytic knowledge. In phoneme synthesis a person demonstrates phonetic knowledge by being able to assemble segments into larger units. With analytic knowledge one knows that syllables or words are analyzable into constituent segments. One type of knowledge enables learning…

The three articles in this monograph describe and analyze the graphoneme (a closed syllable that begins with a vowel and ends with a consonant, semivowel, or silent "e") and its usefulness in the teaching of reading. The first article discusses the graphoneme concept as a systemized approach to initial reading instruction, while the…

Author claims that the essential antecedents of reading consist of two cognitive insights: that written language is meaningful and that written language is different from spoken language. He argues that current instructional practices may hinder the learning of these insights and suggests ways in which parents and teachers may help children to…

Several research studies linking early phonemic awareness to the prevention of later reading difficulties strongly suggest that phoneme segmentation and blending, rather than rhyming and alliteration abilities, are the key aspects of phonemic awareness that are related to the prevention of difficulties. Yet there is a persistent belief among many…

Components of first-grade intervention programs that addressed oral language and listening comprehension instruction within an intensive literacy intervention for native Spanish-speaking students struggling with reading difficulties are described. Findings for the intervention are based on 4 large-scale experimental studies (published elsewhere)…

This article discusses an aspect of the process of learning to read and write which has received little attention, that is, the ability of children to recognize and to distinguish clearly the sounds which correspond to the individual letters within each word. (Text is in Italian.) (CFM)

Phonetic content/handwriting instruction begins by teaching the sounds of, and letter formation for the 70 "Orton" phonograms which are the commonly-used correct spelling patterns for the 45 sounds of English speech. The purpose for teaching the sound/symbol relationship first in isolation, without key words or pictures (explicitly), is to give…