The purposes of this study were to determine the difference between selected groups of fourth grade pupils instructed by proficient teachers of phonics and those instructed by non-proficient teachers, and to determine the difference in pupils' achievement when students are divided into groups based on the number of years of teaching experience and…

A study examined the ability of third, fourth, and sixth grade students to use spellings to arrive at the pronunciations of unknown words. A test of 29 pseudo words was developed. Pseudo words were chosen because they eliminate familiarity with a word in its spoken form and contextual cues as sources of help in decoding. At the start of the test,…

The effectiveness of the impress method of reading instruction, in which the student and teacher read aloud simultaneously, was studied. The subjects were 24 fourth and fifth grade students from a New Jersey school, whose reading level was a year or more below grade placement (indicated by scores on a standardized achievement test) and who…

A study examined the importance of two phonological encoding procedures (addressed phonology and assembled phonology) in children who are learning to read and how the relative importance of these two procedures might change over the age range from six to eight. Subjects, 72 fifth, fourth, and third grade students from two inner London (England)…

Conditional letter sound correspondences (LSC) in which the pronunciation of a letter is determined by its graphemic environment were studied. Conditional LSC patterns selected for investigation were the c, g, and vowel-in-final-e patterns. The study had two aims: (1) to gather normative data for LSC generalizations and (2) to examine, for each…

The purpose of this study was to compare the ability to pronounce synthetic words of children who learned to read by methods emphasizing early, intensive phonics instruction with the ability of children who learned to read by methods utilizing delayed and less intensive phonics instruction. The sample was selected from among second, third, and…

Reading First is a federal initiative authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act. The U.S. Department of Education provides Reading First grants to states, which, in turn, award subgrants to eligible school districts that submit approved proposals for how they will apply scientifically based reading research to improve reading instruction and…