Sight word lists have been used since prior to 20 B.C. and have changed forms many times. Today sight word lists are numerous and are widely and variously used. They differ in source, intended purpose and/or audience, and criteria for including specific words. Despite the differences, there is much agreement that they do reflect the most basic…

A study was conducted to answer the question, "What are the basic words in a list of words kindergarten through sixth grade students will frequently encounter in their reading?" The study was limited to the words the students would encounter in their textbooks (including basals). A corpus of 7,230 words was then analyzed by two raters to…

The Reading-Spelling Vocabulary Program (RSVP) is a list of 900 words of highest frequency selected from 14 previous studies of words in print, spoken vocabulary, and children's and adults' handwriting. The words are divided into four levels and 60 lessons of 15 words each. When a sample test was constructed and administered to 266 elementary…

Focuses on the examination of pupil responses for grades two through four in a study that provides more recent information about the performance of pupils on the Dolch Test. Provides some observations to assist teachers in interpreting the result of pupil responses to these words. (MG)

The purposes of this study were to compile lists of the words used by kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade children in their oral language and to examine differences in the diversity of the vocabularies among the three grade levels. Twenty-nine kindergarten, 25 first-grade, and 23 second-grade children, all of whom attended schools in…

This monograph is based on research designed to (1) identify the vocabulary words introduced at each grade level by the basal reader series adopted by the Georgia Board of Education; (2) determine the extent of overlap among the books is the series; (3) compare these lists with other recognized word lists; and (4) generated a list of words for the…

Details a study indicating that the minimal level of literacy necessary for adults in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is very high. Provides a master list of vocabulary words, symbols, numbers, abbreviations, computational skills, and writing skills needed for functional literacy. (MKM)

This word list includes more than 43,000 items, each identified by a simple word meaning. For each item, the list provides a grade level (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, or 16) and a percentage score that indicates what percentage of students at that grade level understand the word. Each word-familiarity score was obtained by administering a three-choice…

The extent to which intralist similarity affects kindergarten pupils' rate of acquisition, word recognition skills, and tendency to generalize responses to similar words was investigated. The subjects were 54 children from a semirural elementary school who had had no formal training in letter recognition. Three acquisition lists were used to…