In response to criticism of a previous study, this paper reports a revision of a proposed phonics rule "when there are two vowels, one of which is a final e, the first vowel is long and the final e is silent" (cradle), which is called the VCE (Vowel Consonant E) rule. Following an introductory section, the paper examines previous research, citing…

Forty kindergarten children participated in a study to determine (1) whether significant relationships existed among children's scores on various word boundary tasks, (2) whether scores on the individual tasks were significantly related to the children's ability to represent phonemic segments in their spelling, and (3) whether different…

A study investigated whether the workbooks used in the first grades of the Rahway, New Jersey, public schools provided adequate practice in the skills listed in that school district's reading skills array. The four workbooks analyzed were (1) "Phonics We Use: Book A," (2) "The Phonics Workbook: Book A," (3) "Programmed Reading Activities for Books…

A study was conducted to compare two methodologies for establishing hierarchical relationships--the Dayton and Macready model and the White and Clark procedure--using criterion referenced test data. Several phonics and structural analysis skills were selected from a reading skills battery. The opinions of reading "experts" were solicited in order…

The oral reading errors of 15 second graders were analyzed to find out if strategies used by good and poor readers could be differentiated. Patterns of errors were identified, and it was found that good readers often used context cues, while poor readers relied heavily on visual-phonic information. It was also possible to identify good and poor…

This report presents a summary of reading research conducted by the Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) during 1972-75. Research was conducted in four areas: student industriousness, reading readiness, teaching of sound-symbol relationships, and language (especially dialect interference). With regard to industriousness, it was found that…

In an investigation of the degree to which children learn associations in the direction opposite to the one in which they were taught, 20 preschool children were instructed in letter-sound correspondences in one of two ways. One group was presented with the letter symbol and asked to produce the sound, while the other group was presented with the…

SOON IT WILL BE POSSIBLE TO REDUCE TO A TECHNOLOGY THE CONSTRUCTION OF MATERIALS FOR THE PRINTED COMMUNICATION SKILL IN FIRST GRADE. THIS TECHNOLOGY REQUIRES A DATA BASE, A HUGE MATRIX OF S-R FUNCTIONS THAT PLOT THE EFFECT OF A STIMULUS-DIMENSION UPON A READING RESPONSE. A CONSIDERABLE PORTION OF THE DATA BASE CAN BE PROVIDED BY REPLICATING…

To determine the degree of emphasis on phonics instruction necessary for beginning readers, a study was conducted involving five pairs of four-year-old monozygotic twins. Randomly selected twins from each pair were exposed to two different levels of phonics instruction. In one group, the reduced treatment group, only one sound equivalent per…

A 40-item nonsense word list was administered to 27 first-graders who had been taught letter-sound correspondences in isolation. The results displayed a succession of stages through which subjects apparently passed. At the second stage, subjects could sound letters but not blend the sounds into words; at the third stage, subjects could sound some…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of systematic instruction with cloze tasks on the reading achievement of primary grade children. The cloze procedure was selected as an instructional strategy because of the close relationship of the cloze procedure to the psycholinguistic model of the reading process. Twenty-two first and nine…

The purposes of this study were to determine (1) if it is possible to predict which children will develop word recognition deficits based on levels of articulation proficiency and auditory discrimination ability; (2) the effect of two different instructional approaches for beginning reading, phonics, and whole-word approach; and (3) if first grade…

This paper analyzes evidence related to the effectiveness of vowel generalization from two viewpoints: the nature of letter-sound and sound-letter relationships as derived from Dewey, Hanna, and Hillerich, and the nature of these relationships as derived from results of teaching vowel generalizations to children. From the evidence and the research…

Research indicates that the Wallach and Wallach tutorial reading program for low-readiness first graders which emphasizes phoneme identification skills is effective. (MKM)

Reports that after more than 50 years of argument as to whether children should be taught the names of letters as part of learning to read, American researchers have begun to suggest that letter name instruction and phonics instruction interact for better learning. (FL)