Ninety-three first grade children participated in a study that examined the relationship among instructional materials, other factors such as test scores, and the growth and application of letter-sound correspondence knowledge. The study also sought to determine the importance of letter-sound correspondence knowledge in the acquisition and…

In discussing word recognition, Kenneth Goodman argues that preoccupation with words, leters, and sounds cuts off children from the meaning-seeking function of reading; that oral and written language are parallel modes of obtaining meaning from language; and that reading is a selective rather than a precise process of word perception. A review of…

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 purpose of this study was to determine if differences existed between second- and fifth-grade students' word recognition errors, and if differences existed between the word attack strategies utilized by them. Using the Informal Reading Inventory, a random sample of twenty-five second graders and twenty-five fifth graders was taken from three…

A model for transforming data from verbal learning experiments into tables useful to an educational technician was developed, based on a similar one for scientific agriculture. The necessary data were obtained through two experiments replicated upon relevant populations. In the first study, a series of free-recall experiments were performed using…

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…

The purpose of this study was to compare the phonics skills mastered by three groups of fifth and sixth grade students. Sixty fifth and sixth grade students from an open area school were selected as subjects--14 students were reading at third grade instructional level, 15 students at fourth grade instructional level, and 31 students at fifth grade…

Factors were investigated under acquisition and retention conditions which might be expected to counteract interference brought on by mixing sight and phonics methods. Experiment 1 dealt with training kindergarten children to attend to and encode letter pattern cues and the word's contextual cues. Subjects were trained individually in a series of…

Forty first-grade and third-grade students participated in an investigation of differences between oral reading strategies of students taught with a phonics emphasis and those of students taught with an analytic-eclectic program. Results from analysis of a reading miscue inventory used with each student indicated that miscue patterns are directly…

This collection reflects the stance that a truly balanced approach to reading instruction will focus not only on reading but on literacy; integrate language and literacy across disciplines; attend to reading, writing, and other skills and strategies in context; and reflect a coherent integration of as broad a research base as possible. Following a…

The author endorses the approach to teaching phonics set out in recent documents (e.g. Progression in Phonics) that extend and supersede the approach set out earlier in the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) Framework for Teaching. Proposed are minor, evidence-driven amendments to this approach. The assumption that failure to achieve continuing…

Results of a study in which first graders learned ten unfamiliar function words in two different formats indicated that sentence readers learned more about the syntactic and semantic identities of function words, whereas list readers remembered their orthographic identities better and could pronounce the words faster and more accurately in…

Analyzes eight variables in diagnostic tests to determine which are the most predictive of reading levels and then discusses how much each variable adds to this prediction and whether the answers are equally applicable to grades three, six, and nine. (FL)

Trains 94 first graders using a structured phonological reading method emphasizing English phonology and phoneme/grapheme correspondence. Compares to a control group who received a whole-language-plus-phonics approach. Notes that children in all groups improved their phonological awareness by the same amount. Concludes that phonological awareness…

Finds that children identified as at-risk for reading disability scored higher on numerous measures of reading achievement after receiving two years of instruction in a structured phonics code-emphasis approach compared to similar children taught using a "context" approach in which children are taught to first identify unknown words using the…