The responses of 84 children (42 in kindergarten and 42 in first grade) while trying to identify sight words that were similar in sound (bowl/pole), similar in sound and shape (boat/boot), or dissimilar (cup/moon) yielded information about phonetic composition as a source of information by which beginning readers identify sight words. The…

This conference report contains the following papers: "Ability versus Knowledge in Testing Educational Achievement" and "Knowledge vs. Ability in Achievement Testing," by Robert L. Ebel; "A Four-Domain Taxonomy for Classifying Educational Tasks and Objectives," by Bruce W. Tuckman; "On the Social Psychology of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Further…

A structured tutoring technique utilizing the services of parents and high school students was devised. A study was carried out in Provo, Utah, with 10 children in each of six groups--three kindergarten and three first-grade groups consisting of one control group, one with parent tutors, and one with student tutors. The tutors were given a manual…

Determination of the effectiveness of visual perceptual training upon word recognition and subsequent reading achievement of the culturally disadvantaged first grader was this study's goal. Forty-eight pupils in two sections of the first grade of an elementary school in Louisiana tested the hypotheses that no difference would be revealed in the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent the knowledge of letter names, letter sounds, or the combination of both facilitates the acquisition of word recognition ability. Forty-eight first graders were pretested and posttested on their knowledge of letter names and sounds, and measures of auditory and visual discrimination…

A tutoring guide prescribing procedures for teaching naming and sounding of letters and decoding of nonsense words was developed. A sample group of kindergarten and first graders was randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The tutoring guide was distributed to chosen tutors (parents and high-school students). The tutors met with the…

This collection of 20 papers, initially presented at the International Reading Association convention in Anaheim in May 1970, is aimed both at those preparing to teach and those actively teaching. Part 1, Basic Reading Skills: Methods and Content, has three articles on word recognition skills, each aimed at different grade levels, followed by…

The success of remedial reading programs is often attributed to the teaching method used. This study was carried out to investigate the effect that motivation has on reading improvement following remediation. Through a group Word Recognition Test (Carver, 1970) the 32 most severely retarded readers in a large elementary school were selected and…

This study was designed to investigate the differences in effectiveness in teaching sight words to kindergarten children by using words only (no-picture group), words and simple pictures (simple-picture group), and words and complex pictures (complex-picture group). The subjects were 30 kindergarten children selected from two kindergarten classes.…

This collection of 20 papers, initially presented at the International Reading Association convention in Anaheim in May 1970, is aimed both at those preparing to teach and those actively teaching. Part 1, Basic Reading Skills: Methods and Content, has three articles on word recognition skills, each aimed at different grade levels, followed by…

Reports on a study of six fourth grade reading groups that were observed to see if vocabulary instruction was a priority, what kinds of vocabulary instruction occurred, and what shaped teaching decisions. (JC)

Examines the word-reading strategies of a sample of second- and third-grade students in normal classrooms, focusing on the students' relative reliance on decoding versus sight-word associations. Suggests that lack of efficient decoding skills will begin to take a toll on reading comprehension by grade 3. (SR)

The process of acquiring word meaning from context was investigated for high- and low-ability fifth-grade children. Findings demonstrated characteristics of processing that differentiate successful and less successful acquisition and underscore the complexity of the meaning-acquisition process. (HOD)

Analyzes the task performance of two groups of readers--those who made gains and those who did not make gains in a remedial reading situation in order to determine their use of word identification cues. Shows that the gain group was more analytical of the test words and tended to use more units of varying size. (HOD)

Reviews research in which children's processing of individual words is examined in prose context. When taken together, the data suggest that the reader's dependence on contextual constraint for individual word identification decreases with age. (HOD)