The purpose of this investigation was to examine syntax comprehension by poor and average prereaders in first grade and poor and average readers in second grade, to determine whether a relationship exists between reading ability or reading readiness and comprehension of syntax. Subjects were 55 first-grade children and 56 second-grade children of…

Research on reading readiness is listed in two sections: Part 1, 1950 to the present, and Part 2, 1900-1949. Within each section citations are alphabetized according to author's last name and are followed by a descriptive abstract in Part 1 and a brief annotation in Part 2. A broad definition of reading readiness ranging from maturation as a…

This document presents cross-sectional and longitudinal data relating the time required to read orally 50 unrelated letters, 50 unrelated words, and 100 words in text among first to sixth grade children and adults. Results include concurrent correlation between letter, word, and text times ranging between .18 and .92 with a median of .77.…

This 34-item annotated bibliography was compiled to help professional educators decide whether reading should be taught in kindergarten and, if so, how the instruction should be conducted. The references include varying and even opposing points of view. The authors of the articles are teachers, administrators, professors, and researchers. (TO)

A pretest/post-test procedure for measuring information gain from discourse was investigated together with several other aspects of discourse processing. The main purpose was to determine the effect of a pretest on discourse learning as measured by post-test performance. The study also investigated (1) serial position effects in learning from…

The purposes of the study were to determine whether phonic analysis training could be used to prepare children to be successful on the Auditory Analysis Test (AAT) of phonic skills and to then relate phonic knowledge to reading performance. Subjects were 40 first graders in suburban Pittsburgh who had attended kindergarten together. A group of 16…

The purpose of this study was to determine if significant differences in first grade achievement appeared among pupils who participated in an eight-week Summer Head Start Program and qualified pupils who did not participate. Both groups were divided into three subgroups according to scores on the Draw-A-Man Test. Each subgroup (high, middle, and…

The purpose of this investigation was to study the effect of controlling the letters used in words both for a training program designed to improve visual discrimination and for a word recognition task. The experiment was designed to investigate the influence of simultaneous and successive discrimination learning with stimuli which varied in…

The effect of mastery of three prereading skills (letter order, letter orientation, and word detail) on first-grade reading achievement was investigated in a study of 1068 students from 42 randomly selected classrooms; 687 students completed all instruments and could be included in analyses of results. Systematic instruction was given to 16…

Research with kindergarten children showed that low imagery words were more difficult to recall than high imagery words. (MKM)

Describes a study of early readers to determine the linguistic and social interactions in the homes of early readers that seemed to make a difference in their reading. (HTH)

Results of this study showed that the high intralist-similarity groups required more learning trails but demonstrated greater word-recognition skills than the low intralist-similarity groups regardless of whether pretraining was used although discrimination pretraining did increase the rate of learning in beginning reading. (TO)

Study comparing two approaches conducted in the Kindergarten classes in Waterville, Maine. (MB)

Results of research reports can be interpreted to suit personal prejudices, say the authors, since many research studies are not carefully reported. (Authors/MB)

Reports on naturalistic research studies revealing that children begin to learn to read and write long before they go to school. (JL)