Fluent word recognition is an essential component of skilled reading, yet most children with reading difficulty have impaired word recognition. We developed and evaluated a web app, WordDriver, delivered via teletherapy, which targets phonological recoding to support orthographic learning and efficient word recognition. Participants were five…

This publication combines the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)'s practice guides, practice resources and explainer on delivering reading interventions in a secondary school multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS), with details of the methodology used to create these resources. AERO has developed a suite of guidance in partnership…

Purpose: Readers can draw on their knowledge of sound-to-letter mappings to form expectations about the spellings of known spoken words prior to seeing them in written sentences. The current study asked whether such orthographic expectancies are observed in the absence of contextual support at the point of reading. Method: Seventy-eight adults…

Although there is robust evidence that skilled readers of English extract and use orthographic and phonological information from the parafovea to facilitate word identification, semantic preview benefits have been elusive. We sought to establish whether individual differences in the extraction and/or use of parafoveal semantic information could…

The main aim of this study was to develop standardised tests that assess some of the most important spelling skills for children in primary school: sound-letter mappings (non-lexical spelling) and word spelling accuracy (lexical spelling). We present normative comparison data for children in Grades 1-7 as well as measures of validity and…

This research investigated whether spelling ability, an index of precise lexical representations, predicts the balance between bottom-up and top-down processing in online sentence processing among skilled readers, over and above contributions of reading ability, vocabulary, and working memory. The results showed that the combination of superior…

This study examined whether boys and girls in the early school years differed in reading and related skills, and their rates of progress. Gender ratios were calculated to ascertain whether there were more boys than girls who struggle with different facets of reading, and whether the variability of boys' scores resulted in more boys being…

In this study, the relationship between latent constructs of phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) was investigated and related to later measures of reading and spelling in children learning to read in different alphabetic writing systems (i.e., Norwegian/Swedish vs. English). 750 U.S./Australian children and 230…

Two experiments investigated the relationship between masked form priming and individual differences in reading and spelling proficiency among university students. Experiment 1 assessed neighbor priming for 4-letter word targets from high- and low-density neighborhoods in 97 university students. The overall results replicated previous evidence of…

A large gap is evident between the reading and related skills performance of Aboriginal students compared with that of their non-indigenous peers and this gap increases over the primary years of schooling. In this study, 34 students attended a tutorial centre in Sydney for older low-progress readers in Years 5 and 6, for two school terms. All…

In this 3-year longitudinal study, the authors tested and extended M. Senechal and J. Le Fevre's (2002) model of the relationships between preschool home literacy practices and children's literacy and language development. Parent-child reading (Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire plus a children's Title Recognition Test) and parental teaching…

Grade 1 literacy skills of twin children in Australia (New South Wales) and the United States (Colorado) were explored in a genetically sensitive design (N = 319 pairs). Analyses indicated strong genetic influence on word and nonword identification, reading comprehension, and spelling. Rapid naming showed more modest, though reliable, genetic…

Explores the development of 280 students across 7 grades in spelling and word knowledge as well as their pattern of use of lower- to higher-order strategies in their attempts to spell words, write derivations, and display syntactic knowledge. Older students gradually make less use of lower-order strategies in spelling, writing derivations, and in…

Children with reading and/or spelling difficulties were examined to test ability to read and spell using correspondence rules and whole-word rules. Children deficient in both reading and spelling skills had difficulties using correspondence rules to spell and read and difficulties with whole-word reading and spelling. (Author/DB)

To help children develop a concept of "words," this document introduces parallels from languages other than English so that children, especially those learning English as a second language, can become aware of similarities across languages and recognize links between their first language and English. Answers to questions often asked by…