The strategies used by children in word recognition are examined. A critical review of some of the classical research which has influenced current thinking about how words are recognized is presented along with a discussion of some of the errors which can be found in these studies. A five-stage model of how beginning readers learn to recognize…

Taking a psycholinguistic approach, this paper presents an overview of vocabulary and word identification instruction. Sources for instructional procedures are discussed rather than detailed suggestions for teaching procedures. Five approaches to word identification are examined: sight vocabulary development, phonic analysis, structural analysis,…

This book is designed to provide teachers with the information necessary to help their students to cope successfully and independently with unfamiliar words. Three sources of aid in word identification are discussed, to provide a balance to the current overemphasis on phonics decoding as the only way for children to identify words. The three areas…

A study investigated the hypothesis that high frequency words can be effectively specified when word shape data are combined with available contextual clues. To test this hypothesis, an augmented contextual restriction task similar to one used by R. N. and L. R. Haber was employed. The task differed in terms of increased passage difficulty and the…

Shows that word discriminability and contextual complexity have significant developmental effects on word identification, reflecting the growth of meaningful reading with age. (RL)

One model of interactive processing useful in describing word identification processes in discourse context is of a weakly interactive type. This type assumes that the time to identify a word in context is an activation function, whereas the time to activate a word in memory beyond some criterial identification threshold is a multiplicative…

This paper explores the patterns and processes used by adult students of English as a second language (ESL) when they guess at the meanings of nonsense words in a reading text. The findings suggest that while word-unit processing is a major component of both first- and second-language reading, a major difference between first- and second-language…

Describes two experiments that examined word recognition processes of second, fourth, and sixth graders. Shows that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (HOD)

Examines whether eighth grade students acquired measurable knowledge about unfamiliar words while reading natural text. Suggests that incidental learning from context accounts for a substantial proportion of the vocabulary growth that occurs during the school years. (HOD)

As part of a larger effort to develop a test battery for diagnosing difficulties with various word recognition subskills among mainstreamed students in grades 2 through 5, four experiments were conducted to compare the abilities of good and poor readers to read a frequency-graduated series of irregularly spelled words first in isolation and then…

Forty-four junior high school students were randomly assigned to two vocabulary instruction treatments. One treatment used context-rich, three-sentence passages as sources for target word definition. The other, the semantic mapping treatment, entailed learning new words by identifying the similarities and differences with related, known words.…

This paper contains a report of a theoretical investigation of contextual analysis (CA) that ranked this reading strategy as the most complex of four kindred word recognition skills although many current reading programs advance its use in the beginning stages of formal reading instruction. Three propositions are offered: CA holds kinship with the…

This study involved the development of exercises for teaching the use of context clues in word recognition. Although authorities believe that context clues are best used in combination with other methods of word identification, such as phonetic analysis and word form, no hierarchy of difficulty among the many exercises for teaching context clues…

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a point of departure for a coherent program of vocabulary growth. The paper offers three premises for a coherent program of vocabulary growth: (1) vocabulary is best learned as it functions in communication settings, (2) teachers can more effectively stimulate vocabulary growth if they attend more…