Investigates whether prereaders who knew all their letters are better at forming logographic access routes than letter-sound access routes into memory from words read by sight. Concludes that prereaders become capable of forming letter-sound access routes when they learn letters well enough to take advantage of the phonetic cues the letters…

Reports results of the administration of a battery of tests of oral language skills to blind braille readers (N=15). Three skills were tested: phoneme deletion, sentence completion, and morphological analysis. Participants were congenitally blind high school students. Subjects differed from sighted readers only in the ability to perform…

Discusses a study of the relationship of Australian elementary school students' word reading strategies to comprehension level, reading time, and phonemic awareness. Reports that performance in reading both irregular and nonsense words is a reasonably good predictor of subsequent performance. Recommends remedial training for students lacking…

Research suggests New Zealand has the biggest gap between its highest and lowest achievers, and this is known as the "long tail". The debate over whole language and phonics approaches to reading is unfinished, but must now focus on where the point of difference lies. While reading involves a range of skills, teachers need to model the…

To examine how young children learn to read new words, we asked preschoolers (N = 115, mean age 4 years, 8 months) to learn and remember novel spellings that made sense based on letter names (e.g. TZ for "tease") and spellings that were visually distinctive but phonetically inappropriate. Children who were more knowledgeable about letter names…

Teachers working with a language experience approach to reading may use word-sorting activities as a means of exploring the letter/sound concepts and semantic concepts that children are forming. Using words that are already in a child's reading vocabulary, words that the child has made into sight vocabulary, and words that the child has requested…

This Manual provides the foundation for a reading and spelling course which avoids use of the phonic method. Instead of teaching the word as a whole and afterward subjecting it to phonic analysis, this Synthetic Method takes the sounds of the letters for the starting point, and with these sounds lay a foundation firm and broad, upon which is built…

Although reading is often viewed as a mysterious process, sufficient evidence is available to identify certain areas as promising for further research and others as unpromising. In applied research, the study of how reading programs are implemented in schools, including an examination of leadership roles, teacher attitudes, teacher training, and…

Investigated word reading abilities in Argentine Spanish-speaking children learning to read in Spanish. The study compared the performance of skilled and less skilled readers in phonological recoding, knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and phonemic awareness. Findings indicate that the children rely on phonological recoding strategies.…

Compared two forms of word identification training to promote transfer of learning by dyslexic children. One program taught phonological analysis and blending skills and provided direct instruction of letter-sound correspondences; the other taught the acquisition, use, and monitoring of four metacognitive decoding strategies. Both approaches were…

Students at the U.S. Air Force Academy participated in a study of Chinese language skill acquisition. Findings included more rapid and accurate character recognition was associated with higher proficiency; printed frequency had the greatest effect upon accuracy of naming; character density correlated with recognition accuracy; and denser…

Three experiments examined the effect of practice on the acquisition, retention, and generalization of children's skill in rapidly naming visually presented words. Found that, although poor readers did not become as fast as good readers in naming words, they made gains in the time required to access names from print. (PAM)

This article summarizes the National Research Council's conclusions concerning key developmental milestones in the various domains relevant to reading success, including phonological awareness, letter identification, the alphabetic principle, automatic word recognition, and comprehension strategies. Beneficial opportunities for preschoolers and…

To make sense of unknown words encountered in their reading, children must relate what they read to their prior knowledge. It is important to use children's language in early reading instruction, through the use of language experience stories that provide children with a natural transition from oral to written language. Nursery rhymes may also be…

A program is described that successfully teaches decoding to poor readers of average or above intelligence in grades 1 through 8. The teacher-directed, supplemental program guides students to become aware of language patterns and consistencies and to apply a decoding process of using known language patterns to figure out unknown words. (Author/JDD)