This article explores the reading and written language competency of incarcerated youth and examines the role that literacy plays in recidivism. Suggestions for practice include reading and written language curricular strategies that have empirical validation with this population. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

THE PHONEMIC BEHAVIOR OF ALL VOWEL-PAIR SINGLE GRAPHEMES FOUND IN 17,310 COMMON ENGLISH WORDS WAS STUDIED, AND THE PHONEMIC BEHAVIOR OF VOWEL-PAIR GRAPHEMES FREQUENTLY FOUND IN THIS SAMPLE WAS ANALYZED. THE GRAPHEME TO PHONEME RELATIONSHIP FOR EACH POSSIBLE VOWEL PAIR IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WAS EXAMINED. TABLES SHOW THE FREQUENCY AND PERCENT OF…

Concludes that as little phonics instruction as is necessary should be presented to help the learner achieve increasing independence in the various coding tasks. (RB)

THE USEFULNESS OF PHONIC RULES IN READING INSTRUCTION BEYOND THE FOURTH-GRADE LEVEL WAS INVESTIGATED TO ASCERTAIN IF THE CONCLUSIONS REACHED BY THEODORE CLYMER AND REPORTED IN THE JANUARY 1963 ISSUE OF "THE READING TEACHER" WERE VALID WHEN APPLIED TO A MORE REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE OF VOCABULARY. LISTS OF ALL POSSIBLE WORDS (FROM A SAMPLE…

The relative importance of vowels in reading versus the relative importance of consonants was investigated by comparing the scores on the oral reading of a passage from which all vowels had been removed with the scores on the oral reading of the same passage from which all consonants had been removed. Scores for reading the passage with whole…

Phonics is the application of the science of speech sounds to reading and spelling, and it is concerned with the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes) and their graphic forms (graphemes). In the English language there is not a 1-to-1 grapheme-phoneme relationship; 43 basic speech sounds are recorded by using 26 letters. Other irregularities…

Reviews the literature on phonic generalizations and presents a formula measuring the usefulness of word recognition, concluding that further research is needed. (RB)

Finds evidence for a relationship between children's ability to use word recognition generalizations and their reading achievement, although they may not need to be able to verbalize those generalizations. (Author/FL)

The introduction of text conventions, such as word separation, the separation of letter and background and the lower-case letter are appraised with respect to their contribution to literacy instruction. The change in the visual appearance of the graphic word over time led to the assignment of secondary status to spelling and low appreciation of…

Explores the characteristics and implications of the "new sentence method" of learning to read. (JM)

Describes experiments that examined the effects of orthographic similarity on lexical decisions and compared decision times to words when they are preceded by unrelated words. Results indicate that lexical decisions about spoken words were shown to be influenced by the spelling of an immediately preceding item. (SED)

This article introduces Making and Writing Words Using Letter Patterns (MWW-LP), a variation of the popular Making Words word study and spelling instructional activity. Research indicates that proficient readers use knowledge of letter patterns such as onsets, rimes, and affixes to decode unknown words. The MWW-LP activity uses such letter…