This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) topic report addresses reading interventions for students in grades K-3, including core reading curricula, programs, or products to be used as supplements to other reading instruction, programs that focus on staff development, and literacy software. The WWC review on beginning reading focuses on programs…

An examination of materials development for independent study in listening comprehension of English as a second language (ESL) begins with an outline of current directions in second language instruction. The discussion that follows has two parts. The first is a review of some changing perspectives on the role of listening in language learning and…

This guide highlights problems Vietnamese speakers are likely to have in learning English because of differences between the two languages and suggests ways of helping Vietnamese students of English over difficulties caused by these differences. The first section of the guide provides an overview of the Vietnamese language: the alphabet, word…

Item response data were obtained from large samples of students in Grades K-community college, taking the following tests: Stanford Early School Achievement Test, Stanford Achievement Test, Stanford Test of Academic Skills, Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test, and Stanford Diagnostic Mathematical Test. Data were classified as fitting or non-fitting…

The performance of 68 preschool children, ages three (28), four (21), and five (19), on selected phoneme-grapheme correspondence tasks was analyzed for age and sex differences in two stages of data collection. First, the children spelled their first names and the initial of their last names with letters on a magnetic board, after which they…

Yugoslav elementary school students of English as a second language were the subjects of a longitudinal study to determine factors influencing the acquisition of correct English pronunciation. The students were tested for their ability to articulate 32 sounds within ten specific English words. The test was administered each year from the second…

This longitudinal study attempts to (1) describe the development of articulation of consonant phonemes through the 4th grade, and (2) explore the relation between articulation and non-articulation variables. Between the spring before kindergarten entrance and the 4th grade, 436 subjects were tested 11 times at 6-month intervals. On the basis of…

This workbook-primer is designed for teaching beginning readers the most frequently used letters of the St. Lawrence Island Yupik language. This book covers the first simple twenty-six symbols. Each page contains a letter, at least one illustration for that letter, and lined spaces for writing practice. (AMH)

The acquisition of the consonant system by a child acquiring Mexican-Spanish as her native language is described. During the earliest stages (from 1;7 to 2;1 years of age), the data showed several phenomena that could best be accounted for by assuming a central role for the word as the basic unit being acquired. The evidence for the centrality of…

The articles in this publication are (1) "The Children's Literary Heritage" by Dora V. Smith; (2) "Some Approaches to Teaching Standard English as a Second Language" by Charlotte K. Brooks; (3) "Detroit Great Cities School Improvement Program in Language Arts" by Clarence W. Wachner; (4) "Teaching and Testing Critical Listening in the Fifth and…

This guide to reading instruction for elementary and middle school students with learning difficulties covers a wide variety of practical instructional strategies founded in research and proven effective in classrooms. An introductory chapter notes the growing national emphasis on reading skills, especially research-based reading programs and the…

A program to teach young children about phonological structure was evaluated with 64 experimental group and 62 control group preschoolers in Australia. Results support the efficacy of the program and the principle that phonological awareness and letter knowledge are necessary but not sufficient for acquisition of the alphabetic principle. (SLD)

Describes the formation of the new "California Reading Initiative" that directly ties school funding to practices such as teaching phonemic awareness and systematic, explicit phonics. Assesses its research base, and discusses problems in teaching Limited-English-Proficient students to read following its directives. Presents research that supports…

A study investigated the effects of a 2-week summer institute that taught kindergarten and first-grade teachers (n=44) about learning disabilities and effective instruction, stressing the importance of explicit instruction in phonological and orthographic awareness. First-graders taught by trained teachers outperformed controls on phonological…

A study investigated the roles of phonological encoding and visual processes in word recognition in American learners of Arabic as a foreign language. Subjects were 36 individuals with proficiency ranging from beginning to native. Two experiments in word recognition were conducted, one at word and one at sentence level. At each level, the word…