To determine the factors accounting for children's growth in decoding skill, a study examined school entering characteristics--age, sex, ethnicity, and developmental abilities--and school-influenced skills and characteristics--phonemic awareness, letter-name knowledge, basal text, and place in series--of approximately 100 grade one students.…

The adult English literacy program at the Phanat Nikhom Refugee Camp has developed techniques for actively engaging the sometimes reluctant students in the skill development process leading to literacy. A literacy warm-up chart used daily for five minutes develops the prereading skills of sequencing and left-to-right eye coordination; a variety of…

Focusing on research about children's acquisition of reading and spelling skills, this paper discusses the larger picture of reading acquisition, issues addressed by research, and results of this research. The paper cites numerous studies on the subject, including studies on whether environmental print experiences enable young children to process…

This is the third of three volumes intended to be used as pedagogical materials in advanced Urdu courses at Western colleges and universities. An optional set of tape recordings and an optional set of 35mm slides accompany the three-volume work. Volume III first includes an appendix describing the phonemic alphabet (with rough correspondences to…

This publication reports on research which has investigated phoneme acquisition and carry-over in a programmatic fashion. This research began with investigations of the effect of an extension of stimulus control of new phoneme responses through a systematic operant procedure. After quantifying the effect of such procedures in terms of stimulus…

In this document, points of view are presented by a group of educators and academicians whose common purpose was to explore the area of beginning reading. Articles deal with (1) definitions of reading and problems with the use of associated terminology, (2) various theoretical considerations of the processes of learning which apply to beginning…

Local increases in fundamental frequency (Fo) and large integrals of energy in the syllabic nucleus are known to be among the best acoustical correlates of stress. Major syntactic constituents have been shown to have archetype rapid-rise-then-gradual-fall Fo contours, with the rise into the maximum Fo often associated with the first stressed…

The primary objective of this study was to determine the most effective of three spelling programs for sixth graders coming from two culturally different and racially distinct areas of a large metropolitan school district. A secondary objective was to examine any differences which might exist between inner-city and suburban children in the…

It is suggested that the static model of language which is prerequisite for contrastive analysis is inadequate in pinpointing potential difficulties in second language learning. The student learning graphemic-phonetic correspondences encounters two types of difficulties not exposed by contrastive analysis: dialectal difficulties and reading…

The sound system of English is described in all its complexity, from the relationship between spelling and pronunciation to the rules of connected speech, focusing on the methods and rationale of teaching pronunciation of English, particularly to English as a second language learners. (CB)

A study investigated the degree to which the pronunciation of English words in the child's home environment affected the acquisition or discrimination of phonological and orthographic correspondences of standard written English. Subjects were low-socioeconomic-status, inner-city African American kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students, who…

Investigates early literacy acquisition in Turkish with its phonologically transparent orthography and regular letter-sound correspondences. Findings reveal that such orthography fosters the early development of word recognition skills and that phonological awareness contributes to word recognition in the early stages of reading acquisition. (33…

To determine whether disabled readers can benefit from letter-sound instruction if attention to individual regular words is increased, 38 male and 16 female disabled readers aged 7 to 13 years participated in whole word, letter-sound, or control training programs. Implications of improvement by both experimental groups are discussed. (SLD)

This study examined the word-structure knowledge of novice teachers and the progress of children tutored by a subgroup of the teachers. Teachers' word-structure knowledge was assessed using three tasks: graphophonemic segmentation, classification of pseudowords by syllable type, and classification of real words as phonetically regular or…

Seven papers on topics of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction, language research, and applied linguistics are presented: "ESL Students and Common L2 Conversation-Making Expressions" (Eli Hinkel); "Thematic Options in Reporting Previous Research" (Sarah Thomas, Thomas Hawes); "Connected Speech Modifications in…