Three hundred children from two metropolitan areas were studied for 1 year to determine (1) the relationship between letter-name knowledge and reading success, (2) the relationship between letter-name learning and phonic learning, and (3) the ease and efficiency of vowel identification. The study concluded that the sooner a child learns the letter names the greater his achievement in reading. Letter-name knowledge carries over to the learning of letter sounds, and short vowels in isolation are 1.7 times harder to identify than short vowels in phonograms. Implications of the study are discussed. The learning of letter names is seen as the background for phonics and as an important element in the accurate perception of word structure and the building of a large sight vocabulary. Systematic learning of phoneme identification in spoken words is viewed as essential to successful learning in beginning reading. (RT)