Compares the effects of ITA and TO instruction; based on Auguste's master's thesis, Queens College, New York, n. d. (RD)

An assessment is made of the initial teaching alphabet method of teaching reading 10 years after its introduction. (DB)

Reports on a visual-auditory analysis of each of the 1575 e-ending words found on the "Rinsland Vocabulary List" to determine whether the e should be considered as a diacritic. (RB)

This article describes the successful use of the initial teaching alphabet at Lenwood Elementary School in Barstow, California. (PD)

A REACTION TO JOHN DOWNING'S REPORT ON THE I/T/A READING EXPERIMENT IS PRESENTED. DOWNING ASSUMED THAT THERE WAS NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS ON IMPORTANT VARIABLES, BASED ON THE RESULTS OF THE KOLMOGOROV-SMIRNOV TEST. IT IS CLAIMED, HOWEVER, THAT THE TEST USED IS APPROPRIATE FOR SMALLER SAMPLES. A MORE…

REPORTS ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET (I.T.A.) FOR INSTRUCTION IN BEGINNING READING SHOULD BE CONSIDERED WITH CAUTION. SINCE NO DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS USED IS AVAILABLE, EDUCATORS FAIL TO ASSESS RESULTS OBJECTIVELY AND ARE MISLED BY DRAMATIC GAINS WHICH REFER TO SPECIAL CONDITIONS. HAWTHORNE…

AN EXPERIMENTAL GROUP OF 461 CHILDREN WAS TAUGHT TO READ WITH THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET (I/T/A) BEGINNING IN KINDERGARTEN AND WAS READING TRADITIONAL ORTHOGRAPHY (T/O) MATERIALS BY THE END OF THE SECOND GRADE. THE CONTROL GROUP INCLUDED 462 CHILDREN WHO WERE TAUGHT TRADITIONAL ORTHOGRAPHY IN A PROGRAM CENTERED AROUND CONVENTIONAL BASAL READING…

A study of the constraints on word recognition errors (miscues) readers make when reading a passage printed conventionally and one printed in a regularized orthography such as the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.) was undertaken with 50 second-grade students divided equally between children taught according to the orthographies being studied. The…

Objective data on the relative frequency of occurrence of the multifarious phoneme-grapheme correspondences of English, which the author dealt with in an earlier book, Relative Frequency of English Spellings, are applied to the learning of reading. The target audience includes the educator, the textbook author/publisher, and the classroom teacher.…

Presents i.t.a. in a way that enables a teacher to learn the i.t.a. code individually and describes i.t.a. on the basis of American pronunciation. (TO)

Discusses what studies of i.t.a. throughout the past eleven years have revealed for teachers and researchers in the field of reading. (TO)

Points out that i.t.a. is not without inconsistency and that the central difficulty lies with the schwa sound. The teaching of high frequency words containing the schwa (the, a) as exceptions seems advisable. Tables and bibliography. (RW)