Today, many children worldwide grow up in bilingual or multilingual families. This study explores early literacy development in Russian-Hebrew bilingual families in Israel. It studies the contribution of the home literacy environment (HLE), the language of communication, and the nature of the maternal writing support in Hebrew and Russian, to…

Recently, there has been growing concern about how to most effectively support the literacy development of beginning and struggling readers with regard to helping them learn to effortlessly identify the huge number of words that proficient readers ultimately learn to read with automaticity. Some, noting the critical importance of phonics…

This study evaluated a parent-mediated preventive intervention for children's literacy skills 1 year after participation. Parents of 3 1/2 to 4 1/2-year-old-children (n = 69) recruited through early childhood centers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (a) a target shared reading condition emphasizing phonological awareness…

Concept of word in print is the development of an understanding of how monosyllabic and multisyllabic words operate in print. Young children show evidence of this understanding when they are able to repeat a line of text while accurately pointing to each word as it is said. A small but robust line of work has examined the knowledge, skills, and…

Oral reading speeds for letters, words out of context, and simple text and reading achievement were measured in samples of children and adults. Results are used to discuss the nature and development of a general identification speed variable and an orthographic structure variable. (AA)

The development of four-year-old children's knowledge of letters and printed words was studied to determine if preschool children begin reading, and if so, how. A natural hierarchy of knowledge was noted. (MKM)

Evaluates the effects of training in phonemic segmentation and of instruction in letter names and letter sounds on kindergarten children's reading and spelling skills. Finds that phoneme awareness instruction, combined with instruction connecting the phonemic segments to alphabet letters, significantly improves the early reading and spelling…

Analyzes a report by D.D. Steinberg and J. Yamada that investigated which of the different types of scripts used in Japanese writing was the easiest to learn to read. (MKM)

Offers a rebuttal to Tzeng and Singer's criticism of the authors' study of the ease of learning to read the different Japanese scripts. States that the symbols and words were taught in the ordinary situation in which they are learned. (MKM)