Background: The relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading has been examined extensively, but there is still a question as to the reason for the relationship. To reduce involvement of alphanumeric and vocabulary knowledge in RAN, and to possibly reduce phonological demands, researchers have suggested using the RAN sizes that…

Learning irregular words involves mental marking of irregular letters in the spelling, a process not fully understood. In a within-subjects experiment, we manipulated the type of scaffolding given to beginning readers to evoke mental marking. We pretested to sort 103 kindergarten and first-grade participants into sequential decoders, who decode…

This 2-year longitudinal study examined both concurrent and longitudinal relations of a variety of reading-related cognitive tasks and Chinese word reading and word dictation among 187 Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners aged 4-6. Homophone awareness, visual skills and syllable awareness were all uniquely associated with Chinese word reading across…

This study investigated the relative extent to which developing readers (6- and 9-year-olds) of English (deep) or Greek (transparent) orthography exhibit serial and exterior letter effects in letter position encoding. Participants were given a visual search task that required detection of a pre-specified target letter within a random five-letter…

Skilled readers were trained to recognise either the oral (n=44) or visual form (n=40) of a set of 32 novel words (oral and visual instantiation, respectively). Training involved learning the "meanings" for the instantiated words and was followed by a visual lexical decision task in which the instantiated words were mixed with real English words…

A theory of how children progress through different phases of reading should be an asset both to reading researchers and teachers alike. The present paper provides a brief review of Ehri's influential four phases of reading development: pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic and consolidated alphabetic. The model is flexible enough to…

Analyzes a shift in the view of the reading process and suggests a modified view of the learning-to-read process as a constructive process. (MKM)

Replicates a study of a "common unit" task which includes modifications to the original procedure. Confirms the pattern observed in the original study: beginning readers learning by a mixed method can identify shared phonemes but not shared rimes in the common unit task. Discusses implications. (RS)

Investigates the relation between phonological awareness, sound-to-letter mapping knowledge, and printed word learning in novice five-year-old readers. Explores effects of visual memory and of teaching methods. Finds mental representations of printed words are more easily formed by beginners who are able to match at least some of the phonological…

Argues that the teaching of initial reading should focus upon the beginning reader rather than on teaching procedures and that factors in the individual child such as motivation, experience, oral language, cognitive development, and pace of learning should be considered. (FL)

Presents reasons for the current upsurge in interest in oral reading errors, including theoretical shifts in how the process of learning to read is to be viewed and evaluated. Stresses the difference between descriptive and linguistic error analysis and develops leads that have emerged from studies using linguistic error analysis. (Author/FL)

Describes a study of oral reading errors by six-year-olds indicating that previously read words are frequently substituted at points of miscue, but that reliance on this source decreased over the year, casting doubt on previously postulated developmental phases of reading. (HTH)