Children can acquire written language skills and abilities through the natural process by which they acquire oral language. If as infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, children are exposed to rich print environments, they transfer assumptions from experiences with oral dialogue to the more focused situations of print. Discrepancies in the ease with…

Since, by the time they enter school, children have developed a major portion of their spoken language system by being immersed in language, it seems probable that they could also apply these rules to the orthographic system if they were immersed in reading. Thus, learning to read by reading would allow the general formation of rules that could…

Culturally disadvantaged children are characterized as having neither the proper amount of physical stimuli nor the opportunity to engage in many first-hand and vicarious experiences. Emphasis is placed on the ideas that a teacher's attitude is of utmost importance to a disadvantaged child's success in school and that teaching strategies should be…

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…

Addressing subjects ranging from reading readiness to phonics, this book examines several fundamental elements of beginning reading instruction. Divided into 12 chapters, the book begins with a chapter providing a general overview of reading instruction, including the debate between the perception of reading as decoding or comprehension, and other…