This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

Preschool children often confuse letters with their mirror images when they try to read and write. Mirror confusion seems to occur more often in line with the direction of script (e.g., left-to-right for the Latin alphabetic script), suggesting that the processing of letter orientation and text directionality may be interrelated in preliterate…

In this article, I illustrate how research from cognitive science and the science of reading can inform research on the science of reading instruction. This purpose is accomplished by focusing on four recently published randomized control trials of instruction designed to teach alphabet letters to 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 342) attending…

Letter learning is nuanced, complex, and essential to the development of an effective literacy processing system. Forming and naming letters, rapidly differentiating between visually similar letters, and recognizing their sound correspondences are foundational to becoming a reader and writer. Indeed, control over letters affects monitoring,…

Discrimination of reversible mirrored letters (e.g., d and b) poses a challenge when learning to read as it requires overcoming "mirror invariance," an evolutionary-old perceptual tendency of processing mirror images as equivalent. The present study investigated "when," in reading development, mirror-image discrimination…

In the early heyday of ITA education, English as a second language (ESL) educators played a key role in defining three basic learning needs for ITAs: Language, teaching, and culture. Of this model, culture is the most broadly defined and least developed component. It was predicted by some, apparently on the basis of nationality, that ITAs would…

One challenge for many international teaching assistants (ITAs) is improving their spoken English fluency after arrival in the U.S.A. It may be argued that poor fluency, with its hallmarks of slow speech rate, false starts, and particularly pauses that violate phrasal boundaries, account for the failure of many ITAs to be certified by their…

This Italian alphabet book designed for kindergarten and first grade students presents each letter in upper and lower case form accompanied by an illustration and a single sentence caption. The sentence contains two or more words that begin with the letter in question. The book has a teacher's introduction and is illustrated by pen-and-ink…

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.…

This study investigated the process by which the representational activity and knowledge about drawing and letter and number writing emerge in children 21-46 months old. The results revealed that representational activities developed with age through several phases. Beginning at age 2, children produced different marks for different systems, but…

Intended to help children learn phonics and to learn how to use phonics, this handbook is modeled on the 15th century hornbook. The handbook is divided into three parts: (1) "What Went Wrong?"; (2) "HOW to Teach Someone to Read by Beginning with Basic Phonics"; and (3) "Special Problems." Nineteen references and a…

The Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.) was designed by Sir James Pitman as a reading teaching medium from which immediate and efficient transition may be made to the alphabet of regular English. Questions and answers covered in this booklet provide information concerning its history, effectiveness, methods of use, teaching areas, and relationship…

This pamphlet deals with the principle of systematizing traditional orthography (TO) to produce initial teaching media and the application of that principle in Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.). Part 1 discusses: three causes of failure in literacy, the need for systematizing TO for the better learning of literacy, TO research with infants,…