Argues for the reform of the English alphabet and advocates the use of the phonetic system, UNIFON. (KS)

This paper challenges from a practical point of view the idea that the phonemic principle is the most adequate or the optimal theoretical basis for devising a romanized alphabet for a language. In the past, romanization of languages, written or unwritten, have largely been based on the phonemic principle and have unnecessarily burdened the learner…

This study examined the psycholinguistic implications of using either of two different types of orthography--syllabic and roman--in Native language programs for Cree children with regard to readability, learnability, and the transfer of reading skills to and from reading in an official language (English or French). This study can also be applied…

Discusses the advantages of the English-Unifon coding system and its five books for beginning reading instruction. (MM)

Reports results of four experiments testing whether syllable structure affects children's performance in phonemic analysis tasks and in other reading related tasks. The experiments were motivated by theories that syllables consist of an onset (initial consonant or consonant cluster) and a rime (vowel and any following consonants). (AS/Author)

Reponses of poor, average, and good spellers at different age levels to a phonemic segmentation test containing nondigraph pseudowords and to an experimental spelling test containing exception, ambiguous, regular, and pseudowords suggested that the average and good spellers made fewer and more phonetically accurate errors than the poor spellers.…

A great deal of time could be saved in all grades and for all content areas if a truly phonic alphabet were developed. This alphabet would have only one symbol for each sound and only one sound for each symbol so that beginning readers could learn to pronounce any word they could see and spell any word they could pronounce correctly. Such an…

Explored the notion that children's difficulty in reading is a sign of a general inability to selectively attend to parts of perceptual wholes. Children and adults classified triads of spoken syllables and visual objects. Classification of speech was related to reading and spelling ability, but not to classification of visual stimuli. (BC)