Two methods of decoding instruction were compared. Participants were kindergartners who knew letter sounds but could not decode nonwords, M = 5.6 years. The segmented phonation treatment taught students to convert graphemes to phonemes by breaking the speech stream ("sss -- aaa -- nnn") before blending. The connected phonation treatment…

A hallmark of skilled reading is recognizing written words automatically from memory by sight. How beginning readers attain this skill is explained. They must acquire foundational knowledge, including phonemic segmentation, grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding, and spelling skills. When these skills are applied, spellings of words become bonded to…

This study, which was drawn from a larger published work, examined language proficiency and literacy skills predictive of learning content and function words via the commonly used practice of flashcard word reading, which tests word knowledge in isolation. The current study also investigated differences in word learning performance between…

Orthographic mapping (OM) involves the formation of letter-sound connections to bond the spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory. It explains how children learn to read words by sight, to spell words from memory, and to acquire vocabulary words from print. This development is portrayed by Ehri (2005a) as a sequence of…

English-speaking preschoolers who knew letters but were nonreaders (M = 4 years 9 months; n = 60) were taught to segment consonant-vowel (CV), VC, and CVC words into phonemes either with letters and pictures of articulatory gestures (the LPA condition) or with letters only (the LO condition). A control group received no treatment. Both trained…

Children's ability to read and spell their own and classmates' personal names in and out of context in Hebrew was studied. Preliterate children aged 4 to 6 years (N = 60) showed high knowledge of their own names but varied greatly in knowledge of others' names and emergent literacy skills. Reading and spelling of names was primarily related to…

Examines whether kindergartners who were taught to segment words into phonemes either by monitoring articulatory gestures or by manipulating blocks would benefit in their ability to read and spell. Suggests that awareness of articulatory gestures facilitates the activation of graphophonemic connections that helps children identify written words…

Examines the scientific evidence supporting claims about phonemic awareness (PA) instruction. Presents a quantitative meta-analysis evaluating the effects of PA instruction on learning to read and spell. Concludes that PA instruction was found to make a statistically significant contribution to reading acquisition. (SG)

Reports three experiments conducted to examine the ability of beginning readers (in kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2) to categorize short front vowel sounds in familiar spoken words and to determine whether learning spellings of these vowel sounds improved the accuracy of their classifications. Discusses implications for learning to read and…