The central purpose of this three-paper dissertation was to explore the ability of school-age children with and without language-learning disabilities (LLD) to apply sound/word level structure knowledge when performing speaking, spelling, and reading tasks. Data came from a larger investigation that used stratified sampling to create two ability…

This article describes a 2-year exploratory research study of alphabet knowledge instruction in 13 kindergarten classrooms in four at-risk urban schools. Based on insights for teaching from five evidence-based advantages that influence acquisition of letter names and sounds, instruction of letter names and sounds was enhanced to increase students'…

This study examined inexperienced listeners' perceptions of children's naturally produced /r/ sounds with reference to levels of accuracy determined by consensus between two expert clinicians. Participants rated /r/ sounds as fully correct, distorted or incorrect/non-rhotic. Second and third formant heights were measured to explore the…

Studies investigating voicing onset time (VOT) production by speakers with aphasia have shown that nonfluent aphasics show a deficit in the articulatory programming of speech sounds based on the range of VOT values produced by aphasic individuals. If the VOT value lies between the normal range of VOT for the voiced and voiceless categories, then…

More than one third of American children cannot read at a basic level by fourth grade (Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007) and those numbers are even higher for African American, Hispanic and poor White students (Boorman et al., 2007). These are alarming statistics given that the ability to read is the most basic and fundamental skill for academic…

A gap remains in the literature addressing reading intervention programs that have been successful for students identified as at risk of reading failure in grades kindergarten through second. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how the Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention Program supported the improvement of literacy…

In this age of accountability and assessment, classroom teachers need to be encouraged to become action researchers. Action research helps them look at a challenge in the classroom in depth and adjust the curriculum, their teaching methods, or both when they find that current practices are not meeting the needs of some or all students. If…

Reading is a complex process involving numerous skills and abilities contributing to acquiring meaning from text. Individuals without the requisite reading skills will have difficulty not only in school but throughout their lifetimes. The purpose of the study was to compare the reading ability of incoming college freshmen with that of adults with…

The primary purpose of our research was to determine if a comprehensive, phonics-based, direct instruction reading program would be effective in teaching early reading and language skills to students with moderate intellectual disabilities (ID). Participants were 28 elementary students from 10 public schools in an urban school district and one…

The need to investigate strategies promoting the generalization of reading skills is well documented. The current study builds upon previous literature by examining the impact of a common stimulus procedure on accuracy of reading generalization words in isolation. The common stimulus procedure used in this study intended to enhance the salience of…

This study examined the influences of problem behaviors on kindergarten reading outcomes and investigated the extent to which explicit, code-based reading instruction moderated those relations among 206 children identified as being at risk of reading difficulty. Children from the classrooms of 57 kindergarten teachers in 12 schools were randomly…

Knowledge of letter-sound correspondences underpins successful reading acquisition, and yet little is known about how young children acquire this knowledge and what prior information they bring to the learning process. In this study, we used an experimental training design to examine whether either prior letter awareness or prior phonemic…

In the action research project report, the teacher researchers found that many kindergarten and first-grade students did not have the reading readiness skills to be reading at their benchmark target. The purpose of the project was to improve the students overall reading ability. The dates of the project began on September 8 through December 20,…

This study aimed to quantify articulation rate among Hebrew speaking children and adolescents across a wide age range, and to assess whether age-related differences vary according to metric. One hundred and forty children, in seven age groups, participated in this cross-sectional study. All children were recorded during conversation and a picture…

Effects of phonemic awareness and naming speed on the speed and accuracy of Dutch children's word recognition were investigated in a longitudinal study. Both the speed and accuracy of word recognition at the end of Grade 2 were predicted by naming speed from both kindergarten and Grade 1, after control for autoregressive relations, kindergarten…