Presents results of a study of the phonological, morphological, and syntactical oral language patterns of disadvantaged children of New Orleans. Many of the findings are relevant to beginning reading instruction. (TO)

Although spelling instruction has traditionally treated almost every spelling word as requiring a separate learning act, recent research indicates that over 90% of American-English orthography actually is determined by a set of rules for unit phoneme-grapheme relationships, based with decreasing productivity upon three levels of…