Set for variability (SfV) is an oral language task that requires an individual to disambiguate the mismatch between the decoded form of an irregular word and its actual lexical pronunciation. For example, in the task, the word wasp is pronounced to rhyme with clasp (i.e. /waesp/), and the individual must recognize the actual pronunciation of the…

This paper presents an overview of evidence from psychological research, which enables us to understand the processes involved in word reading, how children develop word reading skills and how to teach them to read words successfully. Psychological models of reading in alphabetic orthographies propose two routes to word reading: an indirect route…

The universal role of phonological processing skills for reading acquisition has been established in many different languages including Arabic. However, in Arabic little knowledge exists about the development of wide-range of phonological tasks and about the correlations between them. We longitudinally studied the developmental trends and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between two teaching methods used to teach reading and writing and reading comprehension skills and successes of fifth-grade students. The main difference between the two methods in our research; teaching of the first literacy in the sentence method, determined and sentences with various…

This study examined developmental profiles of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Grades 1 to 9 (ages 7 to 15) in a large Finnish sample (N = 2,518). In addition, early predictors of the profiles were analyzed with respect to kindergarten cognitive skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid automized naming [RAN], number…

This article reports the evaluation of a 10-week phonologically-based literacy programme involving 10 children with Down syndrome (DS). At the outset, each child relied on a whole word method of reading with no apparent use of decoding strategies. The reading and phonological skills of the children were assessed twice prior to undertaking the…

Three main issues relating to the question of silent speech in reading are considered: (1) How do Chinese speakers process Chinese ideographs in short-term memory? (2) How is Chinese students' learning of written English affected by the transition to an alphabetic language? (3) Are the strategies for encoding written words in short-term memory…