Describes and evaluates "Breakthrough to Literacy," a beginning reading scheme based on the language experience approach and launched in Saskatoon, Canada schools in 1974. (RB)

First, second, and third grade students were asked to draw inferences after reading stories written by themselves, by peers, and by adults. The 70 subjects were divided into groups of slow-inaccurate, slow-accurate, and fast-accurate readers. After reading each type of story, they responded to six questions requiring text-based inferences.…

Thirty-three first grade classrooms in Georgia were observed to determine the state of language experience instruction and to examine whether such instruction makes a difference in students' awareness of the reading purpose, their knowledge of instructional terminology, their reading attitudes, and their reading achievement. The Allen Level of…

A study of 46 first-grade children to determine how basal instructed and language experience instructed children would differ in their use of written language cues revealed no significant differences between the two groups in their use of these cues. (TJ)

This study hypothesized that an intervention program that would develop students' language facility in lower elementary school might increase the students' likelihood of retention. An outgrowth of a family literacy project which focused on raising the literacy level of an Appalachian community, the study used the Language Experience Approach which…

A study explored the effects of an expanded Language Experience Approach (LEA) on listening comprehension skills of kindergarteners. During a 2-year period, two exerpiments were conducted with different groups of kindergarteners. The second experiment replicated the first experiment and was conducted to determine if an expanded LEA would produce…

Describes a method of beginning reading instruction that makes use of stories (such as "Goldilocks and the Three Bears") already known by children, and cites research studies that provide support for such a method. (GT)

A year-long, quasi-experimental study investigated the comparative effects of a whole language approach and a code emphasis approach upon the emergent literacy of 53 girls in two kindergarten classes in an all girls' parochial school in the Northeast. Subjects in the experimental class received instruction in Holdaway's Shared Book Experience…

A study of the oral language of Native American children indicates that many are not proficient enough in English to learn to read. Suggestions are given for language development. (MKM)

First-graders taught reading by phonics or language experience approach were compared on their ability to orally decode lists of words identified as either real or nonsense words. The two groups did not differ in overall correct responses, nor were their strategies influenced by the "real/nonsense" directions. (SJL)

Compares the effectiveness of two approaches for teaching basic sight words to educable mentally handicapped students: (1) using the Language Experience Approach (LEA) alone; and (2) using LEA with nursery rhymes. Finds the subjects learned words more easily and rapidly when using nursery rhymes. (RS)

Since, by the time they enter school, children have developed a major portion of their spoken language system by being immersed in language, it seems probable that they could also apply these rules to the orthographic system if they were immersed in reading. Thus, learning to read by reading would allow the general formation of rules that could…

This study examined the effects of two programs which differed in the methods they employed to develop reading readiness. The two methods represented were a language experience approach and a phonics approach. The subjects were children from kindergarten classes in two elementary schools in Flint, Michigan. All subjects were randomly assigned…