In elementary school, an important goal of reading instruction is to enable children to read most words automatically by sight so that they can focus on learning from and enjoying what they are reading. But becoming a strong reader takes several years. Parents and caregivers need to know if a child is making good progress in learning to read.…

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…

The following semi-autobiographical essay tells a cautionary tale about the entrenched Anglocentrism, Eurocentrism, and Alphabetism in reading and reading disabilities (dyslexia) research. Having been born, raised, and educated in an entirely monolingual English-speaking environment, I later migrated to a country where non-European languages…

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working within the pediatric field will find themselves working with school-age children and consequently collaborating with teaching staff. Knowledge of the links between language, speech, and literacy can support and inform successful collaboration between the SLP and the teacher and their shared goal…

Learning a foreign language is a critical skill in the current context of globalization and multicultural communication. Present secondary and post-secondary foreign language classes admit increasing numbers of students with learning disabilities (LD). Given the particular challenges faced by these students in the area of language processing,…

In a recent study we (Greaney & Arrow, 2009) undertook an analysis of the types of spelling errors that students had made during a National Education Monitoring Project writing task (Crooks, Flockton & White, 2007). We discussed several issues related to spelling, including the value of analysing students' error-response patterns as a way…

Problems with handwriting can negatively impact the writing of students with learning disabilities. In this article, an example is provided of a fourth-grade special education teacher's efforts to assist a new student by using a problem-solving approach to help determine an efficient course of action for special education teachers who are trying…

Difficulty with spelling is a perennial challenge for students with learning disabilities. Several decades of research, however, have identified both fundamental linguistic concepts and instructional approaches that, when understood by a teacher, can be applied to teach students with learning disabilities to spell. In this article, a brief history…

This book provides a unique and accessible account of current research on reading and dyslexia in different orthographies. While most research has been conducted in English, this text presents cross-language comparisons to provide insights into universal aspects of reading development and developmental dyslexia in alphabetic and non-alphabetic…

The present paper reports some observations on pre-school children's spontaneous as well as adult-supported spelling behaviour and makes comparisons between aspects of these early literacy activities and some features of spellings from mostly twelfth- to fourteenth-century Norwegian runic inscriptions. The runic inscriptions originate from a…

A number of studies on literacy development, as well as two key tenets of social constructivist theory, support the use of children's own names for engaging children in meaningful and authentic reading and writing activities that foster important understandings about print. Spelling and writing their names help children learn the letters of the…

Precommunicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional, and correct spelling are the developmental stages in the acquisition of spelling competency. Samples of children's early spelling patterns are presented. A system for classifying early spelling strategy is outlined. (DF)

Facts on the grammar of Kazakh, spoken in Kazakhstan, are presented. They are intended as a guide, not an instructional text. Information is presented in the form of notes and word lists on the following topics: orthography (the Cyrillic alphabet, spelling reform, stylistic and dialectal alternations, common misspellings, and homographs);…

It is argued that a more comprehensive, systematic understanding of the nature of the alphabet, its three identities (letters/graphemes, letters/nomenemes, sounds/phonemes), and their specific functions in the teaching of various language skills and subskills should be an integral part of the language arts curriculum and instructional plan,…

In this issue of "NetNews," the focus is on dysgraphia, a form of writing disability. Both dyslexia and dysgraphia fall under the category of specific learning disability. They may be related because significant language processing problems can impact both reading and spelling--although there is less incidence of dysgraphia. Dysgraphia…