Breaking down complex words into smaller meaningful units (e.g., "unhappy = un- + happy"), known as morphemes, is vital for skilled reading as it allows readers to rapidly compute word meanings. There is agreement that children rely on reading experience to acquire morphological knowledge in English; however, the nature of this…

Background: Research acknowledges the importance of phonological processing and orthographic processing for reading and spelling in both consistently and inconsistently written languages. While the focus has tended to be on the role of phonological processing in languages with consistent orthographies, the role of orthographic processing,…

Application of psycholinguistic insights initiated a long career researching how children learn to read words. A theory was proposed claiming that spellings of individual words are stored in memory when their graphemes become bonded to phonemes in their pronunciations along with meanings, and this enables readers to read stored words automatically…

Morpheme-based literacy training programs are widely used in German primary schools. This study investigated whether (1) morphological training is effective early in development (Grade 2) and (2) literacy gains can be attributed to advanced morphological processing. Fifty-two German-speaking second-graders participated in an eight-week…

The ability to encode (spell) is an integral writing skill needed to communicate effectively. The ability to spell, also, enhances decoding as spelling and decoding are reciprocal skills that rely on knowledge of the same subskills. Spelling can also be particularly difficult for students with literacy and phonological-processing difficulties such…

The ability to spell correctly is a fundamental skill for participating in society and engaging in professional work. In the German language, the capitalization of nouns and proper names presents major difficulties for both native and nonnative learners, since the definition of what is a noun varies according to one's linguistic perspective. In…

Machine translation (MT) provides a seemingly accelerated alternative way to communicate in the target language (L2). A convenient service to the public, MT renders a potential disservice to language learners. In this pedagogically focused article, we show concrete and detailed examples of how language instructors can turn MT and other electronic…

With the concise and readable "Brain Words," you will learn how children's brains develop as they become readers and discover ways you can take concrete steps to promote this critical developmental passage. Introducing their original, research-based framework of "brain words"--dictionaries in the brain where students store and…

Mobile technologies are increasingly finding their way into classroom practice. While these technologies can create opportunities that may facilitate learning, including the learning of a second or foreign language (L2), the full potential of these new media often remains underexploited. A case in point concerns tablet applications for language…

In this study, we compared two instruction methods on spelling performance: a rewriting instruction in which children repeatedly rewrote words and an ambiguous property instruction in which children deliberately practiced on a difficult word aspect. Moreover, we examined whether the testing effect applies to spelling performance. One hundred…

Dyslexia is a disorder of the language-processing systems in the brain. It is a specific learning disability in reading that often affects spelling as well. This article describes: (1) Common characteristics experienced by people with dyslexia or reading disabilities; (2) Common misconceptions about dyslexia; (3) What brain research tell us about…

Discusses how and when the written word should be introduced in second language teaching and how interference between spelling and pronunciation can be avoided. Describes a technique for presenting the printed text simultaneously with the oral utterance. Notes that students are aware that the text is a source of interference. (SED)

The study reported here set out to investigate the effectiveness of the Phono-Graphix[TM] reading program with ten learners, aged 9-11 years, assessed as having specific learning difficulties/dyslexia. Testing was carried out via initial and final analysis of the students' phonological processing skills and reading spelling ability over an 8-month…

Written by teachers, linguists, psychologists, and reading specialists, this book elucidates the relationship between reading and language, and explains why reading should be regarded as a language-based process. The book is divided into eight sections, each of which includes an introduction and sources for further reading. The essays for each…

Reflecting the increasing complexity and sophistication in reading research, the papers in this collection represent a wide spectrum of approaches, philosophies, viewpoints, and techniques of scholarly endeavor in their treatment of reading research and instruction. Following an address, by the president of the organization, on reading…