In this article, the author discusses the combined artistry of third, fourth, and fifth graders as they illuminate a formerly dark corner of their school's entry plaza with a sparkling mosaic mural. The students worked in small groups to form the letters of the alphabet on 12" x 15" (30.5 x 38 cm) panels of cement board decorated with flat-backed…

The Serbian writing system was used to investigate whether a serial procedure is implicated in print-to-sound translation and whether components of the reading aloud system can be strategically controlled. In mixed- and pure-alphabet lists, participants read aloud phonologically bivalent words comprising bivalent letters in initial or final…

This study investigated the effects of orthographic depth on reading acquisition in alphabetic, syllabic, and logographic scripts. Children between 6 and 15 years old read aloud in transparent syllabic Japanese hiragana, alphabets of increasing orthographic depth (Albanian, Greek, English), and orthographically opaque Japanese kanji ideograms,…

Phonological and metaphonological skills are explored in 97 Brazilian illiterate and semiliterate adults. A simple letter- and word-reading task was used to define the degree of illiteracy. Phonemic awareness was strongly dependent on the level of letter and word reading ability. Phonological memory was very low in illiterates and unrelated to…

Sign language in the Arab World has been recently recognized and documented. Many efforts have been made to establish the sign language used in individual countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and the Gulf States, by trying to standardize the language and spread it among members of the Deaf community and those concerned. Such efforts produced…

This book remains a comprehensive, myth-debunking examination of how L1 features (orthographic system, phonology, morphology) can influence English L2 reading at the "bottom" of the reading process. It provides a thorough but very accessible linguistic/psycholinguistic examination of the lowest levels of the reading process. It is both theoretical…

The Report of the National Reading Panel (2000) explains that phonemic awareness instruction and phonics instruction are highly beneficial for students learning to read. In the updated second edition, Edmund V. Starrett provides educators with guidance on teaching phonics as part of a well-planned reading program. This reference book presents the…

Preschoolers' (N = 156) classroom language and literacy experiences, defined across multiple dimensions, and their vocabulary and emergent literacy development were investigated. Videotaped classroom observations revealed substantial variability in amount and types of language and emergent literacy activities, across classrooms and for individual…

Fifty-five children and their mothers were studied longitudinally from 18 to 42 months to determine the effects of home literacy practices, children's interest in reading, and mothers' metalingual utterances during reading on children's expressive and receptive language development, letter knowledge, and knowledge of print concepts. At 27 months,…

The objective of this study was to identify causal relationships between the development of phonological abilities and progress in writing in preschool children. The participants were 44 children, with an average age of 5 years and 6 months, and whose writing was syllabic with phonetization. The children were divided into three groups. They were…

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);…

Phonics teaches learners how to match the letters of the alphabet to the speech sounds they already know. At age five, children who are ready to learn to read have a vocabulary of some 5,000 words and understand far more than that when they hear them. The problem is that there are 44 sounds in English and only 26 letters in the alphabet. Phonics…

A study investigated whether predictions of reading achievement could be improved by studying the relative contributions of alphabetic knowledge and invented spelling over time. Subjects, 38 upper middle-class children enrolled at an elementary school in the Midwest, were administered an alphabetic knowledge task (measuring letter names and letter…

To help reduce the guess work that underpins many phonics programs, a study comprehensively examined the phonic elements of 17,211 words drawn from the 17,310 word list originally compiled by Thorndike and Lorge and later updated by members of the Stanford Spelling Project. Each word in the list was assigned its corresponding respelling that was…

Confirms that i.t.a. can be an effective tool with which to teach beginning reading of English to Mexican-American children. (RB)