A study of seventh-, ninth-, and eleventh-grade students' ability to apply letter-sound correspondence to synthetic words indicates that, although by seventh grade, students have largely mastered letter-sound correspondences, low ability students do not approach the same mastery as average and high ability students until the eleventh grade. (JMF)

Argues that Piagetian theory does not support the use of a code-breaking approach to teaching children to read prior to the advent of concrete operations. Suggests that primary instructional emphasis with these children should be placed upon the meaning-getting aspects of reading. (FL)

Reports on an investigation of the role of letter and order information in lexical access, using an interference paradigm in a lexical decision task. (Author/AM)

The study examines one aspect of the relationship between decoding and comprehension--that between word difficulty, decoding ability, and access of single-word meanings. Results indicate that decoding ease and extraction of word meanings are related and suggest that decoding ability must be considered a factor in reading comprehension. (RC)

The central question in these experiments concerns the effect of unattended printed words upon a picture-naming task to determine whether print can be read even when it is not being attended to. (Author/RK)

Reports on a study testing the validity of the Names Test, an individually administered phonics assessment. Provides support for the Names Test's validity by showing it to be significantly correlated with established tests of word recognition and decoding ability. (SR)

Presents the structured comprehension method, a strategy that facilitates literal, inferential, and critical reading comprehension for passive readers who can decode but not comprehend. Uses the method to illustrate how other areas of students' instruction (e.g., vocabulary enhancement through morphemic analysis, use of a phonogram approach to…

Examines the reading skills of children who have deficient decoding skills in the years following the first grade and traces their progress across 20 sessions of a decoding skills intervention called Word Building. Presents results in terms of the consequences of not fully engaging in alphabetic decoding during early reading experience, and the…

A study involving 49 students with deafness (MA=13) whose reading age (RA) was around age 7 found that although phonological awareness and decoding performance was poor compared with RA-matched controls, it nevertheless correlated with their RA. Rapid automatized naming of visual material was much faster in subjects than controls. (Contains…

A step-by-step plan is presented for teaching a mnemonic strategy that students with and without learning disabilities can use to improve word recognition skills. The SCUBA-D strategy involves (1) Sounding it out, (2) Checking sentence clues; (3) Using main idea and picture clues, (4) Breaking words into parts, (5) Asking for help, and (6) Diving…

Considers how good phonics instruction should encourage children to recognize rimes and to identify an unfamiliar word by blending its onset with the rime that follows. Discusses seven conclusions/implications for phonics software derived from research into phonics instruction. (SG)

Explores how the native speakers of English and nonnative speakers of English in adult basic education classes present different reading behaviors. Suggests that adult basic education teachers should not only be aware of how much decoding students know but also to what extent they actually use that knowledge when reading. (SG)

Examines the nature of the relations between home literacy environment (HLE) and oral language, letter knowledge, phonological sensitivity, and word decoding during a one-year interval in preschool children. Finds that each of the HLE conceptualizations was consistently related to the outcomes studies, but the magnitude of the relations varied…

Investigates proficient and less-proficient readers comprehension monitoring. Findings show that proficient readers displayed more competency in monitoring their ongoing thinking processes, because they tended to monitor their reading processes at all times in order to compensate for words that had not been previously decoded. (Author/VWL)

The reading achievement of students with learning disabilities (N=24) who received DISTAR instruction was compared to that of similar students using basal reader materials. The overall reading scores were not significantly different following one and two years of instruction, although DISTAR students had somewhat better word attack skills. (DB)