To whet the curiosity and interest of teachers who may be frustrated with the reading vocabulary achievement of pupils, an informal study compared Piaget's cognitive development theory, recent brain research, and the reading process, and examined how the theory and research apply to reading instruction. The Gestalt Process Approach to teaching…

To help elementary school teachers decide whether writing is beneficial to their students' comprehension, and if it is, which activities are the most effective, a study examined research which dealt with whether the writing performed by elementary school students helps them to comprehend better their own and others' written works. Included are 33…

The debate between the whole language approach and the word-centered skills approach to beginning reading instruction is likely to continue into the next decade, so it seems crucial that educators at all levels understand thoroughly the views held by the participants. Advocates of the whole language approach believe effective readers see meaning…

Focusing on phonograms and generalizations about phonics, this paper presents a comprehensive letter-sound study. The first chapter discusses the phonogram component of phonics, the Arthur Gates study of phonograms in l928, the phonics generalizations studies of the l960s, and the lack of a comprehensive study of the letter-sound relationship. The…

A sample of 270 first, second, and third graders participated in this study of the pronounceability of the 119 phonograms identified in the Glass Analysis for Perceptual Conditioning Program for poor decoders. Each subject was asked to pronounce each of the phonograms. Subjects were cross-classified by grade level, sex, and reading ability as…

Recent research projects demonstrate that pictures in reading textbooks have a negative effect on the word-decoding ability of young readers. This particular study questioned whether the relative difficulty of the words being read determines the effect that pictures have on good, normal, and poor readers. After pretesting to determine reading…

The eight popular commercial reading programs examined in this study were selected on the basis of their use with compensatory education students and the fact that they represent different instructional approaches. The study examined how readers are taught to break the letter/sound code, what correspondences are taught, and how correspondences are…

Comments on the fact that reading skills are neglected in foreign language instruction and outlines the goals of reading instruction, based on an analysis of the reading process. Considering reading as problem-solving behavior, learning strategies are suggested. The active role of the teacher and the need for appropriate materials are stressed.…

Three experiments were conducted to investigate whether the results of previous research on rhymes detection were due to a rhyme production frequency bias (in favor of similar rhymes) in the materials used. The previous results had indicated that orthographically similar rhymes were detected more rapidly than dissimilar rhymes. In the three…

Noting that while the language experience approach to reading instruction assumes that the learner is intuitively familiar with the language and that this familiarity facilitates recognition of the language on the printed page, this paper argues that students learning to read in a second language do not have the same degree of intuitive…

This study investigated the success rate and the type of teachers' responses to miscues during a six-month tutoring program. Teachers gave prompts, or cues, to help each child recognize unknown words, concentrating on behaviors hypothesized to encourage pupil success and independence in decoding. Previous research had shown that inservice teachers…

To ascertain what the most common or basic syllables were, 5,000 of the most frequent words (derived from the American Heritage List) were syllabicated graphemically. In the resulting computer assembled inventory, 3,402 separate or distinct syllables had frequencies of occurrence ranging from 1 to 230. Monosyllabic and two-syllable words each…

A view of skilled reading is suggested that emphasizes an intimate connection between coding and comprehension. It is suggested that skilled comprehension depends on a highly refined facility for generating and manipulating language codes, especially at the phonetic/articulatory level. The argument is developed that decoding expertise should be a…

This study discusses six specific strategies that teachers can use to improve elementary students' reading comprehension. First, teach the students to use context clues as one vital part of the decoding process, in order to improve comprehension. Second, increase students' depth of comprehension by triggering discussion of materials they have read…

Successful reading is a complex, interactive process in which the reader's experience and information are as important to comprehension as the content of the printed page. This article describes several reading processes, discusses the problems involved for the beginning reader, and indicates some implications for reading instruction. Five…