There is a wealth of evidence linking letter knowledge and phoneme awareness, but there is little research examining the nature of this relationship. This article aims to elucidate this relationship by considering the links between letter knowledge and two sub-skills of phoneme awareness: phoneme segmentation and phoneme invariance. Two studies…

A critical step toward becoming a fluent reader is learning to recognize, name and distinguish the letters of the alphabet. This difficult task is often a point of failure. The task, however, can be made easier and less prone to failure. This article, based on research by cognitive scientists, provides guides for how to design a font that will…

Alphabetic knowledge is a strong predictor of academic success. This multiple baseline across subjects study examined the effect of an intensive intervention on the alphabetic knowledge of four pre-school children ages 3;7 to 4;10. Two children with developmental language delay (DLD) and two with typical language development (TL) participated in a…

This book suggests that first graders could express themselves on paper more easily and naturally if they were taught the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.). The chapters take up (1) the neglect of writing skills in a reading-oriented nation, (2) a comparison of the writing performance of students who learned the i.t.a. with that of students who…

This study assessed the effects of multi-sensory training on the understanding of the alphabetic principle in kindergarten children from low socio-economic status families. Two interventions were compared, called HVAM (visual and haptic exploration of letters) and VAM (visual exploration of letters). The interventions were conducted by either…

Part of a series of materials in Hupa and English, this speller was developed by adult Hupas studying their native language for use by elementary students also studying the Hupa language. The speller begins with a Hupa Unifon alphabet chart giving all of the symbols used to reproduce the most simple version of the sounds in the Hupa language.…

Various worksheets to teach basic Hupa language--simple phrases and the vocabulary for animal names and family relationships--are presented in this guide. The introduction notes that materials have been used successfully with students in grades 4 through 8 and that the Hupa language is being taught within the context of traditional Hupa culture.…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO COMPARE SENTENCE-COMBINING TECHNIQUES OF PUPILS USING THE INITIAL TEACHING ALPHABET (I.T.A.) WITH THE TECHNIQUES OF PUPILS USING TRADITIONAL ORTHOGRAPHY (T.O.). THE INVESTIGATION CONSIDERED--(1) WHETHER I.T.A. PROVIDES A LINGUISTIC ADVANTAGE IN THE WAY PUPILS ADD GRAMMATICALLY TO THEIR SENTENCES, (2) WHETHER THERE…

This booklet is an alphabet coloring book. The words and pictures for each letter of the alphabet are all related in some way to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, such as "astronaut" for A, "rocket" for R, and "zero-gravity" for Z. (SR)

A discussion of phonetic transcription looks at the weaknesses of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a cumbersome system to use with typewriter and computer keyboards, and offers an alternative. It is noted that the IPA, a system of symbols devised for handwritten transcription, is rarely used by second language teachers or instructional…

Reports on an experiment designed to study the role of letter stems in the identification of printed words. The stemmed letters b,d,g,h,l,p and t were used. Results showed that the suppression of the letter's body has more detrimental effects on identification than the suppression of the stem. (Author/RM)

Explores how the preschool child identifies distortions which are similar to hand-drawn letters, and accounts for children's performance in recognizing such forms. (RB)

Make kids more expressive by putting movement into all your academics. (Editor)

In lettering education both the application of geometric principles and the study of the past are important. (HOD)

The suggestion of Krueger (1973) and others that wholistic processes underlie certain perceptual judgments is taken up in this paper. (Editor)