Eight approaches to the teaching of elementary reading are described briefly. The Executive Committee of the Department of Elementary-Kindergarten-Nursery Education of the National Education Association selected the approaches to be discussed. They include (1) Language Experience Approach by R. V. Allen, (2) Phonic Approach by Charles E. Wingo,…

In order to make letter shape recognition an integral part of perception training, the use of the line in its two basic shapes is proposed. Letter shapes may seem exceedingly complex linear shapes to young minds. Thus instead of instruction in configuration, instruction involving transformational activities to manipulate and create the…

Twenty-three units comprise this basic course. Each unit consists of a dialog; questions on the dialog; notes on the syntax, morphology, and phonology of Kabyle; pattern drills; and a narrative based on the dialog. Early units (I -VI) also contain notes on the pattern drills. Phonemic transcription is used throughout. (DO)

Errorless discrimination training is a technique in which the discriminative stimulus is supplemented with a salient cue which is gradually removed or faded during the course of training. In this study errorless discrimination training was used to teach preschool children the distinctive features of letters of the alphabet that are difficult to…

Strategies children use when they recognize words were explored. To measure the effectiveness of two different methods of training children to attend to the critical features of letters, 40 first-grade urban children were presented two pairs of letters (similar and dissimilar) simultaneously or successively. Unexpectedly, it was found that with…

The effects on written composition of two reading approaches--traditional orthography (TO) and the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.)--are compared. Two hundred and ninety-three first graders and 391 second graders, half of whom had learned reading with TO and half with i.t.a., were each asked to write two compositions. These essays were rated on…

The author explains that there does not exist one single method of teaching reading since there are different teaching styles and preferences of individual teachers; varied backgrounds, experiences, and abilities among children; and different school administration considerations. Five approaches for teaching reading are described. (1) The…

This article consists of a description of activities and topics to be used in foreign language teaching, including vocabulary development and spelling, geography, important dates and cultural events, and the use of actual publications, such as magazines and newspapers, as reading materials. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Describes a five-week project in which elementary students chose a favorite letter as the main character of a 25- to 30-page book for practice in language skills. The book each child made was composed of more than 20 learning activities that stimulated students to review and practice skills, parts of speech, synonyms, antonyms and alliteration as…

Kindergarten, second, and fourth grade children were asked to recall letter sequences on a task which required the use of a verbal strategy, a positional strategy, or either of the two strategies. (BD)

The hypothesis that letters can be matched on the basis of tactual physical features was tested in three experiments with blind Braille-reading children. (Editor)

This article presents the results of a questionnaire sent to Spanish teachers regarding possible orthographic reforms in Spanish. Changes considered included elimination of certain letters and representation of each phoneme by only one letter. Responses to each question are classified and explained. (Text is in Spanish.) (CHK)

Suggests a methodology, based on the highly successful model of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) literacy training, for teaching non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic. A holistic communication approach, presenting the alphabet as a key to learning the target language, helps learners to assimilate vocabulary more rapidly. (CB)

Coding of printed letters in a task of consonant recall was examined in relation to the level of success of prelingually and profoundly deaf young children. Results indicated that the success of good readers appears to be related to their ability to establish and make use of linguistically recoded representations of the language. (Author/CI)

Focuses on (1) the acquisition and use of word representations and (2) the acquisition of the alphabetic code. Urges that instruction provide conditions to promote the learning of three types of representation--word forms, letter patterns, and mapping. (RDN)