Offers a rebuttal to Tzeng and Singer's criticism of the authors' study of the ease of learning to read the different Japanese scripts. States that the symbols and words were taught in the ordinary situation in which they are learned. (MKM)

This study with 83 normally developing children (ages 4-6) compared three essential skills in early literacy, letter-sound recognition, letter-sound recall, and letter reproduction. Children performed better in letter-sound recognition than in letter-sound recall and letter reproduction. There were no performance differences due to sex or age.…

Investigates whether prereaders who knew all their letters are better at forming logographic access routes than letter-sound access routes into memory from words read by sight. Concludes that prereaders become capable of forming letter-sound access routes when they learn letters well enough to take advantage of the phonetic cues the letters…

Explores problems of three groups of Russian-language students using romanized Cyrillic bibliographic records. Investigates students' ability to keyword search using Russian records romanized according to Library of Congress transliteration tables. Results show that transliteration is one of the factors limiting access by Russian-language students…

Discusses exercises enabling teachers to help 6-year-olds complete the path to total reading and spontaneous writing. The foundation of the exercises is to help children analyze words into sounds; relate the symbols of the alphabet with the sounds using sandpaper letters; and acquire the physical ability to reproduce the letters in writing. (TJQ)

To examine how young children learn to read new words, we asked preschoolers (N = 115, mean age 4 years, 8 months) to learn and remember novel spellings that made sense based on letter names (e.g. TZ for "tease") and spellings that were visually distinctive but phonetically inappropriate. Children who were more knowledgeable about letter names…

High/Scope's approach to education is a blend of Jean Piaget's constructivist theory of child development and the best of traditional teacher experience. The High/Scope approach is about helping students gain knowledge and skills in important content areas, such as language and literacy, initiative and social relations, movement, music, and…

The influx of immigrants and refugees with little or no previous formal education has made the investigation of English as a Second Language (ESL) literacy instructional techniques and methods a priority within the ESL professional field. The 2003-2004 resettlement of over 12,000, mostly preliterate, Somali Bantu refugees to the United States has…

This study investigated the effectiveness of a phonological awareness intervention for 4-year-old children with Down syndrome. Seven children with Down syndrome who attended an early intervention centre participated in the intervention. Their performance on measures of phonological awareness (initial phoneme identity), letter name and sound…

This study tested four complementary hypotheses to characterize intrinsic and extrinsic influences on the order with which preschool children learn the names of individual alphabet letters. The hypotheses included: (a) "own-name advantage," which states that children learn those letters earlier which occur in their own names, (b) the…

In this technical report, the authors describe the development alternate forms of three types of early literacy measures as part of a comprehensive progress monitoring literacy assessment system developed in 2006 for use with students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. They begin with a brief overview of the two conceptual frameworks underlying…

A brief history of modern Rumanian is chronicled, focusing on the influence of a variety of languages on Rumanian's development. Four regional variations are identified: Dacio-Rumanian, Macedo-Rumanian, Megleno-Rumanian, and Istro-Rumanian, all evolving from the Latin spoken in the corresponding areas beginning in imperial Roman times. The…

This paper offers a description of the Ball-Stick-Bird reading system which has been used successfully to teach students with IQs as low as 20 to read with comprehension. A summary of research findings on this approach is presented as well as a discussion of these findings within a neurological/behavioral/evolutionary framework. A new theory of…

This practicum report describes an intervention to improve the literacy skills of seven at-risk kindergarten children. Intervention objectives were that children will: (1) show an increase in letter recognition; (2) demonstrate book awareness skills; and (3) increase their use of prereading and prewriting strategies. The intervention involved the…

A prefatory section discusses the background of Cameroonian pidgin English and presents the pidgin sound and alphabet. Fifteen lessons cover: greetings and leave-taking expressions; present, future, immediate future, unspecified past, simple past, conditional, and compound tenses; subject, possessive, emphatic, object, and relative pronouns;…