This paper challenges from a practical point of view the idea that the phonemic principle is the most adequate or the optimal theoretical basis for devising a romanized alphabet for a language. In the past, romanization of languages, written or unwritten, have largely been based on the phonemic principle and have unnecessarily burdened the learner…

A laboratory and a classroom study were conducted to determine if verbal association learning would be facilitated by visual discrimination training. Kindergarten children who could not recognize the letters used were the subjects for both studies. In the laboratory study, 90 subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental group (E) which got…

The Uniform Slavic Transliteration Alphabet (USTA) was designed primarily with the following objectives: to aid librarians (catalogers and bibliographers), information scientists, transliterators, and editors of bibliographic works of the many Slavic tongues; and to serve as original research for the further development of a machine-readable…

Lecture given before the Annual Conference and Course on Reading (23d, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa., July 10-21, 1967).

Contrasts the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) with traditional orthography in classes for slow readers at the junior high school level. Reports that students using the ITA demonstrated statistically superior reading gains. (HOD)

To examine the factors that affect the learning of letter names, an important foundation for literacy, we asked 318 US and 369 Brazilian preschoolers to identify each uppercase letter. Similarity of letter shape was the major determinant of confusion errors in both countries, and children were especially likely to interchange letters that were…

Four lexical decision experiments are reported that use the masked priming paradigm to study the role of letter position information in orthographic processing. In Experiments 1 and 2, superset primes, formed by repetition of 1 or 2 letters of the target (e.g., jusstice-JUSTICE) or by insertion of 1 or 2 unrelated letters (e.g., juastice-JUSTICE),…

Six experiments apply the masked priming paradigm to investigate how letter position information is computed during printed word perception. Primes formed by a subset of the target's letters facilitated target recognition as long as the relative position of letters was respected across prime and target (e.g., "arict" vs. "acirt" as primes for the…

The setting of this study took place in an inner city. The purpose was to determine the effectiveness of a neurologically integrated approach in teaching 43 at-risk pre-first graders their letter sounds and formations during 45-50 hours of summer school. There were four sequential phases to teaching this alphabetic approach: imagery, auditory,…

This study investigated the role of the amount, content, and implementation of reading instruction provided by 17 kindergarten teachers in eight "Reading First" elementary schools as it related to students' progress (n = 286 students) on early reading assessments of phonological awareness and letter naming-decoding fluency. Children's…

This report presents a history of the Deseret alphabet, beginning with a chapter on English orthography in general and the various attempts that have been made in orthographic reform. The second chapter examines the motives behind the creation of the Deseret alphabet, including the possibilities of a secret Mormon code, a protection from…

Article presents a study to determine whether the apparent benefits of ITA over TO were long-lasting or ephemeral. (Author)

Most early childhood teachers support breaking away from the letter-a-week method of teaching the alphabet but question how to achieve that goal. Concepts related to how young children learn the alphabetic principle are reviewed and successful strategies for teaching the principle are presented. (LB)

The "English-Hawaiian Dictionary," companion volume to the "Hawaiian-English Dictionary," compiled by the same authors in 1957, contains Hawaiian equivalents of approximately 12,500 English words. While serving as a key to the 25,00 entries in the Hawaiian-English volume, this dictionary is designed to be used independently.…