The purpose of this dissertation is twofold-to investigate, in brief, the available guides to Russian lyric diction and to present my own comprehensive guide, which gives singers the tools to prepare the pronunciation of Russian vocal pieces independently. The survey examines four guides to Russian lyric diction found in popular anthologies or…

At-risk prekindergarten students (i.e., low SES, speech-language impaired) typically lag behind their peers in phonological awareness and other emergent literacy skills such as letter knowledge and vocabulary (Duursma et al., 2008; Lundberg, 2009). However, there is a limited amount of research that has studied the efficacy of phonological…

Learning the sounds of letters is an important part of learning a writing system. Most previous studies of this process have examined English, focusing on variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names as a reason why some letter sounds (such as that of b, where the sound is at the beginning of the letter's name) are easier to learn than…

We study the contribution of implicit relatedness to associative recognition in two experiments. In the first experiment, we showed an implicit improvement in recognition when the stimulus elements of each word pair shared common letters and they were unpaired at test. Moreover, when asked to study the stimuli under divided attention, recollection…

To evaluate the orthographic and phonological processing skills of developmental dyslexics, we (a) examined their abilities to exploit properties of orthographic redundancy and (b) tested whether their phonological deficit extends to spelling-to-sound connections for large-grain size units such as syllables. To assess the processing skills in…

One of the most common types of interaction between parents and their very young children is picture-book reading, with alphabet books being one of the most popular types of book used in these interactions. Here we report two studies examining alphabet letter learning by 30- to 36-month-old children in book-reading interactions with an adult. Each…

The First Grade Pre-Screening is designed to be used at the start of the first grade school year so that teachers can obtain information about their incoming students. This information is intended to give teachers insight about what math and reading skills a student may or may not have at the beginning of the year. The information can aid teachers…

Preparing teacher candidates for their roles in 21st century schools calls for direct experiences with inquisitive, linguistically diverse, and often technologically savvy students across global and economic contexts. This article presents the lessons learned from a practicum experience during a semester abroad in Italy, where faculty, teacher…

Error analyses using a multidimensional measure were conducted on the misspellings of Kindergarten children speaking English as a first (EL1) and English as a second language (ESL) in order to detect any differences in early spelling ability between language groups. Oral vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, phonological processing, letter/word…

This paper analyzes a construct that, while pervasive, is not often questioned or defined in literacy studies: the "West." Through a review of pertinent literature, I explore the ways in which problematical assumptions have undergirded its unqualified use in literacy theory. What is the "West," who is it, in literacy research?…

In recent years, the popularity of alphabet books has spread into older grades, as they address a variety of themes and can be used across disciplines. Their complexity can stimulate thinking and offer a world of possibilities in the area of research. Students of all ages are motivated to create an alphabet book on a self-selected topic. The…

The training of teachers of West Africa is carried out by the Academy of Rouen (France) and organized around an annual training plan approved by the AEFE. Each trainer only supervises twenty teachers for 5 days. Teachers from eight countries (Mauritania, Cape Verde, Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso), come to Dakar for…

In the present study, we examined the influence of kindergarten component skills on writing outcomes, both concurrently and longitudinally to first grade. Using data from 265 students, we investigated a model of writing development including attention regulation along with students' reading, spelling, handwriting fluency, and oral language…

The use of touch screen tablets by young children is increasing in the home and in early childhood settings. The simple tactile interface and finger-based operating features of tablets may facilitate preschoolers' use of tablet application software and support their educational development in domains such as literacy. This article reviews…

This study tested a hypothesized model examining reading proficiency across first grade. It addressed how alphabetics at the beginning of the year were mediated by applied and automated skills at the middle of the year to explain actualized reading at the end of the year. The alphabetic skills of 102 first graders were measured in October and the…