This book provides a unique and accessible account of current research on reading and dyslexia in different orthographies. While most research has been conducted in English, this text presents cross-language comparisons to provide insights into universal aspects of reading development and developmental dyslexia in alphabetic and non-alphabetic…

Multiple studies have shown that kindergarten measures of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are good predictors of reading achievement in the primary grades. However, less attention has been given to the early predictors of later reading achievement. This study used a modified best-subsets variable-selection technique to examine…

This study examined the influences of problem behaviors on kindergarten reading outcomes and investigated the extent to which explicit, code-based reading instruction moderated those relations among 206 children identified as being at risk of reading difficulty. Children from the classrooms of 57 kindergarten teachers in 12 schools were randomly…

The study investigated reading in four African languages that use either syllabic Ge'ez (Tigrinya and Tigre languages) or alphabetic Latin scripts (Kunama and Saho). A sample of 385 Grade 1 children were given letter knowledge, word reading, and spelling tasks to investigate differences at the script and language levels. Results showed that the…

Thai has its own distinctive alphabetic script with syllabic characteristics as it has implicit vowels for some consonants. Consonants are written in a linear order, but vowels can be written non-linearly above, below or to either side of the consonant. Of particular interest to the current study are that vowels can precede the consonant in…

Children's literacy skills are an important predictor of success in the early elementary grades. Education programs for at-risk preschool students target children's acquisition of specific literacy skills, including knowledge of letters of the alphabet, in preparing children for early school success. Writing has been proposed as a complementary…

The effect of orthographic transparency on letter position encoding was investigated using a visual search task given to skilled readers of English (a deep orthography) or Greek (a transparent orthography). Two groups of younger participants, matched for age and education, were monoscriptal in English, or biscriptal in Greek and English. Two…

Transfer of reading strategies from the first language (L1) to the second language (L2) has long puzzled educators, but what happens if the L1 is an alphabet language and the second is not, or if there is a mismatch in the languages' grapheme-phoneme connection? Although some students readily adjust to reading and writing in their second language,…

The Curriculum Specifications for English, set out in the Ministry of Education Malaysia syllabus for Year 1, calls for instruction in phonemic awareness (PA) as part of the acquisition of word recognition skills. Students are expected to be able to learn individual letters of the alphabet and their sounds; read aloud consonants in initial…

The need for adequate functional English literacy and numeracy instruction for the herdsmen in Osun State in Nigeria arose as a result of the persistent clashes between the herdsmen and their neighbours. In all, 48 participants (22 adults and 26 children and youths) took part in the International Reading Association assisted functional literacy…

We studied 52 parent-child dyads reading an alphabet book to examine the nature of children's miscues and parents' feedback, and whether miscues and feedback were related to each other and to preliteracy skills. Letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and expressive vocabulary were assessed in 5-year-old nonreaders who were also audiotaped…

This Italian alphabet book designed for kindergarten and first grade students presents each letter in upper and lower case form accompanied by an illustration and a single sentence caption. The sentence contains two or more words that begin with the letter in question. The book has a teacher's introduction and is illustrated by pen-and-ink…

Authors and editors faced with the problem of rendering Russian names or words into English are forced to transliterate the Cyrillic alphabet according to the needs of their readers. This manual presents four systems, ranging from one for works intended for a broad public to one which may be consistently applied in publications requiring…

Discusses the Revised International Phonetic Alphabet and urges linguists to abandon idiosyncratic systems of phonetic representation and to adopt the new international standard. (JL)

Background: While various treatment approaches have been shown to be effective in remediating word-finding difficulties in aphasic individuals, interest has recently been directed at the role of executive functions in affecting treatment outcomes. Aims: To examine the existence of a possible relationship between treatment generalization and…