The ability of 20-24 month-old toddlers to recognize graphemes and phonemes was investigated by reading a "Phonic Faces" (PF) alphabet picture book. Phonic Faces iconically picture a letter in the mouth of a character producing the sound (the curve of the P looks like the top lip popping the /p/ sound). The book was composed of nine…

English-speaking children spell letters correctly more often when the letters' names are heard in the word (e.g., B in "beach" vs. "bone"). Hebrew letter names have been claimed to be less useful in this regard. In Study 1, kindergartners were asked to report and spell initial and final letters in Hebrew words that included full (CVC), partial…

Without a concise and accurate system for notating diction, singers often resort to phonetic spellings that may not convey the correct pronunciation. Modeling and echoing correct pronunciation during rehearsal is time-consuming, and often the reminders singers write into their scores on such occasions prove to be unclear during the next rehearsal.…

A series of lessons designed to explain what the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.) is and to prepare prospective teachers of i.t.a. materials and methods as thoroughly as possible is presented. The eight lessons of the course, for each of which a separate booklet is provided, include the following: (1) The difficulties of traditional orthography…

This study investigated (1) whether symbol-symbol correspondences are learned better when imbedded in whole words or when presented individually and (2) the effect of these two instructional methods on transfer from an experimental transitional writing system (TWS) to traditional orthography (TO). Thirty-five undergraduates were randomly assigned…

This manual, designed to follow "Spanish Alphabet Book 1," presents a Spanish phonetic reading program for children beginning to learn how to read. It contains an alphabet chart with pictures which symbolize words using the sounds of the respective letters. Other pages are devoted completely to the sounds of the vowels, reinforced with common…

Reexamines what learning the alphabet means from the child's perspective. Draws from several case studies and other naturalistic examinations of young children as they learn to read and write to describe what young children learn about the alphabet. (MG)

The Choctaw orthography described here is designed to (1) be as accurate a representation of the spoken language as possible, (2) provide a more or less uniform spelling for each morpheme without sacrificing the first condition, and (3) be acceptable to the speaker of Choctaw and easy for him to learn. It is essentially phonemic, with deviations…

In this paper three experimental techniques are described for studying ambiguous characters and for investigating the relationship between physical attributes and functional attributes. (Author)

Translation of proper place and personal names is very difficult, especially when they occur within texts. It is often necessary to consider native pronunciation and the rules of transcription and transliteration in both languages. Examples from the literature illustrate the need for more attention to this problem. (MSE)

The history of the alphabet is briefly reviewed to provide background on the controversy about beginning handwriting instruction and the relative difficulty of major instructional methods (Roman capitals, ball-stick manuscript, and chancery cursive). The author suggests that a simplified version of chancery cursive can be used for beginners. (CL)

A how-to-do-it article describing how professional quality lettering can be made using simple photography techniques. (HB)

A chronological bibliography of 14 citations dealing with the problem of script. (MM)

Lecture presented in September 1971 at the International Conference on Pharmaceutical Sciences in Washington, D.C. (VM)

Reviews theree stages through which communication passes and the media which transmit words in each stage while affecting the psychological structures in the culture. Emphasizes that each successive stage does not wip out preceding ones, but rather causes them to operate in new ways. (MB)