Examines the research on the central role of decoding in reading, concluding that the position that whole language proponents take in equating learning to read with learning to talk and their reduction of decoding to an incidental place in the curriculum are wrong. The authors argue for a balanced approach to reading instruction. (GR)

Studied emergent literacy in Hebrew by analyzing nursery and kindergarten children's attempts to write and read pairs of nouns. Found that, with age, children's sensitivity to phonology increased and sensitivity to semantics decreased and that these sensitivities played a greater role in literacy acquisition than did sensitivity to morphology. (MM)

This paper discusses five language roots of reading: phonology, syntax, semantics, short-term and long-term memory, and auditory segmenting. Teachers are urged to focus early school experiences toward development of these five skills to reduce the incidence of reading difficulties. Specific teaching suggestions are offered. (Author/DB)

A study conducted with 105 university students investigated the effectiveness of using previous research findings as a means of teaching students how to interpret verbal and nonverbal behavior (decoding). Practice may be the critical feature for training in decoding. Research findings were successfully converted into educational techniques. (SLD)

Three gifted males (ages 10-13) with deficits in successive coding participated in a process-based remedial program which combined global training on tasks requiring successive processing and tasks applying successive processing to decoding in reading, and which utilized verbal mediation. Differences in student improvement were related to entry…

Assesses speed, accuracy, and types of errors in decoding lists of words and pseudo words and performance in two phonemic awareness tasks for first- and second-grade German and American children. Suggests that successful reading in English depends upon more complex grapheme to phoneme correspondence rules than does reading in German. (SC)

Examined to what extent readers' word-treatment strategies are task dependent, and to what extent word-treatment strategies are dependent on the reader's reading profile. Subjects were 42 students of English for academic purposes advanced reading-comprehension course. Instruments used in the study included a word-treatment experiment, an open…

This article reviews research on effective classroom reading instruction that finds dramatic reduction in reading failure occurs when explicit instruction is provided in phonemic awareness and decoding skills, word recognition and text processing, construction of meaning, vocabulary, spelling, and writing. The need for small-group instruction for…

In most disciplines, professors ask students to "read" without specifying what this operation means for their particular field. This chapter traces the path laid out in a cultural history class, where reading entails identifying the essential elements of a text. (Contains 1 figure.)

Auditory pattern recognition skills in children with reading disorders were investigated using perceptual tests involving discrimination of frequency and duration tonal patterns. A behavioral test battery involving recognition of the pattern of presentation of tone triads was used in which individual components differed in either frequency or…

This study examines the effectiveness of a one-on-one reading intervention using trained tutors. Participants were 49 first-grade students at risk for reading failure. The three-step tutoring model included repeated reading of familiar text, explicit coaching in decoding and word-solving strategies, and reading new books during each 15-minute…

A structural equation model of second language (L2; English) reading comprehension was tested on a sample of 135 Spanish-speaking 4th-grade English-language learners (ELLs). The model included 2 levels: decoding and oral language. English decoding measures included alphabetic knowledge and fluency. English oral language measures included…

Parsimonious models of word recognition and reading comprehension were validated in a sample of third-grade readers. Word recognition was modeled as phonological awareness, decoding skill, and word processing rate. This model demonstrated the importance of unitization of letter clusters for efficient word reading. A curvilinear relation between…

When older students fail to gain rapid and accurate decoding skills by the third or fourth grade, they not only struggle with reading comprehension, but they also fall behind their average reading peers in academic performance and achievement--and they rarely catch up. When presented with academic tasks that require reading, these students often…

This pilot study investigated the efficacy of "Phonics Alive 2: The Sound Blender", a computer-based phonological skills training program, delivered with both at-home and at-school components over a 10-week period, as a potential treatment of phonological dyslexia. Participants were 20 dyslexic primary students with an average delay of…