Reading Old English poses many problems for a beginning student. Even though it has some similarities to modern English, the special characters, obsolete words, inflected grammar, and alien word order of Old English makes it difficult for Old English neophytes to reconstruct the propositional content in a poem such as "Beowulf." Experts…

Test results show that children who are skilled comprehenders are more rapid at oral word decoding than are less skilled comprehenders. (Author/DEP)

Suggesting that the ability to identify words depends as much on contextual information available when one is reading for meaning as on decoding skills, this paper challenges traditional, mechanistic skills approaches to reading instruction. In addition, it contends that comprehending (relating written material to what one already knows) is a…

Taking a psycholinguistic approach, this paper presents an overview of vocabulary and word identification instruction. Sources for instructional procedures are discussed rather than detailed suggestions for teaching procedures. Five approaches to word identification are examined: sight vocabulary development, phonic analysis, structural analysis,…

Diagnostic tests for nine different letter-sound patterns were developed for the PLATO Computer Assisted Instruction system and were administered to 122 first, second, and third graders. Results for four of the patterns showed low test reliabilities and no monotonic increase for the percentage correct with increasing grade level. The remaining…

Noting the limitations of recent word recognition research, this paper suggests ways that these limitations might be overcome and then extends these suggestions into a framework for distinguishing between good and poor readers' ability to comprehend words. The paper begins by reviewing the major models of word recognition and discussing their…

A combination of case study observation and mini-experimentation techniques were used to examine a number of issues of relevance in the study of the acquisition of beginning reading skills. Six children were divided equally among three instructional modes: phonics, whole word, and mixed. They were asked to decode and encode words, and their…

This paper develops a model for generating sets of replicable items for testing a range of reading skills in the primary grades. The procedure is particularly concerned with tests to identify a child's profile in reading achievement and to inform a teacher, principal, or district of the actual level of achievement in reading. Although the model is…

In an examination of elementary school children's notions of reading, 1,122 first through sixth graders were individually interviewed. Each child was asked to define reading, and their responses were placed into four categories: those which were vague or irrelevant, those which focused on classroom procedure or the educational value of reading,…

This report summarizes studies of perceptual, decoding, and lexical stages of processing in reading. Using a letter identification task, it was found that subjects who were low in overall reading ability scan a visual image more slowly than do high ability readers and are slower in identifying letters when they do not occur in a familiar sequence.…

The history of teaching people to read is explored from the introduction of the Greek alphabet about 3,000 years ago to the present renewed interest in sound symbol relationships. Greek schoolboys were required to learn first the alphabet in order, next commonly used syllables, and then words. English was first written in the Latin alphabet using…

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the nature of the reading process through an understanding of the general nature of sensory processing mechanisms which reorganize and restructure input signals for central recognition, and an understanding of how the grammar of the language functions in defining the set of possible sentences in…

This paper presents instructional outcomes and student exercises related to the student's acquisition of the reading skills minimally required for comprehension in the SWRL Reading Program. The two outcome areas of the reading comprehension program are the development of word decoding skills and the development of skills necessary for sentence and…

Recent research has shown that spelling-to-sound correspondences in English are less irregular than has been thought in the past and that a large percentage of irregularities consists of irregularly spelled words which recur in various derived and compound words. In order to determine the degree to which irregularities occur in multiple-derived…