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 premise of this book is that most children are ready to learn to read at age four and that parents are capable of teaching their own children to read. Ways in which parents can and do aid in the development of a child's language are discussed. This development of oral language is very important to learning to read the language and is usually…

This study examined the differences in total number of eye movements, direction of the reading scan, and total scanning time of good and poor second-grade readers who were being taught reading by either the phonics or sight-recognition method. (HOD)

The effects of modeling vocabulary words, using a tape recorder, on six high school learning disabled boys' sight-word reading were examined in a multiple-baseline design. Results indicated an increase in correct oral response rates of isolated word lists and a sharp decrease in each student's oral error rates. (Authors)

This report describes a program for improving sight word recognition and the ability to improve reading skills. The targeted population consists of a kindergarten class and a primary self-contained special education class. The schools are located in a large metropolitan city. The problem of poor sight-word recognition was documented with student…

Suggests a variation on the language experience approach designed for groups of nonverbal children. (MKM)

Reports on an investigation of the effects of teaching first grade children two sets of six words by phonics and sight word methods in three instructional conditions with either a selection or production response. (MKM)

First graders were taught to read words either in printed sentence contexts or printed singly on flash cards. Post-test scores indicated that context-trained children learned more about the semantic identities of printed words, while flash card-trained children could read the words faster and learned more about orthographic forms. (JMB)

Evaluates the effectiveness of two different intertrial intervals for increasing the sight word vocabulary of four learning disabled students. Results indicate that, when measuring learning as a function of instructional time, immediate presentation resulted in a faster learning rate than did the five-second condition for three of the…

Compares effectiveness of four different methods for acquiring initial reading vocabulary--onset plus vowel, rimes, phoneme segmentation and blending, and simple repetition of whole words. Finds that beginning nonreaders acquired the trained words fastest in the onset and rime conditions, and most slowly in the whole word condition. Finds the same…

Compares the effectiveness of classroom instruction using constant time delay and community-based instruction to teach a functional sight word vocabulary to students with moderate mental retardation. Finds no statistically significant differences between the two approaches. Discusses implications for practitioners and offers suggestions for…

Examined the strategies employed by 30 Israeli preschool children when identifying noncommercial print appearing in their kindergartens. Found that 5-year olds, but not 4-year olds, attended to print rather than to contextual cues. Results point to a causal role for alphabetic and phonological skills in the development of preschool word…

Children listen, act out and recite nursery rhymes and thus learn about rhyming words, absorb the rhythm of English language, and begin to develop speech sound awareness in an interactive and fun way, which can further enhance reading achievement. Encouraging children to dramatize the rhymes leads to role plays which uses basic vocabulary sight…