Secondary schools--be they middle schools or high schools--are reading-rich environments. Secondary schools provide contexts in which students must regularly read and write competently to demonstrate their literacy achievement. In any given semester, there are short stories and novels to read, comprehend, and analyze; civics and science texts…

This study was an evaluation of a parent delivered, computer based beginning reading program with a group of 15 Kindergarten and Grade 1 students. Completing the "Funnix" program at home through a CD copy was expected to produce educationally and statistically significant improvements in phonemic awareness, letter-sound fluency, non-word…

Teaching students how to read is one of the most important tasks in elementary schools. The majority of schools use published basal programs to teach students to read. Several published reviews have indicated that past editions of basal readers did not align with appropriate instruction for beginning level readers. In this study I reviewed five of…

The "Auditory Discrimination in Depth (ADD) Program[R]" (currently called the "Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing (LiPS) Program[R]") is designed to teach students skills to successfully decode words and to identify individual sounds and blends in words. Initial activities engage students in discovering the lip, tongue, and mouth…

A study investigated the transfer effect of three different word recognition strategies. Subjects were 90 first- through fourth-grade children randomly drawn from an elementary school population to serve in the experimental group and a like number assigned to a non-instructed control group. Strategies taught to subjects were a graphophonic…

This study examined the possibility that expectancy or anticipatory reactions influence the ability to read. The Event Related Potentials (ERPs) of 10 dyslexic Mexican male students (ages 11 to 13) and eight normal male students of the same age range were evaluated. ERPs were measured while the children read words, both in and out of context, that…

The teaching and self-study materials of the Phonological Transcription Accompanied Text (PTAT) method takes into account both sides of the debate over reading instruction in which the skills-emphasis partisans and the meaning-emphasis partisans are engaged. PTAT materials attempt to make the best use of children's oral language and rich…

Intended to answer questions from practicing teachers, concerned parents, and college students about the sounds and spelling patterns of English, this book presents an overview of the structure of written words that shows readers how the sounds of English are paired with their spelling patterns. The book delineates the task of decoding written…

A study examined the developmental shifts in the importance of linguistic components of words to single word decoding. Subjects, 1200 children ages 6-7, 8-9, and 10-12.5 years who were the normative sample of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), were tested using a word recognition test, the Reading Decoding Subtest of the K-ABC.…

A study examined the differences between new and old editions of basal reading programs. Two editions, 1979 and 1986, of the Houghton Mifflin basal reading program for first grade were analyzed. Results indicated that there were substantial differences in both decoding and comprehension activities, and in the stories children read. The newer…

Concludes that the ability to detect small differences in pairs of pictures, letters, or words does not change beyond grade 3, but the ability to recognize sound-alike words improves through the grades. (RB)

Designed for use in the home, this booklet describes how someone can be taught how the alphabet works; that is, by decoding the ABC's into spoken language. Among the steps to decoding discussed in this booklet are these: (1) teaching the sounds of individual letters; (2) teaching the different sounds of the vowels; (3) sounding out little words;…

The paper focuses on reading-disabled students with emphasis on the need for theory-driven research and improvements in the training of teachers in reading instruction. Among abilities that should be tested in research on causes of reading disability are the child's understanding of the phonological structure of written language, a specifically…

Large differences exist among individuals in their ability to process speech sounds within syllables and words, and this ability is crucial for reading and spelling alphabetically beyond a very elementary level. The conception that speech is made up of segments (phonemes) is natural to those who read and spell alphabetically, but arguably: (1)…

Before reading teachers can be held accountable, batteries of diagnostic tests measuring the whole range of language characteristics must be developed and incorporated into school programs. (JH)