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…

The Agnate Sentences Test was designed to measure awareness of the relationship between sentences that are similar in semantic content but different in syntactic structure. In this study, developmental differences in the ability to decode written syntax are observed by means of this test which was administered to 63 4th graders, 65 8th graders,…

Word identification involves many possible strategies in order for the reader to familiarize himself with vocabulary to gain meaning. One strategy is the development of sight vocabulary; another is phonetic analysis, which includes sound-symbol correspondence, syllabication, and accent; and a final strategy is structural analysis, which includes…

Adult students are voluntary learners. They have certain expectations of achievement when returning to the classroom. The teacher of adults should utilize these students' experiences, because adults can respond better if encouraged to draw on their personal knowledge. The non-English speaking adult students learning English as a second language…

This book is concerned with the skill of learning to read and factors primarily related to teaching the beginning reading skills. The contents include: "Rationale," which discusses abilities related to reading, reading as a different medium, decoding coming before reading, decoding as separate from reading, hypotheses for decoding, and a…

This study evaluated the decoding skills acquired by low readers in an experimental project that taught low readers in regular class through the use of clinical procedures based on a synthetic phonic, multisensory approach. An evaluation instrument which permitted the tabulation of specific decoding skills was administered as a pretest and…

The ability of 100 second-grade boys and girls to self-correct oral reading errors was studied in relationship to visual-form perception, phonic skills, response speed, and reading level. Each child was tested individually with the Bender-Error Test, the Gray Oral Paragraphs, and the Roswell-Chall Diagnostic Reading Test and placed into a group of…

A word attack program that begins with phonics and incorporates various aspects of a linguistics approach is described in this paper. Regardless of the material that is used, there are 13 consonant sounds which are easier to learn than others: b, d, j, f, k, p, t, l, m, n, r, v, and z. W and h would be introduced next because in isolation they…

The purposes of this research were to develop a new methodology for measuring comprehension and analyze individual differences in perceiving sentence difficulty. Written descriptions of commonly occurring visual scenes served as the stimuli in the new methodology. The reader's success in drawing a scene after viewing a written description of it…