Zero-order correlation coefficients show significant relationships between orthography, phonology, rapid naming, visual and auditory memory, and reading and spelling for 143 second through sixth graders. Although coefficients ranged from 0.05 to 0.71, most were statistically significant (65 out of 78). In addition, multiple regression analyses…

There is at present no clear consensus as to the nature of the relations between oral vocabulary and specific literacy skills. The present study distinguished between vocabulary breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to better explain the role of oral vocabulary in various reading skills. A sample of 60 typically developing Grade 4 students…

Many students continue to display reading difficulties beyond the elementary grades. Among these, a disproportionate number are students of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. Teaching foundational literacy skills is necessary to impart to these students that which they missed in the early grades. By combining best practices…

A study examined language learners' ability to integrate information from sentence contexts and semantic decomposition in interpreting novel kanji compounds (i.e., words consisting of two or more Japanese characters). Subjects, 59 English-speaking college students learning Japanese, inferred the meanings of 72 unknown compounds consisting of…

Published by the state of North Carolina, the purpose of this booklet is to assist teachers as they plan instruction to help students become proficient readers. The booklet contains matrices for comprehension, word identification, and instructional strategies to assist in planning and helping students be successful on the End-of-Grade (EOG) Tests…

A method of training pupils to read for total comprehension by an analytical approach is proposed. Specific techniques are suggested. (RM)

This study reviewed the literature on phonological processes and decoding in beginning reading, and sought to determine the effect of functional articulation defects on decoding abilities in 18 first-grade students. Results indicated that students without speech impediments did not score significantly higher on a decoding test than students with…

A review of research concerning the nature of text organization skills that contribute to reading comprehension ability reveals two distinct categories of studies: (1) those in which texts have been manipulated so as to facilitate spontaneous syntactic-semantic organization by the reader, and (2) those in which readers have received training or…

A study was conducted to explore the effect of systematically modifying story structure propositions and pronoun antecedents on monolingual, English-speaking students. The study was a replication of earlier work that had involved bilingual students. Thirty fourth-grade students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Those in the first…

Traditionally, reading disabled children have been characterized as suffering a performance or process deficit that prevents them from acquiring the knowledge and skills underlying proficient reading and comprehension. Such explanations raise some logical problems. Process oriented theories do not adequately explain the specificity nor address the…

A study was conducted to investigate the ability of children to determine meanings of derived words that have undergone a pronunciation shift while retaining a close orthographic relationship to their base words. A researcher-designed test was constructed using derived words that had their base word included in a "core list" of words at or below…

The topic of illiteracy in the United States is discussed by five people in this transcript of "Options on Education." These five, each of whom approaches illiteracy in a different way, are George Weber, Associate Director of the Council for Basic Education; Mike Smith, Director for Essential Skills of the National Institute of…

Two sources of information are involved in reading; the visual information picked up by the eyes from the printed page and the nonvisual information, or prior knowledge, that the reader possesses. An overreliance on visual information leads to an overloading of the cognitive process involved in reading and loss in comprehension. Overreliance on…

Three experiments examined the relationship between reading skill and decoding. Children decoded and matched words and pseudowords of different syllable lengths presented in both aural and printed form. Prior verbal experience was manipulated. Decoding differences were not wholly attributable to prior experience with word units, as processes…

Vocalization latencies of young readers were a function of set size, number of syllables, and stimulus material. Differences between skilled and less skilled readers were absent for naming colors, digits, and pictures, but present for words; differences increased with number of syllables (and letters). Reading skill and decoding are discussed.…