A study investigated whether instruction in spelling would affect acquisition of the alphabetic strategy by beginning readers. Subjects, 28 beginning first- and second-graders of average or above-average intellectual ability in whole language classrooms, participated in small group training for two 20 minute periods a week for 6.5 months. Experimental subjects were given segmenting/spelling tasks, while controls were trained to read letters, words, and text. Both groups used computers. Results indicated that trained subjects made significant early gains in using alphabetic strategy and were significantly better than controls by the end of the study at reading regular and irregular nonsense and real words, and at oral passages, but not at silent comprehension. Findings suggest that spelling may affect reading through the mapping of sounds onto letters. (Two tables of data are included; 40 references are attached.) (Author/RS)