A study examined hierarchical relationships among three developmental components of reading ability in grades 1 through 3. It was predicted that semantic skills develop initially, followed by letter identification skills, phonological skills, and visual skills. Reading ability was assessed with a word identification task. The semantic components…

A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that first grade children with a full-day kindergarten experience would achieve higher scores on the Tests for Analysis and Placement (TAP) Level 2 (Readiness) Basic than those children with half-day experience. Subjects were 19 first grade students who completed the TAP on two consecutive days. In…

A teacher's theoretical viewpoint is pervasive. It determines not only the materials chosen and the way the materials are used, but also the perception the teacher holds of the reading process. It is important, therefore, for teachers to understand the theory on which their views are based so that they can understand why they have chosen a…

Based on gestalt psychology, guided fantasy is a technique that uses sensory images related to a particular situation to create a subjective understanding of that experience. For the young child, guided fantasy can be a process of creating an inner subjective experience that is subsequently integrated with objective knowledge (language) to produce…

A sample of 270 first, second, and third graders participated in this study of the pronounceability of the 119 phonograms identified in the Glass Analysis for Perceptual Conditioning Program for poor decoders. Each subject was asked to pronounce each of the phonograms. Subjects were cross-classified by grade level, sex, and reading ability as…

The eight popular commercial reading programs examined in this study were selected on the basis of their use with compensatory education students and the fact that they represent different instructional approaches. The study examined how readers are taught to break the letter/sound code, what correspondences are taught, and how correspondences are…

Problems occur in teaching English to the child whose native language is not English because of a lack of relevant research about the specification of the native language and the transfer of reading skills from one language to another. Most bilingual instruction in the United States is based on either the "native language approach"…

In the Netherlands, explicit beginning reading instruction usually starts in grade one. The children learn grapheme-phoneme correspondences, blending, and phonemic analysis. However, some children experience difficulties in beginning reading that the existing educational procedures are not adequate to resolve. One possible solution being…

Nonformal educational programs, which are frequently characterized by their transmission of knowledge outside the limitations and role expectations of the traditional classroom, exist today as they have throughout the past. Among the common characteristics of the diverse nonformal educational programs throughout the world is their responsiveness…

A great deal of time could be saved in all grades and for all content areas if a truly phonic alphabet were developed. This alphabet would have only one symbol for each sound and only one sound for each symbol so that beginning readers could learn to pronounce any word they could see and spell any word they could pronounce correctly. Such an…

Teaching practices in Italy, where teachers combine three different methods for teaching reading, may provide insight into ways to improve methodologies in the United States. The first method is the natural method, which, unlike American methods, teaches reading and writing simultaneously with the emphasis on writing. The teacher writes as…

The development of certain cognitive skills to a certain level may be necessary to acquire beginning reading skills. A review of research on cognitive skill development and beginning reading revealed that only a few studies investigated the need for ascertaining the presence of some cognitive processing abilities before reading instruction is…

Reflecting the interdisciplinary emphasis that reading comprehension has received during the past decade, the articles in this volume deal with both the processes involved in reading and the instructional practices used in teaching it. The six articles devoted to reading processes deal specifically with the following topics: schemata,…

Children can acquire written language skills and abilities through the natural process by which they acquire oral language. If as infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, children are exposed to rich print environments, they transfer assumptions from experiences with oral dialogue to the more focused situations of print. Discrepancies in the ease with…

The relationship between first graders' listening comprehension and reading comprehension was examined in a study involving 64 children. Two forms of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, Primary A, were administered--one orally and one silently. No significant difference was found between the mean score of the silent test and that of the oral test.…