Acquiring the alphabetic principle: A case for teaching recognition of phoneme identity.

Studied how 2 components of phonemic awareness, recognition of phoneme identity across words and recognition of phonemic segmentation within words, influence acquisition of the alphabetic principle in preliterate children. Evidence favored training in phoneme identity over segmentation as a component of initial reading instruction because it was easier to implement and its relationship to alphabetic insight was stronger. The study also found that identity can be equally easily taught using word-initial and word-final phonemes, a phoneme in a consonant cluster does not present special problems, vowels are as amenable to training as consonants, and stops are more problematic than continuants. Once alphabetic insight is established for some letters, following identity and letter–sound instruction, it generalizes to other letters without the need for further phonemic awareness training. Implications for the initial reading curriculum are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of a program to teach phonemic awareness to young children: A 1-year follow-up.

A follow-up of a study evaluating a program to teach young children about phonemic structure is reported. In the original study (B. Byrne and R. Fielding-Barnsley; see record 1992-10755-001), preschoolers were trained with the program for 12 wks and gained in phonemic awareness and knowledge of the alphabetic principle as compared with a control group. The children were retested at the end of kindergarten on phonemic awareness, word identification, decoding, and spelling. Children who entered school with advanced levels of phonemic awareness scored significantly higher on each of the measures. Alphabetic knowledge predicted literacy development, but phonemic awareness accounted for significant additional variance in decoding and spelling. Verbal intelligence did not influence reading and spelling performance. Other parts of the data led to the conclusion that some aspects of phonemic awareness may be a consequence of literacy instruction rather than a cause. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Getting off to a better start in reading and spelling: The effects of phonemic awareness instruction within a whole language program.

In the present study the effect of providing phonemic awareness instruction, at school entry, on the reading and spelling progress of 5-yr-old children was examined within a whole language program. In Exp 1, which focused on spelling acquisition, 15 children received phonemic awareness training twice weekly, each time for 20 min, over a 10-wk period, while another group of 15 children was involved in "process writing." In Exp 2, which focused on reading acquisition, 17 children received phonemic awareness training while a 2nd matched group of 17 children participated in other language and reading activities that did not involve phonemic instruction, and a 3rd matched group of 17 children received no extra instruction at all. Overall, the training in the 2 experiments had significant effects on spelling and reading performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of preschool phoneme identity training after six years: Outcome level distinguished from rate of response.

Grade 5 children who had been trained in phoneme identity 6 years earlier in preschool were superior to untrained controls on irregular word reading; on a composite list of nonwords, regular words, and irregular words; and on a separate nonword test. Some of the trained children had become poor readers by Grade 5. These poor readers had made slow progress in achieving phonemic awareness in preschool even though they were eventually successful. In general, the rate at which trained children achieved phonemic awareness in preschool accounted for variance in school literacy progress in addition to that accounted for by the actual level of phonemic awareness achieved. Preschool instruction in phonemic structure had modest but detectable effects on later reading skill, but children who were slow to achieve phonemic awareness tended to be hampered in later reading growth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spoken word recognition in reading disabled children.

This study compared spoken word recognition in 39 reading disabled and 61 normally achieving children on a speech gating task and examined the relationships among speech recognition, phonemic awareness, and reading. Children listened to increasingly longer segments of the speech input from word onset and guessed the identity of the target word. Words were either high or low frequency arid had few or many similarly sounding word neighbors in the listener's lexicon. Reading disabled children needed more of the speech input than normally achieving peers to identify target words with few similarly sounding neighbors. The amount of speech input for recognition predicted the youngest children's reading performance, after variance due to measures of phonemic awareness and receptive vocabulary were accounted for. The argument is developed that spoken word recognition may be developmentally delayed in those with reading disabilities and may play a causal role in these children's failure to acquire adequate alphabetic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Code-oriented instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties: A randomized field trial with paraeducator implementers.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of code-oriented supplemental instruction for kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties. Paraeducators were trained to provide 18 weeks of explicit instruction in phonemic skills and the alphabetic code. Students identified by their teachers meeting study eligibility criteria were randomly assigned to 2 groups: individual supplemental instruction and control. Students were pretested in December, midtested, and posttested in May-June of kindergarten. At posttest, treatment students significantly outperformed controls on measures of reading accuracy, reading efficiency, oral reading fluency, and developmental spelling. Treatment students had significantly higher linear growth rates in phonemic awareness and alphabetic knowledge during the kindergarten treatment. At a 1-year follow-up, significant group differences remained in reading accuracy and efficiency. Ethical challenges of longitudinal intervention research are discussed. Findings have policy implications for making supplemental instruction in critical early reading skills available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of a program to teach phonemic awareness to young children: A 2- and 3-year follow-up and a new preschool trial.

This article reports a follow-up study of children in Grades 1 and 2 who had been instructed in phonemic awareness in preschool. Compared to a control condition, the trained children were superior in nonword reading 2 and 3 yrs later and in reading comprehension at 3 yrs. Control children furnished a disproportionate number of readers dependent on sight word reading. The superiority of the experimental condition did not extend to measures of automaticity in reading. W. A. Hoover and P. B. Gough's (1990) "simple view" of reading (Reading Comprehension?=?Listening Comprehension?×?Decoding) was supported. In a supplementary experiment, preschool children were trained with the program by their regular teachers and showed greater progress in aspects of phonemic awareness than the control condition from the main experiment. However, they did not gain as much as those in the more intensely trained experimental condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Letters as spatial-oriented shapes and/or graphemic signs: a developmental study of left- and right-handed girls during the period of learning to read

This study is concerned with the problem of hemispheric specialization and/or cooperation in relation to development and manual laterality. The processing of alphabetic signs and its relationship to interhemispheric transfer and functional hemispheric asymmetries were studied by comparing left- and right-handed girls during acquisition of reading. The children perform matching tasks with letters having different orientations and with meaningless forms having the same orientations as the letters. Each subject performed the matching under three conditions: right/left intermanual transfer, left/right intermanual transfer, and dichaptic exploration. Results indicate: (1) A differentiated development between the two handednesses. (2) The functional lateralization change was different for left- and right-handed girls, a greater effect of the ability to identify the letter on matching tasks was observed for the right-handed children than for the left-handed children. These last results are discussed with regard to inter-hemispheric transfer and functional hemispheric asymmetry changes. We hypothesized a strategy difference between left- and right-handed girls and a difference in their ability to change their cognitive strategy (left-handers continue to favor a spatial coding with letters).     

Gaining alphabetic insight: Is phoneme manipulation skill or identity knowledge causal?

The type of phoneme awareness that supports reading acquisition has been unclear. Phoneme awareness is usually operationalized as skill in manipulating phonemes in blending and segmentation tasks. However, B. Byrne and R. Fielding-Barnsley (1990) argued that phoneme awareness is knowledge of phoneme identities (i.e., recognition of individual phonemes in spoken word contexts). In a double-blind teaching experiment, 48 kindergartners were randomly assigned to identity, manipulation, or language experience programs. Children in the manipulation program made significantly greater gains on tests of blending and segmentation. However, children in the identity program made significantly greater gains on a test of phonetic cue reading, a measure of rudimentary decoding ability. Teaching recognition of particular phonemes in word contexts may help beginners gain insight into the alphabetic principle and apply their insights in early word identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquisition of literacy: A longitudinal study of children in first and second grade.

Tested a model of early literacy acquisition regarding the interrelation of word recognition, spelling, reading comprehension, and writing skills, using longitudinal data collected from 80 children who passed from 1st through 2nd grades. Incoming characteristics (i.e., ethnicity, IQ, oral language) and the rate at which each S progressed through his or her reading books were examined in relation to growth in phonemic awareness, spelling/sound knowledge, and lexical knowledge. The impact of these factors on development in word recognition and spelling was explored, along with the relation of word recognition and listening comprehension to reading comprehension, and the relation of spelling and ideation to story writing. It was hypothesized that poor reading achievement in minority students would be partially attributable to poorer phonemic awareness of school English due to dialect, 2nd language, and cultural differences. Results support the hypothesis, suggesting the strong importance of phonemic awareness in literacy acquisition. The relation between word recognition and spelling was strong due to reliance on similar sources of knowledge. The relation between reading comprehension and writing appeared less strong, suggesting that the generation of ideas involved in story production is not isomorphic to the processes involved in reading comprehension. (61 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"No shoes; they walked away?": effects of enhancements on learning and using Blissymbols by normal 3-year-old children

The present investigation studied the effects of enhancements on the learning, retention, transfer to the unlearned form, and use of Blissymbols in 40 normal 3-year-old children. The subjects, seen individually, learned either 12 standard Blissymbols (SBS) or the same 12 symbols in the enhanced form (EBS). The symbols were introduced with short explanations. The number of trials taken to reach > 90% correct identification, the number of symbols selected appropriately to complete a communicative act, the number of symbols correctly identified a week after the acquisition phase was completed, and the number of symbols correctly identified in the untrained form of Blissymbols were determined. The results demonstrated that the subjects learned EBS faster than SBS, remembered more EBS than SBS in the retention task, did not differ in the communicative use of SBS and EBS, and were affected more negatively when presented with SBS than EBS in a task where the untrained form was presented. The results are discussed in terms of how very young children might benefit more from an illustration system such as EBS than from an orthographic system such as SBS.     

Predicting progress in beginning reading: Dynamic assessment of phonemic awareness.

Investigates the ability of a dynamic measure of phonemic awareness to predict progress in beginning reading. 38 kindergartners who were nonreaders were assessed in the fall on receptive vocabulary, letter and word recognition, invented spelling, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion, and dynamic phoneme segmentation. They were retested near the end of the school year on reading, spelling, and phonemic awareness. The results of the multiple-regression analyses supported the hypothesis that dynamic assessment enhances the predictive utility of a phonemic awareness measure. Performance on dynamic phoneme segmentation was the best predictor of end-of-year reading scores and of growth in phonemic awareness. The study demonstrates the applicability of principles of dynamic assessment to the measurement of phonemic awareness and provides further evidence regarding the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonemic segmentation skill and beginning reading.

Investigated the relation of phonological awareness to learning to read in 63 1st-grade children (mean age 6 yrs 2 mo), who were administered tests of verbal intelligence, phonemic segmentation ability, and reading achievement. Verbal intelligence was measured using the PPVT—Form A. Results indicate that the relation of nondigraph word segmentation to reading achievement is greater than that of digraph word segmentation to reading achievement and that this relation is nonlinear. Consistent with the claim of a causal connection between phonological awareness and reading acquisition, a contingency analysis of the data revealed that phonemic segmentation ability is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for learning to read. The data were also subjected to a path analysis, which indicated that phonological awareness affects reading comprehension indirectly through phonological recoding and that the development of phonological awareness is not greatly affected by method of instruction. Implications of these findings for educational practice are briefly indicated. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Can children and adults focus on sound as opposed to spelling in a phoneme counting task?

Given the well-established link between phonemic awareness and literacy, it is important to better understand the foundations of phonemic awareness. The authors investigated the phoneme counting task, examining the degree to which children reading at a first-grade level and college students can focus on sound as opposed to spelling. In 2 experiments, both groups were found to be sensitive to some phonetic details that are not systematically represented in print. They had some ability to distinguish between monophthongs (as in he) and diphthongs (as in how), and they tended to count fewer "sounds" for syllables ending with the more sonorous (or vowel-like) consonant /r/ than for syllables ending with less sonorous consonants. However, print-related knowledge also affected both groups. Even children judged syllables that were the names of letters to contain fewer "sounds" than syllables that were not letter names. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children.

First and 2nd graders (N?=?285) receiving Title 1 services received 1 of 3 kinds of classroom reading programs: direct instruction in letter–sound correspondences practiced in decodable text (direct code); less direct instruction in systematic sound–spelling patterns embedded in connected text (embedded code); and implicit instruction in the alphabetic code while reading connected text (implicit code). Children receiving direct code instruction improved in word reading at a faster rate and had higher word-recognition skills than those receiving implicit code instruction. Effects of instructional group on word recognition were moderated by initial levels of phonological processing and were most apparent in children with poorer initial phonological processing skills. Group differences in reading comprehension paralleled those for word recognition but were less robust. Groups did not differ in spelling achievement or in vocabulary growth. Results show advantages for reading instructional programs that emphasize explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle for at-risk children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An examination of predictive bias for second grade reading outcomes from measures of early literacy skills in kindergarten with respect to English-language learners and ethnic subgroups.

The assessment of early literacy skills during the kindergarten year can provide useful information about student performance in prereading skills, which are predictors of later reading achievement. This study examined the use of fluency-based prompts of student phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, and oral reading at the end of kindergarten for predicting later reading achievement at the end of second grade. Predictive validity and bias studies were undertaken with respect to English-language learners (ELLs) and four selected ethnic subgroups: European American (EA), African American (AA), Asian American (AsA), and Hispanic American (HA). Results indicated that the predictive validity of the early literacy measures was strong, and no evidence of predictive bias for ELL and non-ELL groups was found. However, evidence of a small amount of predictive bias was found between the EA and HA students with respect to intercept differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Articulation Accuracy and Vocabulary Size Contributions to Phonemic Awareness and Word Reading in English Language Learners.

Relationships among articulation, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and word reading were examined in 45 children who spoke either Hmong or Spanish as their primary language. A theoretical perspective suggesting that English articulation and vocabulary would influence children's English phonemic awareness and English word reading was developed. Articulation influenced both kindergarten phonemic awareness and 1st-grade word reading. Letter-sound knowledge was also associated with kindergarten phonemic awareness, and 1st-grade phonemic awareness was related to 1st-grade word reading. The results are discussed in relationship to 2nd-language speech, articulation, and beginning reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From referents to symbols: Visual cues and pointing effects on children's acquisition of linear function rules.

Each of 84 children in Grade 4 and combined Grades 5–6 first learned 2 linear function rules (a?×?F?=?S and F?+?b?=?S) under 1 of 7 conditions. These conditions resulted from variations in 2 factors: pointing (presence vs absence) and visual cues (context vs weight vs both pictured) plus a verbal-only baseline condition. Subsequently, Ss learned a complex rule (a?×?F?+?b?=?S) as a transfer task. Those trained with the visual cues abstracted a rule from rule instances and expressed it in symbols more easily than did the others. The visual cues caused positive transfer to the abstraction and the symbolic expression of the complex rule. The pointing activity had a short-term effect for the initial acquisition only, but it in itself retarded transfer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)