This monograph discusses research, theory, and practice relevant to how children learn to read English. After an initial overview of writing systems, the discussion summarizes research from developmental psychology on children's language competency when they enter school and on the nature of early reading development. Subsequent sections review theories of learning to read, the characteristics of children who do not learn to read (i.e., who have developmental dyslexia), research from cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience on skilled reading, and connectionist models of learning to read. The implications of the research findings for learning to read and teaching reading are discussed. Next, the primary methods used to teach reading (phonics and whole language) are summarized. The final section reviews laboratory and classroom studies on teaching reading. From these different sources of evidence, two inescapable conclusions emerge: (a) Mastering the alphabetic principle (that written symbols are associated with phonemes) is essential to becoming proficient in the skill of reading, and (b) methods that teach this principle directly are more effective than those that do not (especially for children who are at risk in some way for having difficulty learning to read). Using whole-language activities to supplement phonics instruction does help make reading fun and meaningful for children, but ultimately, phonics instruction is critically important because it helps beginning readers understand the alphabetic principle and learn new words. Thus, elementary -school teachers who make the alphabetic principle explicit are most effective in helping their students become skilled, independent readers.

The development of reading depends on phonological awareness across all languages so far studied. Languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography. This results in developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies and the manifestation of dyslexia across orthographies. Differences in lexical representations and reading across languages leave developmental “footprints ” in the adult lexicon. The lexical organization and processing strategies that are characteristic of skilled reading in different orthographies are affected by different developmental constraints in different writing systems. The authors develop a novel theoretical framework to explain these cross-language data, which they label a psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading and its development. Reading is the process of understanding speech written down. The goal is to gain access to meaning. To acquire reading, children must learn the code used by their culture for representing speech as a series of visual symbols. Learning to read is thus fundamentally a process of matching distinctive visual symbols to units of sound (phonology). In most languages, the relationship between symbol

A connectionist model of reading development previously used to simulate detailed aspects of developmental dyslexia (Harm & Seidenberg, 1999) was used to explore why certain classes of interventions designed to overcome reading impairments are more effective than others. Previous research has shown that interventions targeting the development of spelling–sound correspondences are more effective at promoting generalization skills than ones designed solely to increase phonological awareness. The simulations broadly replicate the patterns of success and failure found in the developmental literature and provide explicit computational insights into exactly why the interventions that include training on spelling–sound regularities are more effective than those targeting phonological development alone. The number of studies of interventions targeting developmental reading impairments is growing at a rapid rate (see Bus & Ijzendoorn, 1999, for a recent review). Such studies typically involve testing one or more interventions with children; outcome measures indicate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different interventions being considered. The benefits of such work are obvious: They give direct evidence for which of the tested interventions provide a more effective use of time and resources for the particular population of children studied. The difficulty is that

This chapter describes the Foundations to Literacy component of the Colorado Literacy Tutor, a comprehensive literacy program that uses computer-based learning tools incorporating human language technologies to teach students to read and comprehend text. The Colorado Literacy Tutor project, or COLit (COLit, 2004), is headed by Professor Walter Kintsch at the

Abstract This study examined the unique contribution of computer-based instruction when compared with more conventional modes of instruction (i.e. teacher instruction with textbooks) to early reading skills acquisition, as well as the effects of specific features of computer technology on early reading skills performance. Forty-six pre-school children (aged 5–6), at high risk for learning disabilities, participated in the study. They were assigned to one of three study groups that received different treatments. Three dependent variables were defined, i.e. children’s phonological awareness, word recognition and letter recognition skills measured prior and after the treatment. Results clearly indicated that children at high risk who received the reading intervention program with computer materials significantly improved their phonological awareness, word recognition, and letter naming skills relative to their peers who received a reading intervention program with only printed materials and those who received no formal reading intervention program. The results are discussed in detail, with reference to the features of the computerbased materials that contributed to the acquisition of critical early reading skills.

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The work upon which this publication was based was supported in part by the

Literacy has been likened to a societal currency (Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins, & Kolstad, 1993). In this chapter, we consider how spelling ability might contribute to the value of that currency and the ways in which adult basic literacy instruction can support that contribution. Over the last few centuries, society has been increasing the value it places on accurate spelling, and spelling diffi cult words has now become a mark of a good education. Gerber and Hall (1987) noted, “The ability to spell is still imbued by an admiring public with connotations of studiousness, literacy, and intelligence ” (p. 34). In the United States, the fact that we hold an annual National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, attests to the cultural value that is placed on correct spelling, for its own sake, even today. A recent study revealed that the perception, among their peers, of college students ’ writing ability and even of intelligence is negatively affected by the presence of a large number of spelling errors in a piece of writing

This study investigated cross-language and writing system relationship in biliteracy acquisition of children learning to read two different writing systems—Chinese and English. Forty-six Mandarinspeaking children were tested for their first language (Chinese-L1) and second language (English-L2) reading skills. Comparable experiments in Chinese and English were designed focusing on two reading processes—phonological and orthographic processing. Word reading skills in both writing systems were tested. Results revealed that Chinese onset matching skill was significantly correlated with English onset and rime matching skills. Pinyin, an alphabetic phonetic system used to assist children in learning to read Chinese characters, was highly correlated with English pseudoword reading. Furthermore, Chinese tone processing skill contributed a moderate but significant amount of variance in predicting English pseudoword reading even when English phonemic-level processing skill was taken into consideration. Orthographic processing skill in the two writing systems, on the other hand, did not predict each other’s word reading. These findings suggest that bilingual reading acquisition is a joint function of shared phonological processes and orthographic specific skills. q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

pre-school phonological training on early reading