Learning to Read: An Integrated View from Research and Practice
Abstract
Literacy research has continued to develop at a rapid pace in these last five years of the millennium. New ideas about how children learn to read have led to a better understanding of the causes of progress and failure in the mastery of literacy, with repercussions for children's assessment and teacher education. These new discoveries also allow teachers to transcend the old debates in reading instruction (phonics versus whole language) and offer the path to a synthesis. At the same time, research with teachers about their own implementation of methods and the development of their own knowledge about the teaching of literacy has produced a fresh analysis of the practice of literacy teaching. Inspired by these developments, teachers, teacher educators and researchers worked together to produce this volume, which promotes the integration of literacy research and practice.
Chapters (21)
For many years, the debates in the teaching of reading were dominated by the tensions between “teaching phonics” and “the whole language approach” (for a thoughtful comment on this controversy, see Beard, 1995). It is quite likely that most teachers realised that both approaches, if treated in a radical manner, were leaving aside significant aspects of literacy but that they found it difficult to escape polarization in this debate. The two teaching approaches are derived from different common sense views of reading — and, as it turned out later, they also differed theoretically [but note that the debate existed in the domain of teaching reading before the theoretical models came to the fore; see, for example, Isaacs, 1930].
There is little doubt that recent research on reading has had a considerable impact on the way in which children are taught to read and to write. In particular, teachers both of normal and of dyslexic children have paid attention to the research which has shown the central importance of children’s sensitivity to phonology in learning letter-sound relationships. Old schemes, such as reading recovery (Clay), have been adjusted to take account of this work, and new schemes for teaching reading, especially to young children, have been entirely based on the discoveries about the relevance of children’s phonological skills (Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley, 1991; Ball and Blachman, 1991; Torgesen, Morgan and Davis, 1992; Hatcher, Hulme and Ellis, 1994; O’Connor, Jenkins and Slocum, 1995).
Morphology plays an essential role in written French, especially since many written markers have no corresponding pronunciation (Catach, 1986; Dubois, 1965; Chervel and Manesse, 1989; Girolami-Boulinier, 1984; Jaffré, 1992; Lucci and Millet, 1994). This predominantly silent morphology has two consequences. First the learning of these markers and of their functions by children must be performed without an oral reference (e.g., the absence of phonetic realization of the nominal plural -s in “les poules”/“the hens” and of the verbal plural -nt in “elles picorent”/“they peck”). Second, the implementation and the control of these markers by adults take place only in reference to the written language (Fayol, Largy and Lemaire, 1994; Largy, Fayol and Lemaire, 1996).
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of writing acquisition in the constitution of the “word” as a conceptual entity. Our hypothesis is that the pre-literate notion of “word” is dramatically changed through the acquisition of a writing system that uses empty spaces between strings of letters, giving by this procedure a new definition of “word” that, afterwards, the literate speaker will consider as “natural”.
This chapter examines a bootstrapping view of the transition from preconventional writing in kindergarten to conventional spelling in first grade as being both promoted by as well as promoting spoken morphology. Following a short review of the relationship between morphology and literacy skills, we provide an outline of Hebrew morphology and its acquisition, and of Hebrew orthography and the development of writing. We refer to writing, a broader term than spelling, to include also early forms of graphic representations, prevalent in kindergarten, that do not involve letter-sound correspondences. The characteristics of Hebrew morphology and orthography lead to the specific expectation that spoken morphology and writing are closely related in Hebrew. Further, one would expect their relationship to differ with respect to learning to write consonants vs. vowels. The bootstrapping view was supported by a longitudinal study, starting in kindergarten and continuing into first grade. The discussion focuses on general reasons for the concurrent and predictive correlations between morphology and writing, applicable both across languages and specific to Hebrew. We conclude by suggesting preliminary educational implications.
There are two major requirements which a good theory of the development of the ability to recognise printed words must fulfil: first, it must accurately describe the processes of development, and second, it must culminate in a processing model which is compatible with what is now known, from studies of normal and abnormal processing in adults, about printed word recognition processes in skilled and formerly skilled readers. In this chapter we consider recent advances in understanding of both the development and the skilled use of printed word recognition processes, describe an experiment designed to elucidate interaction between word level and sub-word level processes, and discuss how best our experimental findings might be accommodated in a developmental theory which fulfils both the requirements established above. We then outline some of the implications of recent theoretical developments for teaching practice.
Literacy is so pervasive in contemporary society that people who have not attended school and are not literate face many difficulties in everyday life. They develop ways of coping with what they perceive as a deficiency in themselves and feel compelled to pass for literates, creating excuses when they must ask a stranger to read something for them: “I forgot my glasses. Would you mind telling me what that sign says?” (Nunes Carraher, 1987; see also Wagner, 1993).
“Dyslexia is one of several distinct learning disabilities. It is a specific language-based disorder of constitutional origin characterized by difficulties in single word decoding, usually reflecting insufficient phonological processing” (Lyon, 1995, p. 9). The above mentioned definition of dyslexia presented by the Orton Dyslexia Society Research Committee will be used in this study. This study will focus on phonological coding difficulties because other studies have documented that dyslexics’ coding problems are particularly pronounced in phonological coding (Rack, Snowling and Olson, 1992; Stone and Brady, 1995). These problems in phonological coding are long lasting and can be seen even in adults who have experienced reading problems in school, but who as adults score at the same level as normal readers on a sentence reading test (Elbro, Nielsen and Petersen, 1994).
Our aim in this paper is to use recent advances in the study of children’s literacy development for the analysis of children’s reading problems. We suggest that these new findings make it possible to unpack the expression “backward reader” and describe children’s reading difficulties in greater detail so that better guidance for teachers can be derived from assessments. A similar approach was taken recently by Seymour and Evans (1997), who applied Stuart and Colthart’s (1988) theory of word reading development to the analysis of “foundation level dyslexias” — that is, children’s reading difficulties in the initial stages of acquisition of literacy. We analyse here children’s difficulties at a later stage in literacy development, known as the “orthographic phase” (Frith, 1985), by examining their spelling.
Theorising always implies simplification in the sense that it involves a search for orderliness in empirical complexities. Theories of the teaching of reading and writing are in a number of ways simplified into the extreme. To a large extent they are organised in dichotomies — decoding versus comprehension, phonology versus semantics, phonics versus whole language, etc. They are typically also founded in research traditions which tend to function compartmentalised. This also regards written language disorders. Where the linguist and speech therapist see linguistic core problems, the cognitive psychologist may see defect subprocesses and the clinical psychologist emotional problems.
Most theories of reading development stress the importance of phonological awareness to the acquisition of reading skill. These theories are supported by findings that pre-school measures of phonological awareness predict later reading success and that training phonological skills benefits reading development (Goswami and Bryant, 1990; Brady and Shankweiler, 1991 for reviews). The corollary of this is that poor readers show phonological processing deficits which are a plausible cause of their reading problems (Shankweiler et al, 1995; Stanovich and Siegel, 1994; Snowling, 1995). However, becoming a skilled reader requires more than just phonological awareness. As Gough and Tunmer (1986; see also Tunmer and Hoover, 1992) have argued, reading is well described as the product of two relatively independent skills, decoding and linguistic comprehension. Both of these skills are necessary, but neither alone is sufficient, for successful reading. It follows from Gough and Tunmer’s argument that children can have difficulties with either of these fundamental aspects of reading.
This section shifts our focus from How can theory inform practice? to What are the questions and the theories of those whose work is to teach literacy? Here the interaction between theory in practice happens in two distinct sites. In one is located the teacher, who would like to know what and how to teach children in pre-school and in the different years of primary school and whether the different ways of teaching work equally well. They would also like to know why they should do things in this way. But their whyquestions are mainly of the type what for, they are questions about aims. Researcher’s why questions are about causes of learning, paraphrased as for what reason. In the second site is located the teacher educator, who asks both types of why question plus a set of questions about the teacher as a learner and a professional. How much does the teacher have to know about causes in order to be an effective teacher? Is the teacher more a professional, who uses scientific knowledge to engineer children’s learning, or an artisan, whose experience results in knowledge-in-action without necessarily going through a reconstructed form of knowledge? What role does consciousness play in adult learning, and consequently teacher education? Does it make learning more effective? With long-lasting consequences? More likely to go on developing after teaching has ended? More general and innovative, allowing for solving new problems when these arise?
The teaching of literacy is fraught with mythology, opinion and the taking of polarised positions. The term ‘Great Debate’ was coined by Chall thirty years ago: is the discussion now finally over? The place of the respective roles of ‘meaning’ and ‘code-breaking’ strategies are seen by various theorists as having different emphases in the child’s competence as it develops. That models of the reading process differ and are partisan is hardly surprising. Two dominant models directly oppose each other. The ‘bottom-up’ theories propose a sub-skills approach suggesting that reading is learned initially by manipulating the smallest units of language, i.e. letters, words. The reverse position supported by theories commonly referred to as ‘top-down’ suggests that the search for meaning is central from the outset and that the main strategies for decoding words are prediction and guessing (Goodman, 1976; Goodman and Goodman, 1979; Smith, 1971, 1973). The effect that this disagreement has had on both methods of teaching reading and the standards of literacy is becoming clear.
In the present chapter, I will deal with the pedagogical practices that can be used to stimulate early literacy. I propose that the availability of written material and the control of the written units, words and texts, have an important effect on how writing skills are acquired during early literacy. Specifically, the familiarization with written material (signs, labels, books, newspaper, etc.) gives children opportunities to acquire knowledge of the graphic properties of written words. The early use of the so called “literate artifacts” such as names, lists, recipes, etc., helps children learn the linguistic properties of the written words. The distinction between words as fragments of utterances and words as isolated linguistic units (as documented by linguists) shows parallelism with the child’s representation about written words. The teacher’s literate role — writing and reading texts aloud — complements graphic information with linguistic information, while children’s written activities couple their knowledge about alphabetic principles with a broad range of practices of written texts. Historical, linguistic and psychological findings support this approach.
I would like to examine the relationship between theory and practice in teachers’ professional lives. This question is not only academic, because I worked for more than twenty years in an École Normale, and latterly, in a Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres, where I have to teach students all they have to know about language teaching in the primary school. So I had to involve myself in literacy and in new knowledge and research in the field. My own field was first didactics, but little by little, I expanded my interest into historical process of teaching literacy in school. So I know, as everybody working in this field, what is the dilemma of training. On the one hand, too many things are to be said in too short time, and yet they are (or they seem) very important in helping children learn and young teachers teach. On the other hand, when students have first experienced teaching, they change their point of view. Information on reading or writing processes seems to them too theoretical. They want the tools to work immediately, they ask for practical gimmicks and recipes. They say: “We haven’t enough time and we need to know how to do it.” Teachers we meet in schools often consider what we are learning at college as useless in becoming efficient in practice. Numerous studies confirm that the knowledge produced by researchers (in all disciplines) rarely satisfies the expectations of practitioners. When teachers seek documentation, they prefer information that is directly usable (Huberman, 1983), they want “how to” suggestions rather than “why” explanations, they look for recommendations for specific types of activities, rather than explanatory talks or models. What I tell through my experience, shows a dilemma between two opposite ways of treating literacy in teacher training. One takes into account what is well known, or what is in debate today in this field. The other takes into account what teachers are doing and how they can be used as models by young teachers.
The purpose of our work reported in this chapter is to shed light on the nature of the relations between teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK) and their understanding of how children learn that subject matter. The main thesis we present here is that teachers’ levels of SMK do not influence their understandings of children’s learning. This thesis runs counter to both common sense and the research literature.
This section contains four chapters, each written from a different perspective. They complement each other well in raising questions and outlining their own views regarding some of teachers’ central concerns in the assessment of children’s progress and the planning of literacy instruction. I will discuss the issues on assessment first and those on teaching in the second part of this introduction.
It is of the greatest importance that children make a good start in learning to read. Once children fall behind, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to catch up, as their peers read more and forge ahead in all areas of the curriculum (e.g., Stanovich, 1986). So it is important to get the classroom programme right from the start. Especially in inner city schools, the child’s experience in school may be critical. Children from poorer homes are more likely to come to school with a more limited experience of books and fewer reading skills. They tend to start behind the other children and make slower progress. They rely heavily on school for their literacy experiences.
In this chapter I shall focus on different approaches to reading and writing instruction and analyze their psychological assumptions and educational implications referring to results from different studies of orthographic development in the German speaking countries. The acquisition of literacy can be viewed from different angles. Our project “Kinder auf dem Weg zur Schrift” (“Children’s routes to literacy”) has taken a Piagetian stance since its beginnings in 1980: the learning of children (as well as of adults, of course) is rooted in their personal experience of the world and dependent on the individual concepts they construct from interacting with it (cf. Glasersfeld, 1995).
In 1991, a mother tongue other than English or French (the two official languages in Canada) was reported by 13% of the Canadian general population, and in some metropolitan Canadian centres such as Toronto this figure is currently significantly higher (Statistics Canada, 1992; UN, 1994). This situation is not unique to Canada. In other countries urban centres are growing constantly and are becoming Increasingly multi-ethnic and multilingual as a result of global and regional economic, social and political forces. Predictions are that these demographic trends will continue into the 21st century.
The title “Words, Letters and Smurphs” arose out of some work I did with some 10 year old children some time ago. Within the context of some work on verbs, it involved a game where the children were asked to create verbs by adding particular grammatical affixes or suffixes to a nonsense root word, producing lengthy and agglutinous, usually alliterative and often hysterical nonsense words. The children enjoyed the work a great deal and in the ensuing class talk about definition of the bits, of suffixes and affixes, which we know as morphs, the morphs became known as Smurphs. The term stuck. So we discussed the past Smurph, the person Smurph and the negative Smurph, the question Smurph and future Smurphs. The words, letters and Smurphs of the title also correspond to the three stages of spelling development, logographic, alphabetic and orthographic identified by Frith (1985).
... Afin de répondre à cette question, Bryant et collaborateurs (Bryant, Nunes & Bindman, 1999 ;Bryant, Nunes & Snaith, 2000 ;Nunes, Bryant & Bindman, 1997b) ont utilisé des tâches impliquant la production orthographique de pseudo-mots. Dans une première expérience, Bryant et al. (1999) ont étudié si les enfants avaient appris que -ed était une terminaison possible pour un verbe au passé mais pas pour un nom. ...
... Afin de répondre à cette question, Bryant et collaborateurs (Bryant, Nunes & Bindman, 1999 ;Bryant, Nunes & Snaith, 2000 ;Nunes, Bryant & Bindman, 1997b) ont utilisé des tâches impliquant la production orthographique de pseudo-mots. Dans une première expérience, Bryant et al. (1999) ont étudié si les enfants avaient appris que -ed était une terminaison possible pour un verbe au passé mais pas pour un nom. Ils ont créé des phrases dans lesquelles était inséré un pseudo-verbe au passé (Last week we /frund/ every afternoon just after lunch) ou un pseudo-nom (I have just seen a photo of a man lifting a /frund/ which is as heavy as a car). ...
... Dès sept ans, -ed était plus souvent utilisé pour les pseudo-verbes que pour les pseudo-noms. Selon Bryant et al. (1999), ce résultat montre que de nombreuses utilisations de la séquence -ed étaient morphologiquement fondées. ...
We first examine the reason why the use of morphological information is helpful and even sometimes essential for spelling in a language such as the French language. We then report results from studies aimed at determining when (at which stage of the acquisition of spelling ?), who (all spellers ? only good spellers ?), and how (by relying on morphological rules ?) different kinds of morphological information are used in the acquisition of spelling. Finally, we address the issue of relationships between the use of morphology in spelling and children's awareness of word morphological structure.
... The similarities in the development of spelling in English (Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997a) and French (Totereau et al., 1998), especially the over-applications of the inflection -ed to non-verbs in English, and of the nominal/verbal plural markers to verbs and nouns in French have sometimes been presented as a classic cross-linguistic phenomenon (as noted in Bryant, Deacon, & Nunes, 2005;Bryant, Nunes, & Aidinis, 1999;Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999). However, there are important differences. ...
... Bryant, Nunes and their colleagues (Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999;Bryant, Nunes, & Snaith, 2000;Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997b) used spelling tasks with pseudo-words to assess the possibility that the evolution described by Nunes et al. (1997b) was due to memorization of item-specific spellings. Bryant, Nunes, and Aidinis (1999) and Bryant, Nunes, and Bindman (1999) examined whether 8-and 9-year-old children learned that -ed is a possible ending for past tense verbs, but not for nouns. ...
... Bryant, Nunes and their colleagues (Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999;Bryant, Nunes, & Snaith, 2000;Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997b) used spelling tasks with pseudo-words to assess the possibility that the evolution described by Nunes et al. (1997b) was due to memorization of item-specific spellings. Bryant, Nunes, and Aidinis (1999) and Bryant, Nunes, and Bindman (1999) examined whether 8-and 9-year-old children learned that -ed is a possible ending for past tense verbs, but not for nouns. They created sentences in which they inserted a past tense pseudo-verb ("Last week we /frund/ every afternoon just after lunch") or a pseudo-noun ("I have just seen a photo of a man lifting a /frund/ which is as heavy as a car"). ...
We present a review of the research on English and French children's learning of the place of morphemes in spelling. Traditional models suggest that children use morphology relatively late in their spelling careers and that the end-point of development lies in rule-based performance. In contrast, we show that (a) children are sensitive to the role of morphemes in determining spelling at a young age and (b) they do not rely (at least exclusively) on rules. We discuss the features that may account for discrepancies between studies demonstrating late versus early use of morphology and we examine the processes that children might rely on in their learning, specifically statistical learning of intra- and inter-word regularities and retrieval of item-specific representations. This proposal provides a potential explanation for how children learn about the representation of morphology in print.
... Kemp, 2000 (Seymour, 1994). ¶·Ú' fiÏ· ·˘Ù¿, ¤Ú¢Ó˜ ¯ˆÚ›˜ ÙË ÌÂıÔ‰ÔÏÔÁ›· Ù˘ ÂÎ·È‰Â˘ÙÈ΋˜ ·Ú¤Ì‚·Û˘ ¤¯Ô˘Ó ‹‰Ë ‰Â›ÍÂÈ fiÙÈ Ù· ·ÌËÏ¿ ›‰· ÌÔÚÊÔÏÔÁÈ΋˜ ÂÓËÌÂÚfiÙËÙ·˜ Ô˘ ··ÓÙÔ ‡Ó ÛÙÔ˘Ì ·ıËÙ¤˜ Ì ‰˘ÛÏÂÍ›· ¤¯Ô˘Ó ˘"ËÏ‹ Û˘Û¯¤ÙÈÛË Ì ÙËÓ ·Ó·ÁÓˆÛÙÈ΋ ÙÔ˘Ë ÏÈΛ· (Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999 (Carlisle, 1987. Leong, 1989. ...
... (Just & Carpenter, 1987). ¶·ÚÔÌÔ›ˆ˜, ÙÔ ·Ó Ù· ·ÔÙÂϤÛÌ·Ù¿ Ì·˜ ·ÔÙÂ-ÏÔ ‡Ó Û˘ÁÎÂÎÚÈ̤Ó˜ ÂȉڿÛÂȘ Ù˘ ÌÔÚÊÔÏÔÁÈ΋˜ ¿ÛÎËÛ˘ ÛÙ· Ï·›ÛÈ· Ù˘ ·Ú¤Ì‚·Û˘ ı· ÌÔÚÔ ‡Û ӷ ÂÏÂÁ¯ı› ·˘ÛÙËÚfiÙÂÚ· Ì ÙËÓ ÚÔÛı‹ÎË ÌË ÁψÛÛÈÎÒÓ ÂÈÚ·Ì·ÙÈÎÒÓ ¤ÚÁˆÓ (.¯., Ì·ıËÌ·ÙÈÎÒÓ) ÚÈÓ Î·È ÌÂÙ¿ ÙËÓ ·Ú¤Ì‚·ÛË (Arnbak & Elbro, 1996) (Bryant et al., 1999. Elbro & Arnbak, 1996 ...
... Hence, a lack of comprehension adversely affects academic performance. Research in applied linguistics and reading research show a strong correlation between reading proficiency and academic success at all ages with many experts (Alexander, 1997;Nunes, 1999;Townend & Turner, 2000) agreeing that poor reading skills lead to poor academic performance which in turn adversely affects student's overall development. For example, a study conducted byPretorius (2000)at the University of South Africa found that many first year Psychology and Sociology students were reading at 'frustration level', i.e. the reader reads with less than 90% decoding accuracy and 60% or less comprehension (Lesiak & Bradley-Johnson, 1983) and found a strong correlation between reading and academic performance. ...
... Students must be able to understand the texts they read to achieve academic success. Consequently, students who experience difficulties in reading will be handicapped in acquiring knowledge and in succeeding academically (Pretorius, 1996;Nunes, 1999;Rose, 2004;Ngwenya, 2010). A study byBohlman & Pretorius (2002:15)showed a " robust relationship between reading ability and academic performance ". ...
Over the past two decades there has been much written in the literature about the importance of reading and the importance of teaching students reading strategies to improve their reading comprehension. Reading is one of the most important academic tasks encountered by students. In higher education, students are exposed to a number of texts and textbooks that require independent reading. At this level they are expected to comprehend what they read so that they can analyse, critique, evaluate and synthesize information from various sources. Many students entering higher education are not adequately prepared to meet these challenges. This article highlights the literacy situation in South Africa with a particular focus on reading both in school and in higher education. In addition, the article highlights the importance of teaching students reading strategies across the curriculum in order to improve their reading comprehension, thereby enhancing their chances of academic success. The implications of this research for policy makers and academics in higher education institutions are outlined and some suggestions are made.
... El conocimiento morfosintáctico y la escritura La existencia de una conexión entre conocimiento morfosintáctico y escritura era previsible dada la constancia de los distintos morfemas, cuya forma se repite en múltiples palabras. Esta asociación ha sido puesta de relieve en un conjunto de trabajos en inglés (Bryant y cols., 1999b y 2000; Nunes, Bryant y Bindman, 1997), francés (Alegria y Mousty, 1994; Fayol, Largy y Lemaire, 1994; Fayol, Thevenin, Jarousse y Totereau,1999; Toterau y cols., 1997) y griego (Bryant y cols., 1999a). Como señalamos anteriormente, el francés y el inglés son sistemas opacos. ...
... Este predominio de la morfología sobre la fonología lleva en múltiples ocasiones a una trasgresión de esta última a fin de respetar la primera. Por ejemplo, la forma escrita final del participio de los verbos regulares ingleses (Bryant y cols., 1999b) es siempre «-ed» (kissed, hired, hated) aunque ese morfema se pronuncie de forma distinta (/-t/, /-d/, /-id/ respectivamente). En otras ocasiones, las marcas morfosintácticas no aparecen en la forma fonológica de las palabras pero sí en la ortográfica y, de nuevo, este conocimiento puede ayudar a escribirlas correctamente. ...
En este trabajo se analiza la posible influencia del conocimiento morfosintactico en la escritura de un sistema ortografico transparente como es el castellano. Se utiliza una clasificacion que considera tres situaciones en las que el conocimiento gramatical puede influir en la escritura en sistemas opacos: o) decidir, utilizando la morfologia, entre dos o mas formas escritas compatibles con la fonologia; b) representar morfemas mudos y c) escribir morfemas que. trasgreden las reglas de correspondencia fonemagrafema. Se observa que dos de las tres situaciones son aplicables en este sistema ortografico, debido principalmente a la existencia de grafonemas inconsistentes y a las particularidades fonologicas del castellano hablado en diversas regiones. Se constata que la demostracion de la conexion entre conocimiento gramatical y escritura esta mayoritariamente por hacer y se propone un cuadro teorico en el cual podrian ser concebidos este tipo de estudios. El analisis de esta relacion se inserta en un debate mas general sobre la importancia del conocimiento lexico frente al conocimiento de reglas y sobre la existencia de mecanismos generales de escritura frente a mecanismos contingentes, dependientes de la propia estructura del sistema ortografico.
... In this case, the plural morphemes " -s " and " –nt " are derived directly from morphological knowledge because these marks are totally silent in spoken language (Mousty & Alegria, 1999). Similarly, an English speller who correctly uses the past tense of " kissed " and " killed " must be given credit for directly exploiting morphology because phonological clues differ in both cases, /t/ and /d/ respectively (Bryant et al., 1999). In the present experiment, an unknown proportion of participants probably derived orthographic marks from phonological clues activated by morphology. ...
... In this case, the plural morphemes "-s" and "-nt" are derived directly from morphological knowledge because these marks are totally silent in spoken language ( Mousty & Alegria, 1999). Similarly, an English speller who correctly uses the past tense of "kissed" and "killed" must be given credit for directly exploiting morphology because phonological clues differ in both cases, /t/ and /d/ respectively ( Bryant et al., 1999). In the present experiment, an unknown proportion of participants probably derived orthographic marks from phonological clues activated by morphology. ...
Deep orthographies usually represent morphology and phonology simultaneously; both resources are necessary for spelling. In shallow orthographies, such as Spanish, phonology would be enough to spell most words. However, morphological knowledge may also take part in spelling. This study examined how Spanish children in 1st (N = 148), 2nd (N = 155) and 3rd grade (N = 155) use morphological information to spell plural nouns and verbs. A word dictation task was designed. The task included high and low frequency plural nouns ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition) and verbs in the 2nd person ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition). A lexical condition including words with a final “s” which was not morphologically motivated was used as a control condition (lexical “-s” condition). The results show that, although Spanish spelling is influenced by phonology, morphological information is also used. These results are discussed in relation to current models of word spelling.
... Hierdie swak leesbegripvaardighede en die onbevredigende onderwysersopleiding (soos in die Inleiding en kontekstualisering genoem) veroorsaak swak akademiese prestasie en belemmer leerders se algemene ontwikkeling (Nunes, 1999: 123, Townend & Turner, 2000. Tog word duidelik in die KABV vir Afrikaans Huistaal in die intermediêre fase (DBO, 2011: 10) gestel dat goedontwikkelde leesbegripvaardighede oor die hele kurrikulum belangrik is vir suksesvolle leer, asook vir volle deelname in die gemeenskap en binne die werksmilieu. ...
OPSOMMING Goedontwikkelde leesvaardighede word vir suksesvolle leer, asook vir volle deelname in die gemeenskap en werksmilieu in die Nasionale Kurrikulum-en Assesserings-beleidsverklaring (KABV) onderskryf (DBO, 2011). Ten spyte van die belangrikheid van effektiewe leesvaardighede bly die lees-standaard van intermediêrefaseleerders steeds onrusbarend laag wanneer die uitslae van internasionale leesassesserings in ag geneem word. Uit hierdie resultate word dit duidelik dat leerders nie voldoende leesbegrip het wanneer hulle op die inhoud van 'n leesteks geassesseer word nie. Alhoewel duidelike kriteria vir tekskeuse bestaan, kan die oorsaak van die swak leesbegrip moontlik aan tekskeuse toegeskryf word. Vir hierdie artikel is die leesbaarheidsvlak van voorgeskrewe tekste as moontlike struikelblok ondersoek. Verskeie leesbaarheidsindekse is ondersoek, maar spesifiek dié wat vir Afrikaans Huistaal gebruik kan word om tekskompleksiteit te meet. Die leesbaarheid van tekste in huistaalhandboeke (intermediêre fase) is bereken. Die ondersoek is vanuit die interpretivisme benader en is kwalitatief van aard. Ten eerste is 'n uitgebreide literatuurondersoek na die leessituasie geloods met betrekking tot intermediêrefaseleerders, tekste, kriteria vir tekskeuse, die leesbaarheid van tekste en leesbaarheidsindekse. Ten tweede is die KABV (Afrikaans Huistaal, intermediêre fase) ontleed om vas te stel wat die riglyne vir tekste, tekskeuse en leesbaarheid behels. Laastens is KABV-geakkrediteerde handboeke ontleed om die leesbaarheidsvlakke van enkele tekste daarin te bepaal. Die oorkoepelende temas uit hierdie drie data-insamelingsmetodes is gebruik om moontlike voorstelle vir Afrikaans Huistaal-onderwysers en handboek-samestellers ten opsigte van selfgerigte tekskeuse vir intermediêrefaseleerders met behulp van 'n leesbaarheidsindeks te maak.
... They showed that morphological awareness made a unique contribution to the prediction of spelling in Greek. Hence, in educational settings, interventions should focus on analyzing the morphological structure of words in order for spelling ability to be improved (Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999;Elbro & Arnbak, 1996). ...
The objective of the study was to investigate the locus of the phonological deficit in Greek children with dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorder (hereafter children with DDLD) by testing the Degraded Phonological Representations Hypothesis and the Deficient Phonological Access Hypothesis. Sixty-six children with DDLD aged 7-12 years and 63 typically developing (TD) children aged 7-12 years, all monolingual Greek speakers, were assessed with phoneme deletion, nonword repetition, rapid automatic naming, and spelling tasks, in addition to a range of language and reading tasks. The DDLD group performed significantly poorly on phoneme deletion tasks loading on phonological short-term memory capacity. Further, a qualitative analysis of spelling errors revealed that the majority of errors (96%) made by the DDLD group did not change the phonology of the spelled words, showing that mainly nonphonological difficulties account for poor spelling accuracy performance in Greek children with DDLD. The findings are consistent with the view that phonological representations of children with dyslexia and DLD are intact, but less accessible.
... There is evidence that children, even after receiving explicit instruction in the digraphs, tend to develop a delayed understanding of their use (EHRI; SOFFER, 1999). Nunes and Aldinis (1999), in brazilian portuguese, found that children in the first years of schooling made more mistakes in words that contained digraphs as opposed to those that did not, and that weaker readers had greater difficulties with digraphs. They put forward the hypothesis that these readers do not understand the need for the consonantal digraph to represent a sound due to phonological difficulties (eg. ...
The study of the strategies that children use in reading words and the analysis of errors that typically occur throughout the learning process are of critical importance for the understanding of reading acquisition. The objective of this study was to understand the process of reading acquisition in European Portuguese in the beginning of elementary school. We sought to know if there would be differences in the frequency of phonological and lexical errors and in the pattern of phonological errors between the first two years of elementary school. The participants were 175 children from the 1st year and 137 from the 2nd year from 6 schools. An oral word reading task was applied. The errors were categorized as phonological, with several subcategories, and lexical. Differences were found in the frequency of phonological and lexical errors between the two years as well as in the subtypes of phonological errors that typically occurred. The most frequent errors were in substitution, occurring mostly in the consonants and digraphs. Errors of addition and suppression mainly occurred in complex syllables. These results that contributed to a characterization of the typical errors in this learning phase are an important tool in the detection of early difficulties in the reading process and in the adequacy of teaching-learning strategies. This study allows for a better understanding of the processes used by children in solving the problems that the characteristics of the Portuguese language poses to them, as well as allowing for an educational intervention that leads to greater success in learning to read. Keywords Beginning learners-Learning-Word reading-Error pattern 1-Funding by PEst-OE/PSI/UI0332/2016, da Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) program.
... Recent experimental evidence suggests that awareness of the internal structure of words is linked to spelling development in a variety of alphabetic orthographies (Arnbak & Elbro, 2000;Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999;Bryant, Nunes, & Aidinis, 1999;Leong, 2000;Sénéchal, Basque, & Leclaire, Effects of Morphological Training on Individuals with Difficulties… 3 2006). Scientists theorise that the processing of morphological units aids the retrieval of orthographic patterns during spelling. ...
This chapter presents a study that employs a case-study design aiming to examine the effectiveness of training of morphological structure on the spelling of complex words by 8 Greek primary school students who faced particular difficulties in spelling acquisition. Students (6 males and 2 females) were attending Learning Support Units in mainstream primary schools (Grades 2 to 6) in the prefecture of Dodecanese in Greece. The experimental design of the intervention was based on the word-pair paradigm (a base and an inflected or a derived word) as in the Tsesmeli and Seymour's (2009) study, and included a pre-test, a training programme and a post-test. Pre- and post-test items entailed two lists of word pairs, the List of Inflections (n= 50 pairs) and the List of Derivations (n= 50 pairs). The Training Program aimed to offer systematic, targeted and step-by-step instruction of morphological decomposition of words to the students using color-coding techniques. It was implemented on an individual basis and delivered via the Smart Notebook educational software (Smart Technologies, 2007) which particularly helped students to interact positively with verbal stimuli. The intervention had a substantial impact in enhancing the spelling of complex words by 8 Greek individuals. In particular, instructional gains by each individual were statistically significant, and generalised considerably to untrained but analogous words and pseudowords in terms of structure and suffixation. Qualitative analysis of the results revealed that the increase was most important on suffix spelling (Mann & Singson, 2003). Τhe degree of improvement by eight students did not seem to be associated directly with their chronological age but rather with the stage of their spelling acquisition. This relationship was statistically negative, suggesting that the degree of improvement was greater in students with lower spelling capabilities. These findings are particularly important for the development of alternative approaches in the educational interventions for individuals with spelling difficulties and developmental dyslexia, and are consistent with the experimental literature (Nunes & Bryant, 2006; Reed, 2008; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2009).
... Por ejemplo, la palabra «cantado» está constituida por dos morfemas, el radical «cant-» que transmite el significado y el morfema flexivo «-ado» que cumple la función sintáctica de señalar el participio de los verbos de la primera conjugación. Los morfemas derivativos se unen al radical para generar palabras nuevas, que pertenecen a una categoría sintáctica determinada; por ejemplo, «-mente» es un morfema derivativo que genera adverbios (lenta, lentamente ), «-ero» genera sustantivos que indican un oficio (carta/cartero), etc. Por tanto, no se puede separar la morfología de la sintaxis y tampoco del significado, ya que como señalan Bryant y cols.1999bNunes, Bryant y Bindman, 1997), francés (Alegria yMousty, 1994;Fayol, Largy y Lemaire, 1994;Fayol, Thevenin, Jarousse y Totereau,1999; Toterau y cols., 1997) y griego (Bryant y cols., 1999a). ...
This study analyses the possible influence of morphosyntactic knowledge on the spelling of a transparent orthographic system such as Spanish. A three situation classification where the grammatical knowledge could influence the spelling of opaque orthographic systems is used: a) deciding between two or more acceptable spelling sequences; b) spelling silent morphemes; c) conventional spellings for morphemes which flout letter-sound correspondence rules. It is observed that two out of three situations could be applied to Spanish, mainly due to the singularities of some Spanish region speakers and to the existence of inconsistent graphonemes. It is ascertained that there is almost not evidence about the connection between morphosyntactic knowledge and spelling. A theoretical frame for this kind of studies is provided. The analysis of this relationship concerns the lexical knowledge versus rule knowledge debate, and that of the general spelling mechanisms as opposed to contingent mechanisms that are dependent on the orthographic system structure itself.
... reading habits, reading preferences, changes in reading, printed media, electronic media, academic literacy 'n Beduidende aantal navorsers in toegepaste linguistiek en leesgedrag wys ook op 'n sterk ooreenkoms tussen leesvaardigheid, akademiese sukses en sosiale ontwikkeling (Alexander 1997;Nunes 1999;Townend & Turner 2000). Bharutham (2012) lys 'n hele rits studies wat gedoen is en waarvan die bevindinge daarop dui dat studente wat sukkel om akademiese tekste te lees, dit moeilik vind om inligting daaruit te onttrek en gevolglik leerprobleme ontwikkel. ...
The purpose of this article is to investigate relationships between the reading habits of a group of first-year students at the University of Pretoria, and their language and academic literacy skills. The students were tested as students who are at risk on account of their poor language proficiency. Various aspects of their reading habits are examined, such as the students’ experience of reading as a school activity. Furthermore, possible changes in reading habits in a technological era are investigated by determining whether students have exchanged printed media for electronic media, which specific reading behaviours students reveal, how reading as an activity of relaxation is approached amongst students, as well as the level of reading frequency amongst students over a broad spectrum of print and electronic media. Lastly, the article touches on students’ use of technological resources and social networks. The findings show that the reading habits of students with a poor language proficiency are such that they will not improve either their language proficiency or their academic reading habits.
... Researchers distinguish various causes of reading problems, the most important of which are biological (Taylor, Pearson, Harris & Garcia, 1995); genetic (Townend & Turner, 2001); and behaviour-related (Nunes, 1999). Merchant & Fairbairn (2001:4) state that 'approximately 4% of any population experience reading problems of a neurological nature'. ...
The standard of reading of learners in the intermediate phase is cause for considerable concern. In this article, the intermediate phase refers to grades 4, 5 and 6 (roughly ages 10 – 12). According to the 2008 Evaluation Assessment Tests for Reading, only 15% of learners in Grade 6 achieved the required literacy level. Clearly, reading achievement is a problem in South Africa. Although approximately 4% of any given population experience neurological reading problems, the focus of this article is on the significant number of learners in the intermediate phase who experience reading problems and the generic causes of reading problems for learners in general. The intent is to alert teachers and parents to the characteristics of a struggling reader so that the problem can be identified and addressed early. Firstly, ways in which learning problems are manifested are described. Secondly, a discussion of various types of reading problems, of which four, namely poor reading comprehension, inadequate reading fluency, a lack of vocabulary and a negative attitude towards reading, are discussed in depth. Strategies for struggling readers are presented and recommendations are made. The conclusion is that learners who experience reading problems can learn to read successfully when given the necessary support.
... However, these were most frequent at the morpheme level. This finding is in stark contrast to English or other alphabetic orthographies, where spelling is not usually centrally dictated by morpheme, at least at such a young age in children (but see Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999, for confusions in spelling past tense in English, e.g., ed vs. t). Chinese spelling errors are overwhelmingly likely to fall at the level of the morpheme, specifically such that a given character is unknown or forgotten. ...
This 1-year longitudinal study examined the extent to which morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness, along with speeded naming, uniquely explained word recognition, dictation (i.e., spelling), and reading comprehension among 171 young Hong Kong Chinese children. With age and vocabulary knowledge statistically controlled, both morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge were uniquely associated with all three concurrently measured literacy skills, as well as longitudinal measures of specific literacy skills. Naming speed was also uniquely associated with concurrent word reading, as well as all three literacy skills longitudinally, even with their autoregressive effects controlled. Analyses of children's spelling mistakes indicated that 97% and 95% of all errors were either morpholexically or orthographically based at times 1 and 2, respectively. Morphologically based spelling errors were also uniquely associated with all three literacy skills across time. Findings underscore the importance of morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge for Chinese literacy acquisition.
... Educators should also explore new avenues for facilitation of literacy acquisition in English among Chinese children, including explicitly highlighting word stress boundaries and derivational and inflectional aspects of English, both in oral language and in writing. Although research on the effects of training of such skills is relatively sparse, studies on the effects of teaching targeted knowledge such as distinctions between spellings of morphemes and non-morphemes (e.g., the past tense of walk is spelled walked, rather than walkt because ed is a common morpheme marking past tense in English verbs; Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999) are necessary in order to determine what best supports Chinese children's learning of different facets of English literacy. Finally, apart from these multifaceted issues at the word level, more studies should be carried out to understand how Chinese children build higher-order English reading and writing skills. ...
simplest units of meanings comprising them (i.e., snow, man, eye, ball), has a given pronunciation and meaning by itself. Therefore, the modern Chinese writing system might best be described as morphosyllabic (Haynes & Carr, 1990; Hoosain, 1991). In modern Chinese, more than 70% of all words are compounds, made up of two or more morphemes (Institute of Language Teaching and Research, 1986). Most Chinese children also learn an alphabetic (or other phonetic coding system) script as an aid to help them read. The most widely used of these, Pinyin, is used to transcribe Mandarin speech using letters from the Roman alphabet. Pinyin transcriptions of Chinese words usually appear together with newly introduced Chinese characters in textbooks for young children to aid pronunciation and comprehension of these words (Siok & Fletcher, 2001).
... It is potentially noteworthy that the retrieval of whole word spellings for plurals from the lexicon is possible only in English, perhaps accounting for the continued evidence of errors in spelling of plurals in French even into adulthood. Nevertheless, the general pattern has been interpreted as evidence of a classic cross-linguistic phenomenon of rule-based learning (as in Bryant, Deacon, & Nunes, 2005;Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999). ...
We put forward our view on how children learn to spell through a review of recent research on English and French children's spelling development. We examine children's learning of graphotactic conventions (legal combinations of letters), followed by a more in-depth treatment of how children learn the place of morphemes (smallest units of meaning in language) in spelling. We contrast findings from recent research with those of traditional models that suggest that children use both graphotactic and morphological information relatively late in their spelling careers and that the end-point of development, particularly for morphological conventions, lies in rule-based performance. Instead, it seems that quite young children's spellings are influenced by both graphotactic and morphological patterns and that writers do not rely (at least exclusively) on rules. We consider the possibility that children might use statistical learning to gain knowledge of both graphotactic and morphological features of the orthography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... The importance to literacy of phonological skills is well established (Bryant & Bradley, 1985;Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989;Torgesen & Wagner, 1992) and preschool phonological training has the potential to produce gains in reading development (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1995;Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988) and to treat reading disability (Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994). There is now a consensus (Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999;Henry, 1993;Moats, 1998;Snowling, 2000) that other aspects of literacy disability merit further investigation, especially the morphemic patterns of language that could provide an effective complementary strategy for later reading and spelling development. ...
This exploratory study aimed to determine the effects of explicit instruction about morphological structure on the spelling of derived words. A cross-sectional ability level-design was employed in order to determine differences in response to instruction between dyslexic students aged 13 + years and age-matched and spelling level matched control groups. The study was based on the word-pair paradigm (a base and derived word) and combined oral instruction with written materials. The intervention had a substantial impact in enhancing the spelling of derivations by the dyslexic adolescents. Their gains were appropriate for their spelling level, stable two months after the intervention, and generalized to untrained but analogous items in terms of structure and suffixation. Non-dyslexic younger participants matched in terms of spelling level also showed training and generalisation effects of the same size as their dyslexic counterparts, while the age-matched controls did not improve so much because of ceiling effects. It is proposed that morphological awareness constitutes a positive asset for dyslexic adolescents that can be used efficiently to counterbalance their severe phonological deficiencies.
Objectives: This study aimed to examine the effects of an intervention using the gamification-based morphological approach on the abilities of writing letter-sound non correspondences in children with poor writing skills.Methods: In this study, a multi-probe design was used to verify the effect of intervention. The subjects were three children with poor writing skills (grade 2-3). Their writing skills were examined through tests of treated and untreated graphemes (eojeols) in the baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases. In this study, we applied the morphological approach that helps students to write the letter-sound non-correspondences through a game. Additionally, we provided instruction that helps them to learn the morphological knowledge and phonological rules. Each student was trained twice a week for 10-14 sessions.Results: All students were found to have high improvements in the letter-sound non correspondences eojeols. In the generalization phrase, all students showed improvements. In the maintenance phase, all students were found to have a similar effect size.Conclusion: First, gamification-based morphological approach on writing skills promote awareness of morphological knowledge in children with poor writing, and have a positive effect on letter-sound non correspondences eojeols. Additionally, training in applying morphological knowledge promotes children’s writing skills that remain in the early stages of writing development. Second, gamification-based intervention can elicit interest and motivation in children with poor writing and can be repeatedly trained.
What is the unique mission of developmental psychology? How has it evolved historically? What are its current challenges? The chapters in this collection present the view that research, history and policy are essential and interlocking components of a mature developmental psychology. Patterns of human development differ markedly across historical epochs, cultures and social circumstances. Major societal changes examined by contributing authors - the advent of universal compulsory schooling, the adoption of a one-child policy in China, US policy shifts in healthcare, welfare and childcare - present 'natural experiments' in social design. Authors challenge the idea of a clear distinction between basic and applied developmental research. In sharp contrast with the view that science is value-neutral, developmental psychologists have from the outset pursued the betterment of children and families through educational, childcare and health initiatives. An historical perspective reveals the beneficial, if sometimes contentious, interplay between empirical research and social programs and policies.
Niños aprenden a escribir de modos muy diferentes. El comienzo del curso escolar no es la hora cero, porque la mayoría de los niños que ingresan a la escuela ya conocen varias letras. El profesor Hans Brügelmann, pedagogo de la universidad de Bremen estudia como progresan en el aprendizaje de leer y escribir.
Las cuatro suposiciones siguientes resumen los resultados de nuestras investigaciones a este respecto y su significado para la práctica escolar:
(1) El comienzo del curso escolar no es la "hora cero".
(2) Los caminos de los niños hacia la escritura son distintos.
(3) El aprendizaje no progresa ni en modo aditivo ni regular.
(4) Las faltas no son "faltas".
Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die deutsche und internationale Forschung zum lautorientierten Verschriften von Wörtern durch Schreibanfänger ("invented spelling"; "alphabetische Strategie")). Dabei wird unterschieden zwischen Korrelations- und Interventionsstudien, und unter letzteren vor allem auch nach verschiedenen Formen des Feedbacks. Insgesamt zeichnen die Befunde ein positives Bild vom Einfluss des lautorientierten Schreibens auf die spätere Rechtschreibkompetenz.
Ein kurzes Fazit vorweg: Es gibt heute zu viele Kinder, Jugendliche und Erwachsene, die nicht gut genug lesen und schreiben können, um private, berufliche und öffentliche schriftsprachliche Aufgaben erfolgreich zu bewälti-gen. Dieses Problem zeigt sich aber auch schon vor 70, 50, 30 Jahren, und zwar in etwa gleicher Größenordnung - allerdings in einer Gesellschaft, deren Alltag weniger stark durch schriftsprachliche Anforderungen bestimmt war, so dass es nicht so auffällig war.
Resumo O estudo das estratégias que as crianças usam na leitura de palavras e a análise dos erros que tipicamente ocorrem ao longo do processo de aprendizagem numa dada ortografia são da maior importância para a compreensão do processo de aprendizagem da leitura. O objectivo deste trabalho foi perceber como se processa a aquisição da leitura no início do ensino fundamental no português europeu. Procurou-se saber se haveria diferenças na frequência de erros fonológicos e lexicais e no padrão de erros fonológicos entre os dois primeiros anos do ensino fundamental. Participaram 175 crianças do 1º ano e 137 do 2º ano de seis escolas. Foi aplicada uma prova de leitura oral de palavras. Os erros foram categorizados em fonológicos, com diversas subcategorias, e lexicais. Encontraram-se diferenças na frequência dos erros fonológicos e lexicais entre os dois anos, assim como nos subtipos de erros fonológicos que tipicamente ocorreram. Os erros de substituição foram os mais frequentes, tendo ocorrido mais nas consoantes e nos dígrafos. Seguiram-se os erros de adição e de supressão, que ocorreram sobretudo em sílabas complexas. Tais resultados, contribuindo para uma caracterização dos erros típicos nessa fase de aprendizagem, revelam-se um instrumento importante na detecção de dificuldades precoces na aprendizagem da leitura e na adequação de estratégias de ensino-aprendizagem. Este estudo permite uma melhor compreensão dos processos usados pelas crianças na resolução dos problemas que as características da língua portuguesa lhes coloca, assim como poderá permitir uma intervenção educativa que conduza a um maior sucesso na aprendizagem da leitura.
This is a chapter about why we teach. I do not ask what the best way is to teach this subject matter or that. Nor do I ask how we can assess children’s learning as a result of teaching. Instead, I ask a deceptively simple question: Why do we teach in the first place? The search for answers to that question takes us to the borders between our biological, psychological, and cultural endowment as humans. Teaching, or folk pedagogy, the social transformation of knowledge from one person to another or the attempt to engender it in others, is one of the most remarkable of human enterprises. I propose that teaching, which is central to education in the broad sense of that term, can also be seen as an essential domain of inquiry for the cognitive sciences. This is so because, as I attempt to show, teaching may be a natural cognitive ability and is essential to what it means to be a human being. Furthermore, I believe that a search for the cognitive underpinnings of teaching may lead to a description of some of the fundamental building blocks of human cognition and its development. Learning, teaching’s mirror image, has been a major focus of the cognitive sciences, to be sure, but intentional pedagogy aimed to cause learning has, by and large, been flying below the cognitive sciences’ radar.
Spelling of cross-linguistically very similar nonwords was compared in 115 Danish and 77 Icelandic children (primarily 3rd and 4th graders). Danish children made more errors than Icelandic children on word medial consonant doublets and on word initial consonant clusters, even when the groups compared were matched on simpler spelling tasks. These results suggest that the acquisition of phonemic encoding skills is slower in "deep" orthography such as Danish than in more "transparent" orthography such as Icelandic. The effect of orthography was expected for consonant doublets because of the relatively more complex sound-letter correspondences in Danish. For consonant clusters, however, sound-letter correspondences are perfectly regular in both languages. The study thus points to the conclusion that even the mastery of regular sound-letter correspondences may be delayed in deep orthography.
This study of dyslexia was concerned with the quality of phonological representations of lexical items. It extended the studies of verbal learning in dyslexia from learning new vocabulary items (pseudo-names) to the learning of more well-specified variants of known words. The participants were 19 dyslexic adolescents in grades 4 to 6 and 19 younger normal readers in grade 2 matched on single word decoding. The dyslexics were significantly outperformed by the reading-age controls in non-word reading and in phoneme awareness. The dyslexics also took longer time to learn to associate a set of pseudo-names with pictures of persons although the dyslexics learned to associate familiar names with pictures as quickly as the controls did. The acquisition of new phonological representations of words was studied in an imitation task with maximally distinct pronunciations of long, familiar words. The dyslexics gained less than the controls in this task. They also gained less on one measure taken from a phoneme substitution task with the same words as in the distinctness task. The results are interpreted in the light of the hypothesis that poorly specified phonological representations may be an underlying problem in dyslexia.
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