A Study of the Vocabularies of Beginning Books in Twelve Reading Methods

Abstract

During the past years much attention has been given to the methods by which children are taught to read. Textbook companies have published readers, claiming for each set distinct advantages, the particular merit specified usually being a difference in the method of instruction, especially in the beginning book. Less attention has been paid to the content, and few comparisons have been made of different series with regard to the size of the vocabulary, the amount of repetition, or the degree to which the books supplement each other. Although writers of textbooks have stated that their books are characterized by a constant reappearing of old or that supplemental primers use largely the same vocabulary of fundamental words though their stories differ, even a cursory examination shows that there is wide variance in introductory readers along these lines. On account of the need for more information pertaining to the content of readers, this study was undertaken. It deals with the vocabularies of the beginning books of twelve different sets of readers, each series representing a more or less distinct method of reading. The beginning books of the following sets were included in the study: