The role of rime units in reading

Abstract

There is currently considerable debate over the most appropriate phonological unit to teach beginning readers. While developmental theories promote the role of large-units such as syllables and onset and rime, instructional theories advocate the use of small-units through grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs). The practical implications of this issue have acquired particular significance since the publication of the National Literacy Strategy and its emphasis on teaching rhyming skills and large-units of spelling-to-sound correspondence. This paper reviews the literature on this debate and highlights the need for a detailed evaluation of the two styles of reading instruction (small vs large units) of the kind currently being undertaken in Essex. We summarize the results of one study which replicated Goswami’s (1993) research into children’s use of analogy on the clue word task with a sample of beginning readers who had received systematic instruction in grapheme-phoneme relationships for one, two or three terms. The findings indicate that teaching children GPCs (small units) facilitates children’s skills in reading phonically regular words and enables them to overcome the restrictions of task presentation which is hypothesized to influence the use of onset and rime in the clue word experiments.