Letter-sound Correspondences Research Articles

The literacy abilities of 11 year-old students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds

This study investigated the literacy skills of all children in Year 6 of a Queensland school in a socially disadvantaged area who were exposed to a “whole language” approach to the learning of written language. Standardized tests of non-word spelling and reading comprehension (including written sentence responses) revealed a large group of children with literacy difficulties. This group of 11-year-old children, and a group of matched controls, were further assessed on measures of phonological awareness and letter sound knowledge. The results indicated that the means of both groups were below those of the standardization populations, and that the children had particular difficulty writing short answers to questions. The group of children identified as performing poorly on the non-word spelling test was heterogeneous. Some had poor phonological awareness skills, some had limited sound-letter correspondence knowledge, some children had problems with both skills. The data demonstrated the need for assessment to identify the specific sub-skills with which individuals have difficulty, in order to allow for appropriate intervention rather than a generic phonological awareness intervention package for all children with literacy difficulties irrespective of age or social status.

The Role of Oracy in Developing Comprehension in Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners

Components of first-grade intervention programs that addressed oral language and listening comprehension instruction within an intensive literacy intervention for native Spanish-speaking students struggling with reading difficulties are described. Findings for the intervention are based on 4 large-scale experimental studies (published elsewhere) in which the intervention was provided to struggling first-grade English language learners (ELLs) in the same language as the core reading instruction (Spanish or English). Interventions taught children the alphabetic principle with letter–sound correspondences and how to read words quickly and accurately as well as providing practices that enhanced the language skills needed to understand word and text meaning. Thus, explicit instruction was provided in oral language, phonemic awareness, alphabetic knowledge, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies. The essential features of the intervention that addressed oral language were a shared storybook reading routine in addition to enhanced language acquisition instruction. Findings indicate that students in the intervention made progress in the areas of phonological awareness, letter–sound identification, word attack, and comprehension skills. Our intervention studies empirically informs us on the instructional components of effective reading and oral language interventions for Spanish-speaking ELLs who are at risk for reading difficulties.

Visual Phonics: An English Code Buster?

Visual phonics is an instructional program to provide print awareness, alphabet knowledge, and sound-letter correspondence for children with hearing loss who experience difficulty developing a foundation of phonemic awareness skills. Its purpose is "to clarify the sound symbol relationship between spoken English and print" (Waddy-Smith & Wilson, 2003, p. 15). It is implemented in numerous school districts, particularly in California and Florida, and can be learned in a 2-day workshop. Administrators, teachers, and speech pathologists see potential benefit in using Visual Phonics to help students with hearing loss raise their achievement scores in reading and spelling. However, it is critical to note that Visual Phonics has virtually no research base. Researchers, teachers, and speech pathologists are called upon to collect their data and begin research on the effectiveness of Visual Phonics. This is a case in which the research-to-practice gap must be closed.

Effects of orthographic consistency, frequency, and letter knowledge on children’s vowel spelling development

This study investigated children’s sensitivity to spelling consistency, and lexical and sublexical (rime) frequency, and their use of explicitly learned canonical vowel graphemes in the early stages of learning to spell. Vowel spellings produced by 78 British children at the end of reception year (mean age 5 years, 7 months) and 6 months later in mid-Year 1 were assessed. Regression analyses revealed that, at both test times, knowledge of sound–letter correspondences influenced spelling performance; however, unconditional consistency of vowel spellings affected children’s spelling most strongly, over and above additional effects of word and rime frequency and the complexity of the target vowel grapheme. The effect of conditional consistency of vowel spellings given coda contexts was not significant. Thus, young children are sensitive to various statistical properties of the orthography from the earliest phases of spelling development and, in particular, to the unconditional consistency of the vowel spelling pattern.

What is the Role of Audition in Literacy?

What is the Role of Audition in Literacy?

Mnemonics Strategy Development: Improving Alphabetic Understanding In Turkish Students, At Risk for Failure in EFL Settings

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of integrated mnemonics on consonant letter naming and consonant sound production for three 4th grade Turkish students, at-risk for failure in an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classroom. Mnemonic picture cards, where the target consonant letter was embedded as an integral part of the picture, were developed (e.g., the letter C as the clock, the letter D as the drum). Results showed that (a) all three students reached mastery on consonant letter naming, and (b) all three students showed marked improvement for consonant sound production, with one student reaching mastery. Letter-sound correspondence performance remained near instructional levels one week post-intervention. Generalization data showed students could produce some words that began and ended with consonant sounds, once consonant letter-sound correspondence was mastered.

Learning to Read and Spell: The Relative Role of Phonemic Awareness and Onset-Rime Awareness

It has been assumed that Chinese-speaking children do not have phonemic awareness. This study investigated phonemic awareness of Chinese-speaking children in tandem with onset-rime awareness and their relative roles in learning to read and spell English. The participants were 29 fourth graders with better onset-rime and phonemic awareness, 29 with better onset-rime but poorer phonemic awareness, and 26 with poorer onset-rime and phonemic awareness. The children first took a criterion learning of letter-sound correspondences task and were then tested on their abilities to spell and read English pseudowords. The results showed that most children were able to detect segmental components in a falling diphthong or a VN rime, indicating phonemes were constituents in their phonological awareness. Children with better onset-rime and phonemic awareness performed better in English pseudoword spelling than children with better onset-rime but poorer phonemic awareness, who in turn, performed better than children with poorer onset-rime and phonemic awareness. Similar patterns were observed for pseudoword reading, only that the effect of onset-rime awareness was less conclusive. These findings underscore the role of phonemic awareness in the acquisition of EFL reading and spelling for Chinese-speaking children.

Orthography as a handicap? A direct comparison of spelling acquisition in Danish and Icelandic

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.

Phoneme isolation ability is not simply a consequence of letter-sound knowledge

Two studies investigated whether knowledge of specific letter-sound correspondences is a necessary precursor of children's ability to isolate phonemes in speech. In both studies, Czech and English children reliably isolated phonemes for which they did not know the corresponding letter. These data refute the idea that phoneme manipulation ability can only develop as a consequence of orthographic (letter-sound correspondence) knowledge.

How to optimize orthography

The basic goal of this paper is to provide a formal treatment of “orthographic principles” in terms of optimization. Starting from a discussion of a preference-oriented vs. a rule-oriented systematic theory of orthography, the paper explores an explicit description of orthographic regularities in terms of Optimality Theory, that is, in terms of a theory of constraints and their interaction. The empirical focus of this paper is on German orthography, in particular on sound–letter correspondences, on morphological constancy in the light of phonological alternations, and on the (non-)doubling of graphemes. Interactions of various constraints to specify the relationship between regular and irregular spellings involving these domains on the one hand and phonological forms on the other hand are presented.

Why is letter-name knowledge such a good predictor of learning to read?

The knowledge of letter names measured just before children enter school has been known for a long time as one of the best longitudinal predictors of learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. After a period during which the comprehensive investigation of this relationship was largely disregarded, there is now a growing interest in attempts to understand the role(s) letter names play in literacy acquisition. This paper reviews these recent studies and emphasizes their main findings regarding the influence of letter-name knowledge in early and formal literacy for three main components of literacy acquisition: first, the emergence of the phonological processing of print; then, the learning of letter-sound correspondences; finally, the development of phonemic sensitivity skills. The final section discusses the status of letter-name knowledge (LNK) in literacy acquisition and suggests possible directions for further research.

What Can Children's Spelling of Running and Jumped Tell Us About Their Need for Spelling Instruction?

This article describes effective instructional strategies for teaching verbs with inflected endings. The ability to spell past and present progressive verbs provides an example of how children need to learn to integrate their developing understanding of letter‐sound correspondences with knowledge of morphological and orthographic patterns in order to spell and write effectively. Furthermore, multisensory instruction that enables children to discover phonological, morphological, and orthographic patterns as well as instruction that incorporates opportunities for generalizing learning to context provides teachers with options for addressing these specific spelling deficits in children's written performance. While the instructional strategies described in this article were specifically designed for students who demonstrate difficulty spelling verbs with inflected endings, it is important to note that instruction in past and present progressive verbs also sets the groundwork for all students' future spelling development as they learn to spell words with multiple morphological units.

Tile Test: A Hands‐on Approach for Assessing Phonics in the Early Grades

An instrument for assessing young students' understanding of the English orthographic system is presented. The Tile Test measures understanding of phoneme awareness, letter‐sound correspondences, decoding and spelling of words, sight‐word reading, and the application of decoding and spelling in sentences. Metalinguistic questions embedded within hands‐on interactive activities reveal the nature of children's problem‐solving strategies for decoding and spelling words. The instrument is efficient and flexible, and offers feedback to guide instruction. The authors describe the instrument, its administration, and scoring, as well as offer evidence of its validity and reliability. Examples of students' responses are provided to illustrate how analysis and interpretation of results are used to make instructional decisions. The authors discuss ways for teachers to adapt the individually administered test to match their curriculum and to accommodate small‐group settings.

The Effect of Direct Instruction and Writer's Workshop on the Early Writing Skills of Children Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

A single subject multiple probe across subjects research design was used to evaluate a writing instructional program for children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Specifically, the effect of instruction on the selection of initial letters of words by 3 children with developmental disabilities who used AAC was evaluated. The writing instructional program comprised direct instruction in letter-sound correspondence and selection of initial letters of words, and a writing workshop-type task to provide instruction in literacy activities. Two of the 3 children were successful in the acquisition of the target skill, maintained use of the skill at least 1 month following instruction, and demonstrated some generalization of the skill to less structured tasks. The third child required a simplified instructional program to accommodate transient episodes of hemiplegia and to increase his time on task. The results of the study suggest that an instructional program that combines a direct instruction approach and a writing workshop-type activity may facilitate the development and application of phonemic awareness skills with children who use AAC.

The Efficacy of an Early Literacy Tutoring Program Implemented by College Students

Absctract. This article describes a two‐year study addressing the effectiveness of a highly structured, systematic tutoring intervention implemented by minimally trained college students with two cohorts of at‐risk first‐grade readers. Participants were 61 first‐grade children in Cohort 1 and 76 first‐grade children in Cohort 2. Tutors participated in three one‐hour training sessions and received occasional on‐site assistance. Individual tutoring sessions were scheduled for three to four times each week for one school year, with each cohort receiving approximately 10–14 hours of instruction across 44 sessions. The curriculum included a game to teach phonemic awareness and letter‐sound correspondence, structured word‐study activities, reading of leveled books, and simple comprehension strategies. Significant differences were found on measures of phonemic awareness and nonsense word reading for both cohorts. For Cohort 1, but not Cohort 2, significant differences were also detected for real‐word identification. Our results support using tutors to provide additional assistance and instruction in early reading, even when tutors are not professionally trained teachers.

Letter-Sound Correspondence Acquisition in First Semester Russian

Although teachers of first year Russian courses know that students often mistake letters of the Cyrillic alphabet for English letters when reading aloud and writing, no studies have documented which letters cause the most frequent misreadings, how long misreading persists, and what implications misreading has for student achievement. This semester-long study attempts to answer these questions by isolating the question of letter-sound correspondence from the larger questions of the students’ interlanguage phonology. The researchers found that ц, ё, ю, й, э consistently gave students difficulty. After 12 weeks (84 hours) of instruction, students had 93% accuracy in matching Cyrillic letters to their primary sound values. While this represents a high degree of accuracy by the end of the first semester, the researchers found that higher accuracy rates earlier in the semester (after 4 weeks [28 hours] of instruction) had a moderate positive correlation with success in the course (as measured by final grade), while high levels of gain in accuracy between the fourth and twelfth weeks of the semester showed moderate negative correlation with success in the course, suggesting that the earlier the students master letter-sound correspondences, the greater their chances for success in studying other features of the language.

Where Is the Phonics?

The purpose of this article is to review studies conducted in the last 12 years that consisted of examining the use of phonetic analysis strategies and/or phonics instruction with students with mental retardation. We conducted computer data-based searches and a manual search of 15 journals published from 1990 to 2002. Only 7 studies emerged that consisted of the use of phonetic analysis (making letter—sound correspondences) with individuals with mental retardation. Outcome measures varied across studies. However, no studies in the last 12 years focused on examining the effectiveness of direct/explicit phonics instruction with children with mental retardation. Findings from the 7 studies not emphasizing direct/explicit instruction revealed that individuals with mental retardation have the potential to benefit from phonic analysis strategies and/or instruction. Clearly, further research is needed before substantial conclusions can be derived. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Kindergarten cognitive intervention for reading difficulties: The PREP remediation in Greek

This study reports two different experiments, as a part of a longitudinal study, that evaluated a cognitive intervention (PREP: PASS Reading Enhancement Program) to enhance early phonological processing skills, such as odd-word-out, segmenting, and blending, to kindergarten children at-rish for reading difficulties, in order to support the development of subsequent word reading skills. As part of the first experiment, thirty children aged 5.1, matched on the basis of age, gender, parental education levels, Non-verbal and Verbal IQ, were assigned to an experimental and a control group (15 in each group) and compared before and after the four-week intervention on a set of phonological and cognitive (successive and simultaneous processing) measures. The two groups of participants were screened to be significantly different at pre-test on the outcome measures. The results of the first experiment indicated that the experimental group performed equally well with the control group on all the measures of phonological and cognitive processing skills. Subsequent analysis focusing on aptitude-treatment interaction indicated that the PREP program appeared to be optimally successful in improving phonological skills in cases where the cognitive profile of the 5-year-olds matched the emphasis on successive information integration. The follow-up experiment examined the long-term effects of PREP remediation. Results showed that both the experimental and control groups performed equally well on word reading tasks and, more importantly, on the bridging PREP tasks, requiring knowledge of the alphabet and of letter-sound correspondences, despite that neither of the groups had been previously trained on the latter. Discussion concludes that intervention including inductive training on the distal cognitive processes, namely successive and simultaneous processing, appears to be effective for enhancing early word-reading skills to kindergarten children at-risk for reading difficulties, even in the absence of direct training of these skills in kindergarten.

Addressing Literacy

As speech—language pathologists work more directly and in concert with educators to address reading problems in school-age children with language-based learning disabilities (LLD), knowledge of current methods in reading instruction will become critical. Eight methods found to be effective with typically developing children and children with LLD are outlined. Word identification is best trained using methods that rely upon knowledge of letter—sound correspondences in varying syllable contexts and word attack skills using letter—sound decoding and analogy. When learning reading comprehension, students benefit from methods that address vocabulary skills and text-level comprehension monitoring.

Integration of Letter-Sound Correspondences and Phonological Awareness Skills of Blending and Segmenting: A Pilot Study Examining the Effects of Instructional Sequence on Word Reading for Kindergarten Children with Low Phonological Awareness

Research evidence indicates that integration of letter sounds with phonological blending and segmenting is critical for acquisition of beginning word reading skills. Yet, a review of kindergarten intervention studies revealed that the optimal sequence for integrating these two component skills has not been investigated empirically. In this pilot study, two sequences for integrating and teaching letter-sound correspondences and phonological blending and segmenting were compared to determine which sequence resulted in higher word reading and phonological awareness performance and higher rates of growth for kindergarten children with low phonemic segmentation skills. Fifty-five children, 36 with phonemic segmentation deficits, were randomly assigned to two instructional conditions: (a) parallel, integrated (PI), or (b) parallel, non-integrated (PN-I) sequence. At posttest, initial segmentation skills explained only 7% of the variance for the PI group and 36% of the variance for the PN-I group on segmentation fluency measures. The PI sequence “closed the gap” in phonemic segmentation between children with low segmentation skills and children with adequate skills by posttest. Children in the PI sequence also performed reliably higher on word reading generalization at posttest and maintenance, and the rate of change in the growth trajectory for letter-sound fluency was greater for the PI sequence.