A hallmark of skilled reading is recognizing written words automatically from memory by sight. How beginning readers attain this skill is explained. They must acquire foundational knowledge, including phonemic segmentation, grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding, and spelling skills. When these skills are applied, spellings of words become bonded to…

Suggests teaching a compare/contrast method of word identification rather than teaching syllabication rules to decode words and describes research investigating this technique. (MKM)

Points out that oral reading involves visual, auditory, and kinesthetic perception and that it is impossible to divide reading methods into auditory and visual categories. Discusses the need to discover whether a child's perceptual abilities are directly related to his learning propensities and lists several other areas of needed research.…

Concludes that there are numerous problems with the test studied. Argues that the abilities it assesses and their relationship to reading and reading instruction are not sufficiently understood to warrant the test's use. (FL)

This study confirmed that young Spanish-speaking readers use contextual clues when they read in Spanish. (HOD)

Outlines diverse strategies (contextual clues, palindromes, figurative language/idioms, etc.) for increasing vocabulary skills of gifted readers in the lower primary grades, using children's literature to supplement good tradebooks. (NKA)