The pronunciation of final -s clusters is not uniformly treated by dictionaries, phoneticians, and writers of ESL texts. Four reasons for treating the pairs of clusters as homophonous in ESL instruction are: linguistic observation, linguistic patterning, linguistic history, and linguistic and pedagogical simplicity. This explicit treatment may…

Shows that Dutch children acquire and use lexical entries containing specific information about visual-orthographic structure quite early, even after only six months of formal training in reading. (FL)

Argues that many spelling and pronunciation mistakes made by students are due to consonant cognates--two consonant sounds that are produced almost identically with the articulators except that one is voiced and the other is voiceless. (FL)

A computer analysis of the most frequently occurring (approximately 18,000) words in the English language was conducted. All letter strings from two to seven letters in length (ngrams) were output. The information maybe useful for reading instruction. (Author/RD)

Effects of target-noise similarity on the ability to discriminate between two target letters were investigated. Performance was low when the noise letter shared the same name as the target. Thus, interletter interference effects cannot be explained in terms of inhibition between visual features. A "cognitive masking" hypothesis is proposed.…

Discusses experiments that provide information about the reading processes involved in mapping phonemes onto alphabetic symbols; suggests several techniques for helping children both to differentiate among the short vowel sounds and to associate sound and symbol. Focuses on the needs of beginning readers who are experiencing reading difficulties.…

Outlines reading activities that can be correlated with children's literature; focuses on the development of vocabulary, syntactic, and graphophonic skills. (MAI)

Two types of phonological training of children with reading disabilities were compared. Children trained in speech discrimination, letter-sound correspondence, and phonemic awareness (SP/LPA) and children trained only in letter-sound correspondence and phonemic awareness (n=35) improved in phonemic awareness, but only the SP/LPA group scored…

Reports on three studies comparing the reading and phonological skills of children with Down Syndrome (DS) and younger normally developing children of similar reading level. Notes that for children with DS, letter-sound knowledge did not predict reading. Suggests that children with DS do not possess full phoneme awareness. (PM)

Examines whether the conscious use of phonological knowledge is associated with invented spelling and whether a relation exists between invented spelling and reading. Finds a relation between spelling ability and conscious use of phonological knowledge; however, word reading appears to be a related (but separate) ability from word writing. (RS)

Two experiments explored the effects of one aspect of English phonology, syllabic consonants, on young children's spelling. For first graders, vowel omissions and misorderings occurred primarily for syllabic /r/ and /l/, whereas by second grade only orthographically influenced errors on syllabic /l/ remained. Results show that the sound form of…

A study of 16 first-grade Greek children with literacy difficulties and 16 controls found that the time needed to process a written item was the crucial index of difficulty in literacy acquisition and that phonemic awareness and speech rate tasks were predictors of learning to read and spell Greek words. (Author/CR)

This article considers differences between good and poor spellers and concludes individual differences in spelling ability are the result of differences in the knowledge of sound-spelling information rather than differences in visual memory abilities. Poor spellers may rely more on visual strategies, but this is due to limited phonological…

Notes evidence that backward readers might have difficulties with spelling morphemes. Compares a group of backward readers' spellings with control groups matched on chronological age and reading level. Finds that backward reads are behind their age group in correct spelling but no worse than groups at the same reading level. (DSK)

Investigates the relation between phonological awareness, sound-to-letter mapping knowledge, and printed word learning in novice five-year-old readers. Explores effects of visual memory and of teaching methods. Finds mental representations of printed words are more easily formed by beginners who are able to match at least some of the phonological…