This edited volume grew out of a conference sponsored by the National Reading Research Center, funded through the Office of Educational Research and Improvement by the U.S. Department of Education. The purpose of the conference was to bring together beginning reading experts from the fields of education and the psychology of reading and reading disabilities so that they could present and discuss their research findings and theories about how children learn to read words, instructional contexts that facilitate this learning, background experiences prior to formal schooling that contribute, and sources of difficulty in disabled readers. Presenters wrote drafts of their chapters prior to the meeting; these were read by others and discussed at the meeting, and revisions were written to produce this volume.
Chapters in Part I focus on the importance of the internal cognitive processes of developing readers and on explanations of their growth and development. Authors in Part II of the book address the development of reading-related phonological skills in disabled readers and programs aimed at teaching disabled readers. Chapters in Part III present studies of word recognition in the context of the early home environment, and also examine several beginning reading programs in the classroom. Also, the principles that make early literacy instruction motivating to students are addressed, and the impact of early reading success on later reading habits are examined.
Ehri (chap. 1) begins by identifying the processes that develop as beginners learn to recognize written words. Ehri considers the different ways that words might be read and proposes a detailed developmental model, including the role of alphabetic processes and spelling knowledge in acquiring mature word recognition skills. Ehri emphasizes that although a method of instruction is not prescribed herein, it is paramount to take into consideration the cognitive and linguistic processes to be targeted in such instruction.
Goswami examines the importance of spelling patterns that correspond to rhymes in the spoken language on children’s reading acquisition (chap. 2). She argues that the high level of regularity of orthographic analogies at the rhyme level, as well as children’s early sensitivity to rhymes in spoken English, combine to make this a functionally important unit for beginning readers. Goswami compares the reading acquisition processes involving rhyme across a number of languages, and concludes with a section on how to incorporate the importance of rhyme units into classroom instruction.
Stahl and Murray extend the discussion of phonological awareness skills and address how these interact with basic reading skills in word recognition (chap. 3). These authors first examine the multidimensional aspects of phonological awareness skills because research has accumulated to expose earlier notions as too simplistic. A new and more detailed model of the role of these phonological awareness skills in acquiring skilled word recognition is proposed.
In Chapter 4, Metsala and Walley examine aspects of spoken language growth that may be prerequisites to phonological awareness skills. These authors argue that the phoneme emerges first as a perceptual processing unit that results from growth in vocabulary size and structure, and only later emerges as a unit that can be accessed and manipulated in awareness and reading tasks. Walley and Metsala present a model suggesting the seeds from which phonemic awareness develops.
In the following chapter, Brown argues that one can achieve a different kind of understanding of the endpoint of the reading process if one adopts the “adaptive analysis” approach that has recently received wide attention in other areas of psychological research, such as memory and perception. According to this approach, skilled adult processing is seen as an optimal processing strategy, given the statistical nature of the task at hand (chap. 5). Brown shows that this approach can be used to understand a number of core issues in the study of adult skilled reading, and he discusses the potential of such approaches for understanding the word recognition acquisition process.
Siegel begins Part II by exploring the cognitive processes that have most often been identified as major hurdles for disabled readers (chap. 6). She examines how phonological processing deficits are manifested in reading disabled children across different languages. Siegel also discusses the modularity of phonological processes and their role in word recognition development in disabled readers.
Torgesen and Burgess expand the discussion of reading-related phonological processes across the earliest years of reading acquisition (chap. 7). These authors examine whether reading-related phonological processes show sufficient stability across early reading development to qualify as a proximal cause of reading disabilities. Three reading-related phonological processes are identified, phonological awareness, short-term phonological memory, and rapid automatic naming. The relationship between these three processes and measures of reading ability over the period of early reading acquisition are reported. Torgesen and Burgess discuss the practical applications of their findings for diagnoses and intervention for reading disabled children.
In chapter 8, Wise, Olson, Ring, and Johnson present their research on computer-supported reading programs for disabled readers. Their research is driven by the questions of how these instructional programs can establish foundation skills in phonological and orthographic processing, and how they can ensure that these skills are integrated and applied to reading in context.
Part II closes with a chapter by Gaskins describing the reading program implemented at Benchmark School, a school for struggling readers in Grades 1 through 8 (chap. 9). Gaskins outlines the specific forms of word knowledge that the students at Benchmark School appear to lack and then how the literacy instruction is targeted at these specific knowledge deficits. Gaskins’ theory of instruction builds strongly on targeting the cognitive processes outlined in previous chapters.
In Part III, Cunningham and Stanovich examine the effects of exposure to print as a variable that can account for individual differences in both specific mechanisms practiced in reading, and, more generally in vocabulary, reading comprehension and verbal ability (chap. 10). These authors present a longitudinal investigation relating widening achievement disparities to differences in cumulative print exposure. Cunningham and Stanovich provide evidence that early success in beginning reading acquisition affects lifetime reading habits.
Baker, Fernandez-Fein, Scher, and Williams extend the context of examining reading development to include early home experiences (chap. 11). Baker and her colleagues examine home experiences such as book reading and environmental print reading, with a focus on defining effects on the child’s development of print knowledge and phonological awareness. These authors also examine sociocultural differences in home experiences related to word recognition and implications from their findings are briefly discussed.
Contributors of previous chapters briefly mention the importance of spelling in the development of reading and literacy. Treiman expands on this and presents evidence that supports the incorporation of spelling instruction into beginning reading instruction (chap. 12). Treiman examines the spelling properties of the English orthographic system and children’s spelling development within this orthographic context. Treiman argues that spelling instruction benefits both phonemic awareness and learning to read. A focus on approaches to spelling instruction in the early years concludes her chapter.
Calfee explores and analyzes major features of his literacy program, Word Work (chap. 13). Word Work is a decoding-spelling program that also includes policies and practices found in literature-based classrooms. This program includes teaching strategies for literature analyses, as well as explicit strategies for analyzing English spelling-sound relations. Calfee explains how Word Work differs from typical phonics programs and presents three case studies to illustrate this unique program of instruction.
Tracey and Morrow discuss the aspects of learning environments, such as physical, as well as task characteristics, that motivate children in beginning literacy. Studies show that increasing the motivation of the children to read leads to increased levels of literacy involvement and achievement. Surveying current instructional practices in both phoneme awareness and phonics instruction, these authors examined whether word recognition instruction in the classroom most often includes the motivating principles outlined in this chapter.
Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, and Mistretta examine the classrooms of nine first-grade teachers selected by administrators in their districts as exceptional teachers. Pressley and his colleagues develop a bottom-up approach to characterize literacy instruction in each classroom. Three classrooms that exhibit excellent first-grade literacy instruction on criterion variables are identified and the commonalties of these three classroom models are compared and summarized. One classroom is presented in detail to provide an example of an excellent first-grade reading program.
In summary, the chapters in this collection bring a variety of perspectives to bear on a single cluster of problems involving the acquisition of word reading ability. It is our keen hope that the insights and findings of the research reported here will influence and become incorporated into the development of practicable, classroom-based instructional programs that succeed in improving children’s ability to become skilled readers. Moreover, we hope that these insights and findings will become incorporated into the working knowledge that teachers apply when they teach their students to read, and into further research on reading acquisition.
—Jamie L. Metsala and Linnea C. Ehri