The effects of a reading intervention with the spot-and-dot syllabication strategy in conjunction with the vowel pattern chart

This study investigated the effects of a 14-week reading intervention, which included using the Spot-and-Dot Syllabication Strategy (Cheyney and Cohen, 1999) in conjunction with an adjusted Vowel Pattern Chart (Cheyney and Cohen, 1999) with one student who attended a mid-western metropolitan literacy center. The student received instruction that allowed him to segment multisyllabic words through awareness of the vowel/syllable patterns. Pre- and posttest assessments were administered with the Reading Dr. Seuss Words!!! (Santa & Hoien, 1999) and the Power Pattern Placement Survey (Cheyney and Cohen, 1999). Posttest results showed he had significant improvement of p = 03 on Reading Dr. Seuss Words!!! (1999) and p = 01 on the Power Pattern Placement Survey (1999). These results show that the use of this intervention strategy helped this struggling reader recognize vowel/syllable patterns. Further research is needed to determine the effects of this intervention with small intervention groups and/or in a regular classroom environment

Comparative evaluation of reading series with regard to their incorporation of linguistics

The purpose of this investigation was to present a review of the literature concerning the application of linguistic principles to reading. An effort was made toward the evaluation of materials and linguistic readers as an informative aid to classroom teachers in choosing materials and texts

The Role of Phonics in Teaching English Pronunciation English as a Foreign Language Students

This thesis proposes the use of a modified phonics program to teach students basic rules that will help them to translate graphemes to phonemes in both words they are familiar with and words they are not. It is a common misconception that English has a highly irregular or irrational orthography. Quite to the contrary, English, as a morphophonenic language, has a highly regular orthography governed by systematic rules and spelling patterns that correspond to phonemes in speech. We argue that a knowledge of these rules give students the necessary tools to move from grapheme to phoneme. This also increases their confidence, develops their metacognitive awareness and produces autonomous learners whose pronunciation and communication will improve because of knowledge of how English works and relates writing to speaking

How does explicit phonemic awareness instruction in a 6th-grade classroom, influence students reading fluency and comprehension?

The purpose of this study was to determine if using phonemic awareness lessons could help students with reading comprehension and fluency. This action research study was conducted in a rural 6th-grade classroom with a total of 38 students. The classroom is in west-central Minnesota. The student participants were two sections that included the entire 6th grade. The research entailed whole group lessons; which involved games, syllable instruction and explicit instruction on listening to the sounds in words and noticing the patterns that sounds and spellings have in words. Small group lessons were also implemented where students rotated in the classroom to stations set up with phonemic awareness assignments. The students were also given tools and resources to use independently to decode and attack new words. Data was collected with the STAR Renaissance assessment tools. Students were assessed for comprehension three times a year, and fluency throughout the year. A comprehensive phonemic awareness assessment was given to students to determine students that had a gap in this foundational reading skill

Statistical and explicit learning of graphotactic patterns with no phonological counterpart: Evidence from artificial lexicon studies with 6– to 7-year-olds and adults

Children are powerful statistical spellers: They can learn novel written patterns with phonological counterparts under experimental conditions, via implicit learning processes, akin to “statistical learning” processes established for spoken language acquisition. Can these mechanisms fully account for children’s knowledge of written patterns? How does this ability relate to literacy measures? How does it compare to explicit learning? This thesis addresses these questions in a series of artificial lexicon experiments, inducing graphotactic learning under incidental and explicit conditions, and comparing it with measures of literacy. The first experiment adapted an existing design (Samara & Caravolas, 2014), with the goal of searching for stronger effects. Subsequent experiments address a further limitation: Previous studies assessed learning of spelling rules which have counterparts in spoken language; however, while this is also the case for some naturalistic spelling rules (e.g., English phonotactics prohibit word initial /ŋ/ and accordingly, written words cannot begin with ng), there are also purely visual constraints (graphotactics) (e.g., gz is an illegal spelling of a frequent word-final sound combination in English: *bagz). Can children learn patterns unconfounded from correlated phonotactics? In further experiments, developing and skilled spellers were exposed to patterns replete of phonotactic cues. In post-tests, participants generalized over both positional constraints embedded in semiartificial strings, and contextual constraints created using homophonic non-word stimuli. This was demonstrated following passive exposure and even under meaningful (word learning) conditions, and success in learning graphotactics was not hindered by learning word meanings. However, the effect sizes across this thesis remained small, and the hypothesized positive associations between learning performance under incidental conditions and literacy measures were never observed. This relationship was only found under explicit conditions, when pattern generalization benefited. Investigation of age effects revealed that adults and children show similar patterns of learning but adults learn faster from matched text

Growing phonological and morphological knowledge and improving spelling outcomes in Year 2 primary school children through Explicit Instruction and contextualised dictation

Using Explicit Instruction (EI) to teach spelling is controversial because teaching approaches vary considerably in the contemporary classroom. Teachers may privilege visual over linguistic strategies and include target words based around themes, rather than the phono-morphological structures of words. There is also little current research about the benefits of using sentence dictation to practise taught spelling skills and thus to increase the likelihood of developing spelling automaticity. Spelling automaticity is important because it complements crucial reading and writing skills. Developing fluent spelling through EI, followed by sentence dictation, was a specific focus of this study. Two primary schools in rural NSW and a total of 30 teachers were involved in this mixed methods research. One of the schools was used as a comparison school and the other was the intervention school. All 30 teachers involved in the study completed a knowledge survey about the components of the English spelling system considered essential to teach spelling explicitly. From this data, the specific knowledge of the teachers involved in the Year 2 intervention, the Learning Support Teacher and the Acting Principal, was extracted. The two Year 2 teachers in the comparison school received professional development on meaning-based approaches to spelling, whereas the five teachers at the intervention school received professional development on EI techniques and word level components of the English spelling system. Mid-intervention teacher interviews gathered data about their feelings on implementing EI techniques in practice. Post-intervention quantitative tests and interviews allowed in-depth and rich understandings of aspects that either enabled or hindered implementation of the intervention. The spelling competence of 60 students at the two schools was also assessed before any intervention took place. The 35 Year 2 students in the two classes at the intervention school received EI in the phonological and morphological aspects of words, editing, and contextualised sentence dictation during Term 3. The 25 students in the Year 2 class at the comparison school continued their established literacy routine. Interviews with randomly selected students from both schools facilitated an exploration of their feelings about spelling approaches used during the term. The findings showed that spelling results in both schools improved as expected. However, overall the intervention school had superior results to the comparison school; one class in the intervention school consistently outperformed all other classes in word spelling and dictation assessments with moderate to large effects. Many of the teachers demonstrated an increase in morpheme knowledge, but not in word structure. In this study the EI spelling Lesson elements were reinforced by teaching strategies that included contextualised editing tasks and daily sentence dictations. These tasks were embedded in the term science theme of Insects, which was chosen in collaboration with the intervention teachers. The dictation component, a previously underutilised tool, involved students writing two lines from a contextualised poem, each day. In Australia, current methods of teaching spelling remain varied and contentious. Teachers who are engaged in improving spelling knowledge may find that using EI strategies reinforced by contextualised dictation can improve outcomes for all students

The missing foundation in beginning reading instruction: The case of Ghana

This study presents a content analysis of Ghana's current standards-based curriculum, with a specific focus on its alignment with evidence-based reading instruction, against the backdrop of low reading achievement and learning outcomes of learners. The research uses content analysis methodology to examine the representation and emphasis of reading instruction elements within the kindergarten and primary 1-3 curricula. Drawing on the Cognitive Foundation Framework and a socio-cultural perspective of reading as an analytical framework, the study spotlights the alignment between language and literacy curriculum and essential elements of effective reading instruction. Findings indicate that while the kindergarten curriculum's preamble more fully reflects current research on effective reading instruction compared to the primary 1-3 curriculum, both show varying degrees of alignment. The analysis underscores a stronger emphasis on the meaning-emphasis cluster of skills over the alphabetic coding cluster in both curricula, with the kindergarten curriculum exhibiting a more pronounced focus. Additionally, the study highlights disparities in the representation and frequency of standards across skill clusters, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions. This study contributes to ongoing efforts to enhance literacy outcomes in Ghana's public schools by providing insights into the alignment between curriculum standards and evidence-based reading practices, emphasizing the importance of curriculum reform and targeted interventions to address persistent challenges in Ghana's education system

AN ITEM BANK DEVELOPMENT TO INCLUDE TEST ITEMS ASSESSING ORTHOGRAPHIC AND PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING SKILLS AT THE FACULTY OF NURSING

In recent years, the importance of assessing students’ orthographic and phonological processing skills has been acknowledged, especially in L1 reading. Moreover, the development of an item bank for an in-house English placement test would enable faculty to assign students to appropriate English-language classes, which in turn would likely lead to students’ successful completion of English-language programs in the tertiary-level institution. Little has been reported, however, on the L2/FL reading contexts. This study thus investigated the process of developing an item bank with orthographic and phonological processing skills for the Faculty of Nursing. The study involved identification of the orthographic and phonological features of the faculty’s English curriculum and materials. It also explored the orthographic and phonological features of two commercially produced English proficiency tests, the TOEFL and the TOEIC, and determined whether these tests correspond to the Faculty of Nursing curriculum requirements. The study also used Rasch analysis to validate the development of test items to assess orthographic and phonological skills, and explored whether these test items correspond to the requirements of the faculty’s English curriculum. Analysis of the faculty’s curriculum and the commercially produced English proficiency tests revealed that the two tests may not be appropriate tools to measure students’ orthographic and phonological processing skills. The Rasch analysis— including separation, reliability, test targeting, and unidimensionality for a total of 147 items—yielded 90 equated test items. Moreover, the test items showed sufficient spreads: 9 (10%) were grouped at the beginner level, 74 (82%) at the intermediate level, and 7 (8%) at the advanced level