Phases of development in learning to read words by sight

Although written English displays three types of units that make contact with readers’ knowledge of language, letters, words, and sentences, readers’ eyes come to favor words as the units that are most easily processed (Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). The advantage of words over sentences is that words can be assimilated in one glance. The advantage of words over letters is that written words correspond more reliably to spoken words than letters correspond to phonemes. Many years ago, Cattell (1886) found that readers could recognize a whole word more readily than a single letter. More recent studies have verified the word-superiority effect (Reicher, 1969; Wheeler, 1970). Various ways to read words can be distinguished: by sight, by decoding (also called phonological recoding), 1 by analogizing, by processing spelling patterns, and by contextual guessing. When people read words by sight, they access information stored in their lexicons (mental dictionaries) from previous experiences reading those words. On seeing a familiar written word, readers access the word’s identities, including its pronunciation, meaning, syntactic identity (its typical grammatical role in sentences), and orthographic identity (information about its spelling) (Ehri, 1978, 1980). Words appearing frequently in text are more apt to be read by sight than words appearing infrequently because some practice is needed to form access routes into lexical memory for specific words. Several behaviors indicate sight-word reading: when words are read as whole units without any pauses between phonemes or syllables; when words are read rapidly, faster than nonsense words having comparable spelling patterns; when irregularly spelled words are pronounced correctly rather than decoded phonetically (reading recipeas /rĕ-s∂-pe -/ rather than /re --sı -p)2 (Adams & Huggins, 1985); when correct spellings are distinguished from homophonous spellings ( rain vs. rane; swordvs. sord; pearvs. pair; write vs. right) (Olson, 1985; Stanovich & West, 1989).

Development of the ability to read words: Update.

When children learn to read, their success is determined by a number of factors. Some determinants of success are found in the environment, including the intensity, duration, and quality of the reading instruction provided, and the nature of the oral and written language the child must attempt to master. Other determinants of success are found within the child. Examples include maturational readiness (the majority of 6-year-olds can learn to read whereas few 2-year-olds can), fluency in oral language, and an interest in reading (for summaries of the reading literature, see Adams, 1990; Crowder & Wagner, 1991; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). During the past decade, a great deal of progress has been made in our understanding of beginning reading in general, and in the areas of phonological and orthographic knowledge and processing in particular.

The Development of Orthographic Processing Ability

Previous cross-language research has focused on L1 phonological processing and its relation to L2 reading. Less extensive is the research on the effect that L1 orthographic processing skill has on L2 reading and spelling. This study was designed to investigate how reading and spelling acquisition in English (L2) is influenced by phonological and orthographic processing skills in Spanish (L1) in 89 Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 2 and 3. Comparable measures in English and Spanish tapping phonological and orthographic processing were administered to the bilingual children. We found that cross-language phonological and orthographic transfer occurs from Spanish to English. Specifically, the Spanish phoneme deletion task contributed a significant amount of unique variance to English word reading and spelling, for both real words and pseudowords. The Spanish homophone choice task predicted English reading, but not spelling. Taken together, these results suggest that there are shared phonological and orthographic processes in bilingual reading; however, orthographic patterns may be language specific, thereby not likely to transfer to spelling performance.

Cross-language transfer of phonological and orthographic processing skills from Spanish L1 to English L2

A theory of how children progress through different phases of reading should be an asset both to reading researchers and teachers alike. The present paper provides a brief review of Ehri’s influential four phases of reading development: pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic and consolidated alphabetic. The model is flexible enough to acknowledge that children do not necessarily progress through these phases in strict sequence. Such flexibility is perhaps both a strength and a weakness. Despite some minor problems (such as weak operational definition, little attempt to relate to underlying developing cognitive structure, a final phase that seems removed from mature skilled reading) the model has served reasonably well as a flexible framework rather than as a set of falsifiable scientific hypotheses.

Ehri's model of phases of learning to read: a brief critique

The purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship between word recognition ability, knowledge of orthographic structures, and use of orthographic knowledge in word recognition. Fifty-six first and second graders were administered a word recognition test, two tests of orthographic knowledge, and two search tasks. The results indicated that when searching for multiple word targets children with word recognition levels of less than 2-2 searched similarly through all fields, whereas children with word recognition levels of 2-2+ searched faster through pseudowords and nonwords than through words. When searching for members of a category, children with word recognition levels below 2-1 searched faster through nonwords and pseudowords than through words providing no evidence for the use of orthography in word search. Children with word recognition levels above 2-1 searched faster through nonwords than through pseudowords and words, demonstrating a generalized effect of orthographic structure. Rumelhart's (1977) interactive model of reading proposed that readers utilize several knowledge sources (featural, graphic, phonemic, syntactic, orthographic, lexical, semantic) in word recognition. In contrast to earlier serial processing theories, the interactive model suggested that the knowledge sources were operating simultaneously, independent of level. As such, semantic processes constrain alternatives at the feature analytic level but are themselves constrained by feature analysis. In an extension of the interactive model designed to accommodate individual differences in reading fluency, Stanovich (1980) proposed that a deficit in any knowledge source would result in a heavier reliance on other knowledge sources, regardless of the level in the processing hierarchy. For example, the model predicts that readers who have difficulty with feature extraction may rely more heavily on other sources of information in word recognition. Stanovich found

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10862968609547571

Brenda Thimke

Papers

The Use of Orthographic Knowledge in Beginning Reading