Letter Name Knowledge For Word example essay topic

Research Article 1 Roberts, T. (2003). Effects of Alphabet-Letter Instruction on Young Children's Word Recognition [Electronic Version]. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (1), 41-51. Title The title of the article gave a fair representation of the topic as it was clear and concise in the wording. The title encompassed the idea that alphabet letter instruction on young children's word recognition would be explored through experiments and analysis. Reading on through the article it was evident that the effects of alphabet letter instruction on you children's word recognition were addressed.

Introduction Experimental studies have been undertaken throughout the years in relation to alphabet letter instruction. The first of these experiments were undertaken with kindergarten and year one students in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The purpose of these early experiments was to examine the hypothesis that letter-name knowledge played a causal role in the relationship between letter-name knowledge and early reading. If knowledge of letter names was a causal factor, then instruction that increased children's letter-name knowledge should increase early reading performance. It was concluded from these early studies that there was little educational benefit to be gained from letter-name instruction. A man by the name of Ehri in 1983 critiqued these early studies and concluded they suffered from a number of methodological flaws.

The concluded flaws included training may have been too short and not thorough, treatment groups differed, training did not include instruction in how to use letter-name knowledge for word reading and training the children in small groups resulted in insufficient learning. Since the early studies and Ehri's conclusions a great deal of research has demonstrated that letter knowledge is integrally involved in word recognition. The hypotheses and purpose of this later study was to examine anew the effects of letter-name knowledge associated with instruction on beginning phonetic word recognition with methodology correcting for the flaws of previous studies. After instruction the children's ability to learn 3 types of word spellings was examined. An argument was then formulated that efforts to increase children's attention to letter information are needed, given its clear importance in early reading. Method The subjects for this study were thirty-three preschool children whose language was predominantly other than English.

The mean age of the participants was 52.82 months old. The participants included 3 three year old children and 30 four year old children. The participants were enrolled in a state funded, half day pre school program which served children from rather low socio economic status families and backgrounds. The mean English oral proficiency score 0 f 1.86 indicated that the children were on average classified as non English speaking. The children in this study were blocked by language and oral proficiency. They were randomly assigned to either letter-rhyme or comprehension treatment.

They received 16 weeks of either letter-rhyme instruction or comprehension instruction. Pretesting was conducted over a 2 week period prior to the intervention. Following pretesting the 16 week instructional program was implemented. There were three 20-25 minute lessons each week.

Two trained teachers alternated weeks for the first 12 weeks of the intervention to control for teacher effects. The researcher regularly observed lessons. There were three different aspects of the study. These included comprehension treatment, letter-rhyme treatment and word learning training. Results Before the intervention, a multivariate analysis, with pretest age, storybook vocabulary, letter-name knowledge and English oral proficiency was performed to determine the compatibility of the children in the comprehension and letter-name instructional groups.

To determine whether the letter-name treatment had engendered differences in letter-name knowledge after the 16 weeks of instruction and analysis of covariance, with pre-treatment letter recognition scores was computed. Children who received letter name instruction named significantly more letters at the end of the intervention than comprehension group children. The children in the comprehension treatment group scored significantly better than the letter-name group on the vocabulary test at the end of the intervention. This result showed that the comprehension treatment produced better performance for children on a comprehension related variable, and thus children in this group participated in an effective alternative treatment.

In the word recognition category children in the letter-name group had significantly greater percentage of correct recognitions for words with phonetic spellings. Discussion Children in the letter-name and comprehension-instruction groups began with comparable low levels of letter naming ability. The letter-name treatment engendered a significant and large advantage on letter naming for children receiving letter-name instruction. Fifty-eight percent of letter-rhyme children at least 13 of the 16 taught levels which is equivalent to 81 percent in performance.

The majority of the participants were beginning learners of English. They were also from very low socio economic families. These children learned letter names through instruction. Findings from this study encourage holding high expectations that preschool English learners can acquire and use letter names as a result of explicit instruction. There are important limitations of this study that must be noted. One of these being that the full significance of letter knowledge gained from instruction can only be gauged by determining how the initial benefits reported here align with conventional reading competence in later years.

The sample of this study was also small. There was no evidence of future studies. Critique This article implies that children with alphabet letter instruction would help the child to learn phonetically sounding words. The study proved that in most cases the phonetic word recognition was significantly better after the instruction. Most children learn how to recognise words at their own pace with both home and school help.

Some children do not receive both of these outlets and are only able to practice their word recognition at school. The study therefore may not be one hundred percent accurate as some of the students may have already had the two outlets working in their advantage. As a child going through primary school I had a substantial amount of help from my parents before I even attended primary school with my word recognition and reading. When I started year 1 I was able to read many books from the year 2 book lists and then when I was in year 2 I was able to read books from the year 3 book lists. This was all because of help from home and school. The study only really examines school instruction where home is also just as important.

Research Article 2 Evans, M. Fox, M. et. al (2004) Beginning Reading: The Views of Parents and Teachers of young Children [Electronic Version]. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96 (1), 130-141. Title The title of this research article encompasses two important aspects. These being parents and teacher views on the topic of beginning reading. The article delves into the exact views as conducted throughout the study.

Introduction The authors of this study examined the views of parents and teachers in relation to the topic of beginning reading instruction. They approached this by using a questionnaire titled approaches to beginning reading and reading instruction. Parents were also asked to rate the importance of the 9 developmental areas including literacy and the relation between home and school. In previous studies including the study by Evans, Barra ball and Eberle e, 26 parents and 14 teachers of first grade students had been asked to rate items according to the emphasis they placed on encouraging reading in the home or classroom. This report presents the first stage in a longitudinal research program addressing parent belief and behaviour connections in beginning reading. The views of both parents and teachers were documented through a mailed questionnaire.

The study attempted to asses parents views more directly by creating a survey to tap parent's attitudes and beliefs. Method The sample for this study consisted of 148 parents and 52 teachers drawn from a medium sized urban community in Southern Canada and it's surrounding rural villages. The parents had consented for themselves and their children to participate in a 3 years longitudinal study in which children would be assessed, parents interviewed and parents and children observed reading books together once each year from kindergarten through to year 2. From the returned surveys from parents it was identified that in 122 cases it was the mother who was put forward as fulfilling this role and thus became the respondent. During the winter term of kindergarten all parents were interviewed by telephone to provide additional details about the study, to collect demographic information and to ask them how they themselves had learnt how to read. This exercise is known as data collection.

From the 148 parents in the study, 133 returned their completed surveys. 5 surveys were returned in which the first page was not completed and 10 parents did not complete their surveys at all. Individual data points for each item were entered into a data file. Out of 1400 data points from the ratings on the TORP, 6 were missing because of an item not being answered.

For these cases, the items on the corresponding scale of the TORP that were answered were used to calculate average scale score. Rank orders from the skill development survey were reverse scored so that domains ranked first received the highest numbers. Results There were many components and aspects to the results section of the study. The main and most important of these were the factor structure, validity of the components, demographic correlation of the scores, comparison of parent and teacher responses and the skill development survey. The comparison between teachers and parents was noted in two parts.

These included component scores and individual items. The analysis of the component scores revealed that the two groups significantly differed on both the graphophone mic and constructivist components. The scores of each mirrored each other with higher average graphophone mic scores amongst parents and higher constructivist scores among teachers. Because the teachers were older than the parents the analysis was repeated with age as a co variate. The same results were obtained. In the section of individual items, the analysis of this area returned the same results as that of the component scores.

Parents and teachers equally valued developing oral language as a basis for reading, practicing to recognise words and developing accurate and fluent oral reading. Discussion The main finding from this study was that even when education level was controlled, parents had higher scores than teachers on the component whereas teachers had higher scores than parents on the constructivist component. The core of this difference seem to centre around how children should be helped to read words not in their sight vocabularies, with parents highly valuing the use of word phonetics and teachers highly valuing the use of context. There were no limitations and future research noted in this study. Critique This article discussed the views and opinions of both parents and teachers in regards to beginning reading. Literacy development is a major issue within early primary classrooms.

Parent's views on this were that literacy development is the responsibility of the school. The foundation of literacy definitely comes from the school but it is at home where it is practiced and reinforce and may even overarch the schools responsibility. Children whose parents are unable to assist them at home with their literacy development definitely fall out in respect to ongoing help and support. Children in my primary school classes whose parents were unable to help them struggled with their reading, word recognition and literacy skills the entire way through primary school. This shows that literacy development is not primarily the schools responsibility but the child's parents at home also.