Environmental print and word reading

Abstract

The nature of the earliest stage of reading was examined by comparing two views about the importance of environmental print in children's learning experiences. One theory holds that environmental print leads to the acquisition of reading through developing rudimentary representations of specific words and logos, while the second theory concerns assembled phonology and asserts that reading begins with knowing letters and their sounds. Supporters of this theory hold that knowledge of environmental print and logos is reading the environment and may not directly facilitate the acquisition of word reading. Two studies were conducted with non-reading preschool children in which environmental print knowledge was assessed and related to word recognition training. In the first session of each study children were presented with accurate representations of environmental print and logos such as`McDonalds' and Stop' to find the ones they were able to identify and the ones they failed to identify. In the second session learning trials were conducted with those words from the logos that the children identified and also those that they failed to identify and with matching control words. Both studies found that the words from the known logos were more readily learned than the matching control words, but only in Study 1 were the known logo words learned more readily than the ones the children did not know. The results were discussed in terms of Gibson's (1969) theory of perceptual learning, and supported the view that environment print and logo knowledge facilitated word reading.

Reading Environmental Print: What Is the Role of Concepts About Print in Discriminating Young Readers Responses?

“…Stahl and Murray (1993) asserted that many children who can read words in lists "have begun to develop a generalized wordrecognition ability" (p. 230). Cronin et al (1999) made a similar observation when they noted in their research on environmental print reading that findings "suggest that the earliest word representations do not [pass through a phonological route], and the child learns words without using the sounds of letters" (p. 280).…”

“…From these findings, the use of phonemic awareness, or grapho-phonic knowledge, although correlated with the significant discriminant functions that separated the conventional reader group's ability to read environmental print in context or out, were more weakly correlated and less consistently correlated with accurate environmental print reading than were concepts-about-print and word recognition across all five conditions for reading environmental print in context and out. This is an interesting finding in that it may suggest that although a vast network of knowledge is available to conventional environmental print readers to support their accurate recognition of environmental print, they may not invoke or use the entire contents of their print and phoneme knowledge network to operate on the reading of print embedded in an environmental context (Cronin et al, 1999). They may in fact not progress toward a final stage of using letter-sound analysis in reading environmental print.…”

“…In a more recent study, Cronin et al, (1999) found that recognizing words in environmental print created an advantage for learning those same words in isolation as compared with learning new words from a group of matching control words. They found that although "The route from early rudimentary word representations to skilled reading must necessarily involve phonological knowledge, .…”

Categories of Environmental Print: All Logos are Not Created Equal

“…Many researchers have concluded that learning about environmental print helps children learn to read (Cronin, Farrell, & Delaney, 1999;Harste, Burke, & Woodward, 1984;Haussler/Matlin, 1984;Kuby, Aldridge, & Snyder, 1994;Mason, 1980;Wepner, 1985). In an oft-cited investigation, Harste et al (1984) studied twenty 3-to 6-year-old children's knowledge of environmental print, along with a number of other written and oral language skills.…”

The role of environmental print in emergent literacy

“…It is possible that environmental print knowledge will promote the learning of skills that are precursors to later conventional reading skills. In support of this notion, Cronin et al (1999) investigated whether environmental print knowledge (e.g. logographic reading of 'McDonalds', 'Stop', 'Dairy Queen') affects later word learning ability.…”