Learning correspondences between letters and phonemes without explicit instruction

Thompson, G. Brian; Fletcher-Flinn, Claire M.; Cottrell, David

doi:10.1017/s0142716499001022

Cited by 40 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…We have also presented consistent evidence from other long-term residuals of childhood instruction. As was predicted, the adults with phonics, when compared with those without, had greater awareness of the phonemes of heard words, greater accuracy in graphophonemic segmentation, and greater overall accuracy for the phonics sounds of letters, although following a particular pattern among the letters that had been predicted from previous research with children (FletcherFlinn & Thompson, 2004;Thompson et al, 1999). In this predicted pattern, the adults without phonics instruction were at ceiling level in giving phonics sounds for the subset of consonant letters compatible with the letter-name acrophonic principle but, in giving phonics sounds for the other letters, were inferior to the performance of the participants with childhood phonics-especially so for the vowel letters.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

“…Where explicit phonics is not taught in childhood, it may seem inevitable that adult readers' knowledge of the phonics sounds for individual letters will be inferior. It has been reported, however, that children who were without explicit phonics instruction had near ceiling accuracy in giving phonics sounds for the subset of the letters b, d, j, k, p, t, v, and z, but were significantly lower in accuracy for the remaining letters (Fletcher-Flinn & Thompson, 2004;Thompson, Fletcher-Flinn, & Cottrell, 1999). It was shown that this subset of letters was that from which the children could infer the phonics sound of the letter from the initial pronunciation element (e.g., / /) of the letter name (e.g., / /) that was well known to them.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This, however, was not the only source of knowledge of the sounds of letters for children without explicit phonics instruction. In the 1st year at school, such children acquired implicit knowledge of letter-sound relationships from the initial letter position of the words in their reading vocabulary, but for the vowel letters, this source of knowledge was highly variable and unreliable (Thompson et al, 1999). If there were developmental continuity, low levels of correct phonics sounds for vowel letters would be predicted for adults without childhood phonics, as well as the effects of the letter-name acrophonic principle on the subset of consonant letters.…”

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The nature of skilled adult reading varies with type of instruction in childhood

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Psychology Lab A produces data on accuracy levels for the naming of nonwords from a sample of skilled adult readers, but Lab B, using the same stimuli and procedures, produces highly divergent results from another sample matched in age and reading skill. This is not an imaginary illustration. It was our prediction on the basis of (1) knowledge of the divergent types of reading instruction with which the two samples of adults learned to read when they entered elementary school, (2) published research on the differential effects of these types of instruction on children's reading processes, and (3) theory on developmental continuity in reading processes from early childhood to adulthood.What justifies a prediction of developmental continuity into adulthood of reading processes arising from the type of instruction received in early childhood? Justification comes only from theory, since there is no relevant empirical evidence. In the theory of Ziegler and Goswami (2005), orthographic-phonological units can be of various grain sizes. When children learn to read English, traditional explicit phonics instruction is said to influence them toward use of the smallest grain size, letter-phoneme units, rather than toward larger units. Nevertheless, it is argued that in English orthography, these small grain size correspondences are often inconsistent, and beginning readers have to learn additional correspondences of larger grain size that can offer greater consistency. Continuity of reading processes from childhood to adulthood is a feature of the theory, although there is no reference to continuity of the influence of the type of instruction.On the other hand, in the influential theory of acquisition of reading skill presented by Share (1995), there is a major shift in cognitive processes beyond the beginner level. There is also the claim that satisfactory progress by beginning readers requires teaching of simple explicit grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Children's processes of mapping orthographic information into phonological information are said to shift from use of these taught letter-sound relationships (predominantly context free) to use of those relationships that children implicitly induce from their acquired reading vocabulary of familiar words, including those relationships dependent on context in words. Share cited as evidence the developmental decline of regularization errors and of the regularity effect that gives a reading performance advantage for words with regular spellings over those with irregular ones. This University of Auckland, Auckland, New ZealandDoes the type of reading instruction experienced during the initial years at school have any continuing effect on the ways in which adults read words? The question has arisen in current discussions about computational models of mature word-reading processes. We tested predicted continuing effects by comparing matched samples of skilled adult readers of English who had received explicit phonics instruction in childhood and those who had not. In responding...

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confidence: 64%

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The nature of skilled adult reading varies with type of instruction in childhood

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“…Concerning implicit approaches of reading instruction, LNK offers the exciting potential for novice readers to discover letter-phoneme correspondences on their own. Examples of letter-phoneme correspondences self-teaching were reported in first-grade readers (Thompson et al, 1999) and spellers (Treiman, 1993), both being taught using a whole language approach. In Thompson et al (1999), five-yearold beginners receiving no formal instruction about letter sounds made use of CV letter names and printed word recognition to infer grapheme-phoneme correspondences.…”

Section: Letter Names As Precursors Of Letter Soundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why is letter-name knowledge such a good predictor of learning to read?

2005

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The knowledge of letter names measured just before children enter school has been known for a long time as one of the best longitudinal predictors of learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. After a period during which the comprehensive investigation of this relationship was largely disregarded, there is now a growing interest in attempts to understand the role(s) letter names play in literacy acquisition. This paper reviews these recent studies and emphasizes their main findings regarding the influence of letter-name knowledge in early and formal literacy for three main components of literacy acquisition: first, the emergence of the phonological processing of print; then, the learning of letter-sound correspondences; finally, the development of phonemic sensitivity skills. The final section discusses the status of letter-name knowledge (LNK) in literacy acquisition and suggests possible directions for further research.

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“…Children who are familiar with letter names may say that y makes the sound /wǝ/ or that w corresponds to / dǝ/, treating these letters as if their sounds were at the beginnings of their names (Ellefson, Treiman, & Kessler, 2007;Thompson, Fletcher-Flinn, & Cottrell, 1999;Treiman, Weatherston, & Berch, 1994). Additional evidence comes from children who learn letter sounds before they have mastered letter names.…”

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confidence: 99%

Which children benefit from letter names in learning letter sounds?

et al. 2008

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Typical U.S. children use their knowledge of letters' names to help learn the letters' sounds. They perform better on letter sound tests with letters that have their sounds at the beginnings of their names, such as v, than with letters that have their sounds at the ends of their names, such as m, and letters that do not have their sounds in their names, such as h. We found this same pattern among children with speech sound disorders, children with language impairments as well as speech sound disorders, and children who later developed serious reading problems. Even children who scored at chance on rhyming and sound matching tasks performed better on the letter sound task with letters such as v than with letters such as m and h. Our results suggest that a wide range of children use the names of letters to help learn the sounds and that phonological awareness, as conventionally measured, is not required in order to do so.Knowledge about letters-their shapes, their names, and their linguistic functions-plays an important role in the development of reading and spelling ability. For example, children who are learning to read and write in English should know that the shape V is called /vi/ and that it generally represents the phoneme /v/ (see International Phonetic Association, 1999 for an explanation of the phonemic symbols). Children's knowledge about letters is often tested by providing them with one attribute of a letter and asking them to supply one or more other attributes. For example, children are shown the shape V and are asked to say its name in a letter name task or its sound in a letter sound task. Performance is typically pooled across all of the letters in each task to yield measures of children's letter name and letter sound knowledge. Some researchers additionally pool knowledge of names and sounds, for example by asking children to provide either the name or the sound of a letter and counting the number of letters for which either piece of information is known (e.g., Riley, 1996).Supporting the idea that letter knowledge is important in learning to read and spell, young children's knowledge as pooled across letters or across names and sounds predicts their later literacy skills (e.g., McBride-Chang, 1999;Riley, 1996). However, such pooling may mask Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. , 2006; Mc-Bride-Chang, 1999;Treiman et al., 1998). These differences suggest that children bring their knowledge of letter names to the learning of letter-sound correspondences, using the letters' names to help learn and remember the sounds they represent. Thu...

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Learning correspondences between letters and phonemes without explicit instruction

Cited by 40 publications

References 32 publications

The nature of skilled adult reading varies with type of instruction in childhood

The nature of skilled adult reading varies with type of instruction in childhood

Why is letter-name knowledge such a good predictor of learning to read?

Which children benefit from letter names in learning letter sounds?

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