“…It has been constantly confirmed that strong phonics or decoding programs produce higher reading achievement compared to programs with a less direct instruction in systematic sound-spelling patterns even with weaker readers (e.g., Fletcher, Shaywitz, Shankweiler, Katz, Liberman, Stuebing, Francis, Fowler, & Shaywitz, 1994;Poorman, Francis, & Fletcher, 1998;Torgesen, 1997;Vellutino, Scanlon, Sipay, Small, Pratt, Chen, & Denckla, 1996). This conclusion derives mostly from the evidence supporting a strong connection between children's awareness of the constituent sounds in words and their success in learning to read, which seems to be indisputable for many researchers (Bradley & Bryant, 1985;Kirtley, Bryant, MacLean, & Bradley, 1989;Stanovich, 1993). Moreover, research findings reveal that children who are better at detecting syllables, rhymes, or phonemes are quicker to learn to read (i.c., decode words), and this relation is present even after variability in reading skill due to intelligence, receptive vocabulary, memory skills, and social class is partialed out (Bryant, MacLean, Bradley, & Crossland, 1990;MacLean, Bryant, & Bradley, 1987;.…”