Sight Word Reading in Prereaders: Use of Logographic vs. Alphabetic Access Routes

Abstract

In a previous study, Ehri and Wilce (1985) found that prereaders who had not mastered letters were better at forming logographic access routes than letter-sound access routes into memory to read words by sight. Of interest here was whether prereaders who knew all their letters would reveal the same pattern. Preschoolers and kindergartners who could read few if any words out of context but who knew letters were taught to read either six simplified phonetic spellings whose letters corresponded to sounds (e.g., JRF for "giraffe"), or six logographic spellings whose letters were non-phonetic but were more visually distinctive (e.g., J R F for "candy"). Word reading practice included either naming or counting letters in phonetic spellings or counting letters in visual spellings. Letter naming was expected to draw prereaders' attention to phonetic cues. Letter counting was the control. Results revealed that phonetic spellings were learned better than visual spellings regardless of whether letters were named or counted. We conclude that prereaders become capable of forming letter-sound access routes when they learn letters well enough to take advantage of the phonetic cues they provide.According to various theories, there are at least two processes that readers might use to identify written words: by phonological recoding, and by sight. Phonological recoding consists of applying general knowledge of the orthographic system to transform spellings into pronunciations with recognizable meanings (Baron, 1977; Ehri, in press-a; in press-b;Marsh, Friedman, Welch, & Desberg, 1981;Venezky, 1970). Meanings are recognized from pronunciations of words, not from print cues. Sight word reading involves accessing information that was stored in lexical memory about words when they were read previously. Although sight words 149

Beginning readers outperform older disabled readers in learning to read words by sight

“…This shows that the majority possessed the requisite knowledge for phonetic cue reading . Because our target words were spelled phonetically with most of the relevant sounds accessible in the names of the letters, phonetic cue reading should have been easy to employ (Scott & Ehri 1989) .…”

“…As soon as beginning readers gain even rudimentary knowledge about G-P relations, they become able to learn to read sight words by bonding spellings to pronunciations (Ehri & Wilce 1985;Scott & Ehri 1989;Rack et al 1994). However, because their G-P knowledge and phonemic segmentation skill are limited, their form partial rather than complete connections.…”

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

“…In addition, converging data have established that preschool LNK level is a reliable marker of children's print experience, associated both with other early print-related skills (Adams, 1990;Burgess, 2002;Fritjers, Barron, & Brunello, 2000) and home literacy experiences (Bowey, 1995;Hecht et al, 2000;Lonigan, Burgess, Anthony, & Barker, 1998). Presumably, this unfavorable theoretical and empirical context explains why the in-depth investigation of the role of letter names in literacy development was for many years limited to Ehri's (1983;Ehri & Wilce, 1985;Scott & Ehri, 1990) seminal works.…”

“…The typical procedure contrasted phonetic spellings, in which some letters matched letter-name sequences included in word pronunciations (e.g., JRF for giraffe), and visual spellings, which were irrelevant regarding word pronunciations, but perceptually highly distinctive (e.g., xGsT for beach) (Ehri & Wilce, 1985). Earlier studies have shown that novice readers (Ehri & Wilce, 1985) and prereaders (Scott & Ehri, 1990), both with a high LNK level, learned the phonetic spellings more easily than the visual ones. This result suggested that children took advantage of the graphophonological information supplied by letters in printed words and letter-name sequences in spoken words.…”

Transitions to the Conventional: An Examination of a First Grader's Composing Process

“…A great deal of work has been concerned with children's phonemic awareness and its strong relationship to reading and invented spelling ability (Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986;Morris, 1993;Scott & Ehri, 1990;Spector, 1995;Yopp, 1992). Richgels, Poremba, and McGee (1996) have described kindergartners' developing phonemic awareness in a naturalistic classroom context as the children engaged in various literacy experiences and activities.…”