Lynette Bradley

Nursery rhymes, phonological skills and reading.

Nursery rhymes are an almost universal part of young English-speaking childrens lives. We have already established that there are strong links between childrens early knowledge of nursery rhymes at 3;3 and their developing phonological skills over the next year and a quarter. Since such skills are known to be related to childrens success in learning to read, this result suggests the hypothesis that acquaintance with nursery rhymes might also affect childrens reading. We now report longitudinal data from a group of 64 children from the age of 3;4 to 6;3 which support this hypothesis. There is a strong relation between early knowledge of nursery rhymes and success in reading and spelling over the next three years even after differences in social background, I.Q and the childrens phonological skills at the start of the project are taken into account. This raises the question of how nursery rhymes have such an effect. Our answer is that knowledge of nursery rhymes enhances childrens phonological sensitivity which in turn helps them to learn to read. This paper presents further analyses which support the idea of this path from nursery rhymes to reading. Nursery rhymes are related to the childs subsequent sensitivity to rhyme and phonemes. Moreover the connection between knowledge of nursery rhymes and reading and spelling ability disappears when controls are made for differences in these subsequent phonological skills.

Rhyme, language, and children's reading

It has been shown that there is a strong relation between childrens phonological skills and the progress that they make in reading. But there is some uncertainty whether this is a specific connection or whether it is just a byproduct of variations in general language ability. We report evidence from a longitudinal study showing that the relation between childrens sensitivity to rhyme and alliteration and their success in reading is highly specific and cannot be accounted for in terms of general language ability. In this study measures were taken of a group of childrens linguistic and metalinguistic skills when they were 3 and 4 years old. The linguistic measures were of the childrens vocabulary, their receptive and expressive use of grammar, and their ability to imitate sentences. The metalinguistic measures were of their ability to detect rhyme and alliteration and of their awareness of syntax. Two to three years later, when the children were 6;7, we measured their progress in reading and spelling. The childrens rhyme and alliteration scores were related to their reading two years later even after controls for differences in linguistic skills and also for differences in intelligence and in social background. The other metalinguistic task - syntax awareness - did not predict reading after these controls. Awareness of rhyme, we argue, makes a distinctive contribution to reading by helping children to form spelling categories.

WHAT CHILDREN SEE AFFECTS HOW THEY SPELL

The authors predicted that children who have experienced frequent visual confusion of text during their development because of unstable binocular control may be prevented from discovering the rules and patterns of English orthography. The authors compared the spelling errors made by children who had unstable binocular vision with those of children who had stable binocular vision and the same spelling ability. The subjects were drawn from a clinical population of children referred because of suspected reading difficulties; though they were of mixed abilities, they were generally poor spellers and readers. Children with unstable binocular control made spelling errors which were more phonologically plausible than those made by the control group with normal binocular vision.

Children's reading problems : psychology and education

Preface. 1. What is the Problem?. 2. Getting the Evidence Right. 3. Is there a Deficit?. 4. Awareness of Sounds and Reading. 5. Does the Way Backward Readers Read and Spell Reflect the Way they Think?. 6. Dyslexia, Dyslexiaa s. 7. Two Ways of Teaching Backwards Readers. 8. The Two Methods in Practice. Epilogue. References. Index.

The Organisation of Motor Patterns for Spelling: an Effective Remedial Strategy for Backward Readers

A controlled training study is reported in which children backward in reading and spelling were taught to spell words by three different methods. 16 words were selected and were divided into groups of four, each group of words being taught by a different method. As a control, one of the four groups of words was not taught by any method. An adaptation of Simultaneous Oral Spelling was found to be the most successful method. It is argued that these results demonstrate that the ability to spell correctly is dependent upon the organisation of the correct motor patterns for writing the words.

Covering one eye affects how some children read.

The Dunlop Test was used to identify unstable binocular control in a group of 32 mixed‐ability children. They were compared with 32 reading age‐matched controls. The children were then asked to read two lists of single real words of equal linguistic difficulty: one with both eyes open and the other with the left eye occluded. Only children who failed the Dunlop Test made fewer non‐word errors when they read with one eye. This result provides additional support for the theory that unstable binocular control can directly affect how children read. In addition, these findings suggest that this effect must be due, at least in part, to some interaction between the images from the two eyes.

Dissociation of Reading and Spelling Behavior

Among children with special educational needs, those who have spelling problems do not have a very high priority. Many other children have more severe and more obvious handicaps. Yet not being able to write affects almost all children at every level. When they write words they learn about the details in them. When they write they learn to express ideas, to organize and develop thoughts. They need to write to record information, to pass examinations, to be promoted. Spelling failure or difficulty affects every aspect of students’ academic development.

Reading and Spelling Difficulties

One of the most reasonable and least controversial things to be said about reading and writing is that these are very complex skills indeed. They clearly involve a large number of separate psychological processes. If he is to read, a child must be able to dismember words phonologically, to recognize and tell apart visual configurations, to learn rules about visual to auditory transformations, to cope with the many exceptions to these rules, to remember sequences and so on.

Book reviews : Reading, writing and dyslexia: a cognitive analysis: Andrew W. Ellis London and Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1984. 147pp

class for dyslexic children, who make good progress. We were discussing some of the recent research on reading, and the headteacher said that she could not understand what all the fuss was about. In her classroom things were much the same as they had always been. There was a well thoughtout approach to the teaching of written language skills which was consistent from one class to another. If a new teacher joined the staff she

Book reviews : Dyslexia: The Pattern of Difficulties. T. R. Miles, (St. Albans: Granada Publishing, 1983). Pp. 225. £9.95. ISBN 0 246 11345 6

relaxed U.K. schools, are likely to find ideas they will like. Indeed it might be well if those for whom relaxed means excessively premissive were to read it carefully, for the recommendations are both sensible and demanding. Discipline is not located in the method of teaching, but on one hand it is seen as intrinsic to the child’s active mastery of skill and on the other to the teacher’s thoughtful and active management of the learning environment. The main aspects of learning to write and read are covered, the priority given to the act of writing as the visible form of linguistic communication being a matter of some interest. All issues are dealt with in an a-theoretical