Learning to Read and Spell Words

Learning to read and spell words is a central part of becoming literate. During text reading, most words are processed, and skilled readers are able to do this effortlessly. How they become skilled at processing graphic cues has been the focus of our research. Findings indicate that prereaders do not acquire graphic skill by learning to read signs and labels in their environment. Rather, mastery of letters is required. Whereas prereaders use visual or context cues to identify words, as soon as children move into reading they shift to letter-sound cues. Initially, words are read by accessing remembered associations between a few letters in spellings and sounds in pronunciations. Later, when decoding skill matures, complete spellings are analyzed as phonemic symbols for pronunciations and are stored in memory. Various studies indicate that having a visual picture of speech in memory is an important part of a person's information-processing equipment. Spellings may influence how words are pronounced, what sounds people think are in words, how quickly people judge spoken word rhymes, how rapidly pronunciations change over time.