(named after the researcher who invented them in 1935) list color words (red, yellow, blue, green, purple) printed in nonmatching ink colors (red appears in purple ink, yellow appears in blue ink, blue appears in red ink, and so on). The reader must name the color of the ink while ignoring the printed word; most find this more difficult than picture-word tasks because colored ink is a weaker stimulus than a picture. Tasks such as these provide proof for the idea that skilled readers no longer sound out words but recognize them automatically.
In 2005, reading researcher Linnea C. Ehri synthesized eight theories about the development of automatic word recognition (Chall, 1983; Ehri, 1998, 1999, 2002; Frith, 1985; Gough & Hillinger, 1980; Marsh, Friedman, Welch, & Desberg, 1981; Mason, 1980; Seymour & Duncan, 2001; Stuart & Coltheart, 1988). She concludes that all students learning to read in English progress through four phases of word recognition development: (1) the prealphabetic phase, (2) the partial alphabetic phase, (3) the full alphabetic phase, and (4) the consolidated alphabetic phase. We describe and summarize each in the following sections.
Prealphabetic Phase
During the prealphabetic phase, students read words using visual or context cues. A visual cue is a distinctive feature of a word’s appearance; for example, a student named William might recognize his name because it has “two lines in the middle” (the Ls). A context cue is something that typically occurs in a word’s immediate environment—for example, the golden arches that often accompany the word McDonald’s.
Philip B. Gough, Connie Juel, and Priscilla L. Griffith (1992) examined the nature of context cues by teaching preschoolers sets of four words in which one of the words appears with a thumbprint (see figure 1.4 for an example).
Figure 1.4: Set of words with a thumbprint word.
Students could quickly learn to “read” the thumbprint word (in figure 1.5, lamp) with the thumbprint next to it, but when the researchers removed the thumbprint, they no longer knew the word. When the thumbprint appeared by itself, with no print accompanying it, students successfully produced the thumbprint word (lamp). When researchers placed the thumbprint next to a different word (for instance, stick), almost all of the children produced the original thumbprint word (lamp) rather than the new word (stick). In essence, these prealphabetic readers were associating the target word’s pronunciation and meaning with the thumbprint image, rather than with the letters of the word.
Patricia E. Masonheimer, Priscilla A. Drum, and Linnea C. Ehri (1984) found that preschoolers who could read common signs and labels such as McDonald’s or Pepsi could still read them if letters were altered; for example, if the researchers changed Pepsi (shown with its logo) to Xepsi, children still read it as Pepsi. Even when prompted to look for mistakes, students failed to detect the change. These findings indicate that, during the prealphabetic phase, learners do not associate words with their spellings, but rather with context or visual cues.
Additionally, Brian Byrne (1992) finds that prealphabetic readers attend to print-meaning correspondences, but not to print-sound correspondences. In an experiment, he taught prealphabetic readers that triangle-square meant little boy and circle-square meant big boy (see figure 1.5). Then he showed them triangle-cross and asked, “Does this say little fish or big fish?” Most of these prealphabetic readers were able to match the word little with the triangle and answer correctly (it says little fish).
Figure 1.5: Print-meaning correspondence task.
In contrast, when Byrne (1992) taught prealphabetic readers that triangle-square meant fat and circle-square meant bat, the learners were unable to figure out whether triangle-cross meant fun or bun (see figure 1.6). That is, they could not isolate the /f/ sound and match it to the triangle.
Figure 1.6: Print-sound correspondence task.
Bynre’s (1992) findings indicate that prealphabetic readers understand that printed symbols can correspond to spoken words (which have meaning), but they do not understand that printed symbols correspond to spoken sounds (which do not always have meaning by themselves).
Partial Alphabetic Phase
The partial alphabetic phase, according to Ehri (2005), emerges when students begin to form connections between the sounds of letters and the sounds in words. They stop using visual or context cues and start using phonetic (letter-sound) cues to identify words. To make this switch, students must grasp the alphabetic principle—the realization that there is a relationship between printed letters and spoken sounds (Purcell-Gates et al., 2016). Students typically begin to grasp the alphabetic principle as they acquire alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness (Paratore, Cassano, & Schickedanz, 2011).
Alphabet knowledge involves knowing the names of the letters and the sound or sounds associated with each letter. Research indicates that students acquire alphabet knowledge in a specific order (Paratore et al., 2011), typically starting with letters in the student’s name and letters in frequently encountered words. They usually learn uppercase letters before lowercase letters, and generally distinguish letters with few overlapping features (such as O/E or h/s) before letters with many overlapping features (such as E/F, O/Q, K/X, or m/n). Last of all come letters that differ only in orientation (such as b/d or p/q).
Phonological awareness is the ability to manipulate the sound structure of language, such as by segmenting sentences into words and words into sounds. Like alphabet knowledge, learners follow a typical acquisition sequence for phonological awareness (Paratore et al., 2011). Students typically acquire larger units, such as words and syllables, before smaller units, such as phonemes (single sounds). Interestingly, this is likely because phonemes are not actually articulated as separate units in speech. For example, when you say the word green, you blend the phonemes together, making it almost impossible to hear where one ends and the next begins. The National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) explains:
Being able to distinguish the separate phonemes in pronunciations of words so that they can be matched to graphemes is difficult. This is because spoken language is seamless; that is, there are no breaks in speech signaling where one phoneme ends and the next one begins. Rather, phonemes are folded into each other and are coarticulated. Discovering phonemic units requires instruction to learn how the system works. (chapter 2, p. 2)
In other words, because of the coarticulation of phonemes in spoken speech, hearing separate phonemes in speech is a skill that develops as a student learns that words consist of letters, which represent individual sounds. Alphabet knowledge and phonemic discrimination go hand in hand.
To illustrate the difference between the prealphabetic and partial alphabetic phases, Linnea C. Ehri and Lee S. Wilce (1985) conducted a study in which they taught students in both phases to read various invented spellings of words. For example, for the word giraffe, one of the spellings they taught was wBc, which is visually distinctive (it has a memorable shape—tall in the middle). Another spelling they taught was JRF, which is phonetically distinctive (if you say the names or sounds of the letters, it sounds like “giraffe”). Ehri and Wilce (1985) correctly predicted that the prealphabetic readers would remember spellings with strong visual cues (like wBc) and partial alphabetic
