Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1981

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Major

Curriculum and Instruction

Major Professor

J E Alexander

Committee Members

Brenda Kolker, Lester Knight, John Lovell

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine how a group of normal-age first graders, who had completed a year of kindergarten, developed in their understanding of reading and reading instructional terminology during their first year of formal reading instruction. A series of experimental tasks was used to gather quantifiable data about children's understanding of the terms letter, sound, word, and sentence, and interviews were conducted to gain insight into children's thinking about the reading process. Additionally, selected children were observed during periods of reading instruction in their normal classroom situations.

Participants in the study were 60 first graders, 30 boys and 30 girls, chosen by a stratified random sample method from four elementary schools in Cookeville, Tennessee. The children were tested and interviewed individually during the first week of school and at the end of two consecutive 12-week intervals thereafter.

It was found that prior to formal reading instruction, many first graders did not have precise or conventional meanings for the terms letter, sound, word, and sentence. There was a tendency among these children to confuse letters with numbers and symbols, to confuse phonemes with words and letter names, to confuse words with letters, to be unaware of printer's space as the boundary between written words, and to be unfamiliar with the concept of a sentence.

During the normal course of reading instruction most children achieved clarification of these concepts, but some remained unsure of exact meanings for several months. The terms letter and word became clear to most children before the terms sound and sentence. The concept of sound as a phoneme was difficult for these first graders to understand, and about one third of them continued to confuse sounds with letter names throughout the year. Over half of these first graders considered a single line of print to be a sentence after several months of reading instruction. Recognition of printer's space as the salient cue for word boundary developed rapidly as reading instruction progressed, although the tendency for some children to reject short words as individual units continued through out the year.

Interviews indicated that these beginning first graders varied considerably in their understanding of the nature and purposes of reading and in their ability to convey this understanding in spontaneous conversation. After several weeks of reading instruction most children identified "knowing the words" as the main attribute of good reading. Their favored strategy for dealing with an unknown word was to "sound it out."

Using specially prepared observation instruments the investigator was able to record the behavior of individual children during reading instructional periods but was unable to verify a connection between demonstrated confusion about instructional terminology and subsequent reading behavior.

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