Abstract
Two studies were conducted across three countries to examine samples of beginning readers without systematic explicit phonics who had reached the same level of word reading accuracy as comparison samples with high and moderate explicit phonics. Had they employed any compensatory learning to reach that level? Four hypotheses of compensatory learning or performance were tested on the samples, all of which represented the lower half of the normative distribution of word reading accuracy. The two samples without explicit phonics received teaching that centered on story text reading and some receptive phonics that arose from this text reading. They did not compensate by relatively greater use of a larger psycholinguistic grain size in the form of rime units. Nor did they compensate by trading off comprehension for text word reading accuracy. In a microtraining study, they showed no compensation in proficiency of initial learning of lexical orthographic representations. For all samples, this initial learning was less effective with spelling than reading training trials. In reading text, the samples without explicit phonics did not compensate by trading off speed for accuracy, or comprehension. On the contrary, they read text faster than the explicit phonics samples. The extra classroom instruction time available to them for text reading, with the consequential extra exposure and practice of word reading, would explain this result.
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Acknowledgements
We are pleased to acknowledge the assistance of Julie Dockrell, Institute of Education, University of London, in providing funds for a research assistant; the support of the School of Psychology, Australian Catholic University, for providing research assistance; and the support by a Summer Studentship from the Department of Psychology, University of Auckland. We acknowledge with gratitude the cooperation of school authorities, staff, and children; and the contributions of Alison Arrow, Amy Barbour, Jason Frowley, and Hanny Savitri Hartono. We are indebted to the Test Library of the School of Education Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, for the provision of tests and test information.
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Appendices
Appendix A
Matched pseudowords with and without common lexical bodies and exemplar words sharing the bodies
Appendix B
AB pairs of stimulus words in the pretest of Study 2, in the presentation order for lower case
hand, bag; bad, green; her, ran; bend, hard; barn, drag; hang, head; bead, bear; rang, bread; grand, garden; grab, anger; bare, bang; began, age; brag, gang; darn, hedge; garage, barber; earn, badge; dagger, barren; rage, grade; dare, beard; ahead, errand; garbage, eager; beggar, bandage
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Thompson, G.B., McKay, M.F., Fletcher-Flinn, C.M. et al. Do children who acquire word reading without explicit phonics employ compensatory learning? Issues of phonological recoding, lexical orthography, and fluency. Read Writ 21, 505–537 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-007-9075-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-007-9075-9