Initial reading schemes and their high frequency words

Abstract

Word recognition is an essential component in the mastery of reading (Compton, 1997; Freebody & Byrne, 1988; Strickland & Morrow, 1991; Szeszulski & Szeszulski, 1987), and considerable evidence suggests that the major difficulty confronting the beginning reader is the development of rapid, automatic word recognition skills (Adams, 1990; Byrne, Freebody & Gates, 1992; Chall, 1983; Ehri, 1991). Efficient readers use a variety of orthographic data to recognise word units, such as individual letters, letter clusters, morphemes, word stems, and word patterns (Stanovich, 1980; Taft, 1991). It is the rapid visual processing of word units that seems to evade children with reading problems and reduces their motivation to continue to read (Barron, 1986; Gipe, 1995; Samuels, 1994; Stanovich, 1986). In the process of rapid word recognition, rather than converting the letter group into a sequence of sounds, blending the sounds, and matching them to a known spoken pattern, readers retrieve stored information simultaneously about how a word looks and sounds.