Resources - Discussion Papers

Foundations for Universal Literacy

M. Moustafa ¹

¹California State University, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Professor Margaret Moustafa

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews research on readers, reading instruction, and access to age-appropriate books, and suggests that universal literacy requires universal best practices in reading instruction as well as universal access to age-appropriate books. It also suggests that an essential element to making this possible is general public knowledge about how we learn to read and how to best support children in their journey to becoming proficient readers on a variety of topics.

KEY WORDS

Literacy Education, Reading Instruction, Reading Improvement, Reading Difficulties

INTRODUCTION

Today the need for universal literacy is greater than it has ever been. In the Industrial Age those with low literacy skills could work in industrial, agricultural, and the service sector jobs that once required only minimal literacy skills. However, in todayĦs Information Age, our individual and collective success depends on universal literacy.

How can we promote universal literacy? In this paper I describe independent, peer-reviewed, replicated research on the reading process, reading instruction, and access to age-appropriate books, especially as it applies to lower-achieving students. Then I look at the current influence of publishers and politicians on instructional policy for lower-achieving students in elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. and suggest a long-term solution.

RESEARCH ON EARLY READERS

Theories of reading instruction need to be grounded in sound theories of how we read and learn to read. What does replicated research say about the reading process? 

Let's look at a piece of research done by Steven Kucer[i]. In this piece he studied a child reading a story entitled A Pin for Dan. Here is a transcript of the child's reading and retelling. The child's departures from text are underlined and the self-corrections are in bold.

Which child would you say was the better reader? Most people say the second child was the better reader. In fact, it was the same child reading both stories. What a difference a text makes!

In A Pin for Dan the child shut down as a reader. At first she struggled with the text but then she gave up. In line 5 she struggled to read tag but was unsuccessful even though she had read bag in the same sentence. In the next line she settled for reading fits as fists even though it didnĦt make sense. In the following line she attempted to read Dad but couldnĦt even though she had figured it out in line 3.

In The Great Big Enormous Turnip, rather than shutting down, the same child took giant steps towards becoming a proficient reader. In line 8 she read again as agen but the next time she encountered it she read it correctly and she continued to read it correctly through out the rest of the story. At first she struggled with the text but by line 9 she was reading the text word for word. Then, from line 29 to 42, like a proficient reader, she departed slightly from the text while remaining faithful to the meaning. She changed pulled to pulls, added on after pulled, and omitted old in the recurring phrase the old man.

A Pin for Dan and The Great Big Enormous Turnip represent paradigmatically different views of beginning reading. A Pin for Dan is a decodable text. Decodable texts use, or are supposed to use, letter-phoneme correspondences and print words that have been taught before the children are asked to read the story. They belong to our traditional parts-to-whole assumption that learning to read an alphabetic script proceeds from learning to recognize letter-phoneme correspondences, to learning to figure out print words, to learning to read whole passages. The implicit message of A Pin for Dan is that reading is nonsense.

The Great Big Enormous Turnip is a predictable text. Predictable texts use, or are supposed to use, language that is already familiar to children. They belong to the contemporary whole-to-parts approach to reading instruction. The implicit message of The Great Big Enormous Turnip is that reading makes sense.

How typical is the child in Kucer's study? Lynn Rhodes[ii] asked 13 first grade children to read a predictable story and two decodable stories. One of the decodable stories was based on letter-phoneme correspondences that had been taught and the other was based on print words that had been taught. She found three of the children read and retold the predictable and decodable stories equally well. But ten of the children responded differently to the different types of text. These children, like the child in KucerĦs study, had fewer oral reading mistakes and better retellings on the predictable story than on the decodable stories.

What would account for the different responses to these two types of text? Language. For example, read the following sentence.

If you haven't read Kuhn's book, you should read it.

The word read occurred twice in this sentence. Each time it was written exactly the same. Yet, you pronounced each word differently. While you were using your knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to pronounce these words, you were also using your knowledge of English. These two knowledge sources were functioning together as one coordinated system, much like when you run you use your feet, heart, lungs, and brain as a coordinated system, not as separable, sequential parts.

When children begin to read, they know much more about spoken language than they know about letter-sound correspondences. Language is their strength. Studies by Ken Goodman,[iii] Tom Nicholson,[iv] and Keith Stanovich[v] have all found that children learning to read read words in the context of a story better than outside the context of a story.  For example, they may read horse as house in a list but read it correctly in a story about cowboys. Robert Ruddell[vi] and Susan Tatum[vii] studied childrenĦs responses to text with familiar language vs. text with unfamiliar language. Like Kucer and Rhodes, they both found that children read text with familiar language better than text with unfamiliar language.

Because decodable stories are limited to letter-sound correspondences and print words that have been taught, the syntax, i.e., the flow of the language, in decodable stories is unnatural. Because emergent and early readers use language to read, the unnatural language of decodable texts makes it more difficult, not easier, for children to read. On the other hand, stories with familiar language, when combined with shared reading described below, enable children to use what they know†language†to learn more.

Other researchers have disproved the traditional assumption that children learn to read by learning letter-phoneme correspondences. D.J. Bruce,[viii] Jerome Rosner,[ix] Isabelle Liberman and her associates,[x] and many others[xi] have shown that children have difficulty analyzing spoken words into their constituent phonemes. That is, children have trouble analyzing the spoken word smiles into /s/, /m/, /i/, /l/, and /z/. Robert Scholes[xii] showed that being able to analyze spoken words into phonemes is a limited consequence of becoming literate in an alphabetic script. Most adults use their knowledge of how words are spelled to determine how many phonemes are in a word. For example, when asked, most adults respond that there are three phonemes in the word box, rather than the four that there are.

How, then, do readers learn to independently figure out unfamiliar print words when learning to read an alphabetic script? Rebecca
Treiman[xiii] found that developmentally children analyze spoken English into onsets and rimes before they analyze them into phonemes. That is, they can analyze the spoken word smiles into /sm/ and /iles/ before they can analyze it into /s/, /m/, /i/, /l/, and /z/.

Usha Goswami[xiv] found that children learning to read make analogies between print words they already recognize and unfamiliar print words to figure out unfamiliar print words, and they use letter-onset and letter-rime correspondences, not letter-phoneme correspondences, to do so. For example, children who have learned to recognize the print words small and smile can figure out that the letter string sm- is pronounced /sm/. Similarly, children who have learned to recognize the print words cart and part can figure out that the letter string -art is pronounced /art/. Then, when they encounter the print word smart, they can figure out how to pronounce it by themselves.

In my own work[xv] I found that children's knowledge of familiar print words accounted for their pronunciation of unfamiliar print words better than their knowledge of letter-phoneme correspondences. I also found the more print words children recognize, the better they figure out new print words.

William Tunmer and Andrew Nesdale[xvi] studied six first grade classes, three where instruction emphasized letter-phoneme correspondences and three instruction ignored letter-phoneme correspondences. Their data show that at the end of the year the children who could pronounce more real print words could figure out more made-up print words, regardless of their instruction. 

These research discoveries are but a part of the large body of research that has fostered new instructional strategies some of which I will describe.

CONTEMPORARY EARLY READING INSTRUCTION

A powerful way to launch young children into reading building on what they know†language†is shared reading. In shared reading[xvii] the teacher chooses a song or story with familiar language and teaches emergent readers to read by reading the story to and with the children while pointing to the words in full view of the children. This is done again and again until the children have memorized the story. Then, if necessary the teacher teaches one-to-one spoken-word/print-word matching. Once children can read the story independently by themselves with one-to-one spoken-word/print-word matching, shared reading continues with other stories.

A related strategy is shared writing. In shared writing the teacher writes down what the children say on a familiar, shared topic and teaches the children through shared reading to read what she has written.  As she is writing the teacher involves the children in the conventions of print. For example, if the teacher has written the word the on the first line, when it comes up again in the story she might ask the children how to spell the.

Through daily shared reading and writing, emergent readers and writers see daily demonstrations of proficient reading and writing and learn to recognize a multitude of print words in context. Through daily opportunities to read stories with familiar language and write on familiar topics, children come to see themselves as readers and writers.

A powerful way to introduce children to phonics (letter-sound correspondences) is to demonstrate letter-onset and letter-rime correspondences within the context of stories they have learned to read via shared reading. This instructional strategy, which I call whole-to-parts phonics instruction,[xviii] begins by asking children their favorite words in the story they have just learned to read via shared reading, writing the words on pieces of paper with a logo representing the story, and highlighting a letter or a set of letters that represent an onset, a rime, or a syllable in each word. For example, if the children choose the words know and show in If You're Happy and You Know It, the teacher might highlight the letters -ow in know and say "These letters say /o/. Do you hear the /o/ in know?". Similarly the teacher would highlight the letters Âow in show and say "These letters say /o/. Do you hear the /o/ in show?" The teacher then puts the words on a word wall, grouping them together to bring out the pattern. (See Picture 1.) As other words with Âow are taught the teacher adds them to the word wall, grouping them with these words.

Picture 1: An example of how print words are highlighted and grouped in whole-to-parts phonics instruction

As letters with different pronunciations go up on the word wall, such as the -ow in how and cow, the teacher uses a different color for each pronunciation of the letter or letter string. That is, the -ow in know and show would be colored one color and the -ow in how and cow would be colored another color. As more and more familiar words go up on the word wall, with the logo to remind children of the context, children are able to make their own phonics generalities based on their own reading experiences using their own dialect.

RESEARCH ON EARLY READING INSTRUCTION

There is a large body of comparative research that has found that children with contemporary reading instruction such as shared reading, shared writing, phonics in context, and lots and lots of experience of being read to and opportunities to read self-selected books and write on self-selected topics learn to make sense of print better than children with traditional, parts-to-whole reading instruction.

For example, Penny Freppon[xix] compared children in two first-grade classes with a contemporary reading program which focused on meaning with children in two first-grade classes with traditional reading programs. She found the children in the two contemporary classrooms not only had a better sense that reading was constructing meaning with print but also were almost twice as successful as the children in the traditional classrooms at sounding out words.

For another example, Susan Cantrell[xx] found primary-grade children in contemporary classrooms that focused on reading for meaning and skills taught in context achieved scores between the 50^th and 76^th percentile on the Stanford 9 national norms in reading comprehension, spelling and language whereas children in classrooms where skills were taught out of context and meaning was not emphasized achieved scores that fell below the 50^th percentile.

An important subset of this body of research on reading instruction focuses on lower-achieving children. Colin Sacks and John Mergendoller[xxi] studied 132 kindergartners in 11 classrooms. They found the children who scored the lowest on entry into kindergarten improved the most in reading achievement in classrooms with contemporary, meaning-emphasis reading instruction and improved the least in traditional phonics-oriented classrooms.

Connie Juel and Cecilia Minden-Cupp[xxii] looked at four first grade classrooms in a school district serving economically disadvantaged children. Their data show that the children in the lowest reading groups gained the most in word reading in the two classrooms where they experienced the fewest phonics worksheets, used choral reading, and were taught letter-onset and letter-rime correspondences. The greatest gains among the children in the lowest reading groups occurred in the classroom where the teacher used no phonics worksheets with the low group and frequently asked the children to use their emerging knowledge of letter-sound correspondence and what makes sense in the text to figure out unfamiliar words in text.

Lloyd Eldridge and his colleagues[xxiii] compared the effectiveness of shared reading with traditional round-robin reading (where children take turns reading a story orally) on 78 second grade childrenĦs reading growth. They found all the children, above-average, average, and below-average, did better with shared reading than with round-robin reading. However, the below-average children especially benefited from shared reading. They became 41 percent better in oral reading than the children with round robin reading.

Richard Anderson and his colleagues[xxiv] studied 149 third-graders in six classrooms. They asked the teachers to teach their students four lessons†two lessons with an emphasis on overall story meaning and two lessons with an emphasis on such things as letter-phoneme correspondences and accurate oral reading. They found that the lessons that emphasized overall story meaning led to better outcomes in relation to factors such as studentsĦ recall, oral reading, story interest, and lesson time. While all of the reading groups , high, average, and low, benefited from the emphasis on meaning, the average and low groups especially benefited from it.

BEYOND DECODING

Reading is more than decoding (pronouncing) print. It is making sense of print. Schema researchers have shown that readers of all ages must first understand a topic to understand text on that topic. To illustrate, read the following passage written by John Bransford and Marcia Johnson.[xxv]

A newspaper is better than a magazine, and on a seashore is a better place than a street. At first, it is better to run than walk. Also you may have to try several times. It takes some skill but itĦs easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. One needs lots of room. Rain soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.

Most people who read this passage have difficulty making sense of it until they are told that the passage is about flying kites. If you didn't realize it was about flying kites when you read it, read it again and see if it makes more sense to you now that you know what it is about.

Researchers have shown that the more we know about a topic, the better we can understand text on that topic. George Spilich and his colleagues[xxvi] gave a passage about baseball to adults who already knew a lot about baseball and to adults who knew little about baseball. They found those who knew a lot about baseball remembered the passage much better than those who knew little about baseball.

David Pearson, Jane Hansen, and Christine Gordon[xxvii] gave a passage about spiders to   second-grade children who already knew a lot about spiders and children who knew little about spiders. They found the children who knew a lot about spiders before they read the passage were significantly better at answering questions on implicit information in the passage than the children who knew less about spiders before they read the passage.

Other researchers have shown that we are better readers when we are reading on a familiar topic than when we are reading on an unfamiliar topic. Marjorie Lipson[xxviii] gave fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade children attending a Catholic school and fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children attending a Hebrew school two reading passages, one entitled First Communion and the other entitled Bar Mitzvah. She found the children attending the Catholic school read faster, recalled more, made fewer errors, and made better inferences in the passage about the first communion than in the passage about the bar mitzvah. Similarly, the children attending the Hebrew school read faster, recalled more, made fewer errors, and made better inferences in the passage about the bar mitzvah than about the first communion.

Donna Recht and Lauren Leslie[xxix] replicated Spilich's baseball experiment with Àlow reading ability” and Àhigh reading ability” seventh- and eighth-graders. They found the children who had more knowledge of baseball before they read the passage comprehended the passage on baseball significantly better than those with less knowledge of baseball before they read the passage, regardless of whether they had been classified as low-ability or high-ability readers. That is, the children with a Àlow reading ability” who had more prior knowledge of baseball comprehended the baseball passage significantly better than the children with a Àhigh reading ability” who had less prior knowledge of baseball.

Researchers have also shown that providing readers background knowledge on a topic before they read can improve reading comprehension of texts on that topic. Kathleen Stevens[xxx] gave three classes of tenth-graders a lesson on the Texan War and three classes a lesson on the U.S. Civil War. Then she asked the students to read a passage on the Alamo, a battle in the Texan War. She found that the students who were given background information about the Texan War before they read the passage on the Alamo understood the passage significantly better than the students who were not given relevant background information before they read the passage.

BEYOND INSTRUCTION

While instructional materials and instruction are important, they are not sufficient. Children and their caretakers at home and at school need access to engaging, age-appropriate books. Gordon Wells,[xxxi] Shirley Brice Heath,[xxxii] and Dina Feitelson and Zahava Goldstein[xxxiii] have all shown that children who are read to become better readers. Richard Anderson and his colleagues[xxxiv] and Ina Mullis and his colleagues[xxxv] and have shown that children who read more, become better readers.

All this requires access to age-appropriate books. Jonathan Kozol,[xxxvi] Steve Krashen and his colleagues,[xxxvii] and Jeff McQuillan[xxxviii] have each shown that children in poor communities in the U.S. have less access to age-appropriate books at home, in school, and in public libraries. In a series of studies in the Los Angeles area, Krashen and his colleagues showed how great the disparity can be. While children in one affluent neighborhood average 200 age- appropriate books per home, children in an impoverished nearby neighborhood average one age-appropriate book for every two homes. The children in the affluent neighborhood have more age-appropriate books in their homes than the children in the impoverished neighborhood have in their classroom libraries.

Warwick Elley,[xxxix] Steve Krashen, and Jeff McQuillan have each shown that access to age-appropriate books is a powerful predictor of reading achievement. Warwick Elley and Francis Mangubhai[xl] have shown that when children with limited access to books are provided with access to books, there is significant growth in literacy. Just as highways are a necessary part of the infrastructure for commerce, access to age-appropriate books for children and their caretakers is a necessary part of the infrastructure for universal literacy.

TOWARDS UNIVERSAL LITERACY

In this paper I have touched on just some of the large body of independent, replicated, peer-reviewed research that has helped literacy educators move beyond traditional parts-to-whole reading instruction and into contemporary, meaning-based, whole-to-parts reading instruction. This body of research shows again and again that while all children benefit from contemporary reading instruction, lower-achieving children benefit the most. It also shows that universal access to age-appropriate books is a pre-requisite of universal literacy.

The problem is, this body of knowledge is not yet part of our general cultural knowledge. Those outside of education often see phonics as reading rather than phonics as a part of reading. Unaware of the role access to books and background knowledge play in learning to read and reading, they assume that if children donĦt do well on norm-referenced tests, it must be because they donĦt know phonics.

In the U.S., publishers with access to the media and access to politicians have been successful in convincing national, state, and local politicians that there is a literacy crisis and their programs (i.e., products) are "research-based" and will improve the literacy of lower-achieving students. Politicians in turn are overriding the expertise of reading/language arts specialists and are implementing traditional educational policies that literacy educators learned a long time ago donĦt work.

One reading program that claims to be based on "reliable, replicable research" (never mind that the sole piece of research it is based on compared less disadvantaged children using its product with more disadvantaged children using its competitorsĦ products) begins with "pre-decodable"(whole word) stories (You go up the [rebus]. We can go up the [rebus] too.) and moves on to decodable stories (A trip, Nat? A trip! A trip! A trip in a cab, Nat? I have the map!).

While decodable texts used to be found exclusively in the primary grades, we are now seeing decodable texts being sold to school districts with large numbers of secondary students who score low on norm-referenced tests. Here is an excerpt from a story from another series (owned by the same publisher) for junior high and high school students:

Al said to Dad, "Hit the sack, Dad. Have a nap."

"I can nap," said Al to Dad.

"I can sit, Al," said Dad.

Dad can pack a sack. Dad can pack the back pack. (sic)

Al said, "Dad, have a bit of a nap."

School is more than a place for corporations to make money. It is a place where individual and collective futures are made. How can we get beyond where we are now to provide more effective literacy education for lower-achieving children?

More and more frequently we see articles in professional newspapers and journals urging educators to dialogue with politicians. As difficult as this is for many of us, it is necessary. There is too much at stake to not do so. However, it may not be sufficient in and of itself. The voice of one education reporter who has never taken a class in education can easily outweigh the voice of thousands of experienced, overworked professional educators.

Ultimately the answer is education†to take what we literacy educators know and disseminate it into the culture. Every college graduate must fulfill general education classes in math and science. Imagine if every college graduate were to have as one of his or her general education classes a class on how children learn to read and write. Then when that college graduate goes on to become a reporter, or a politician, or a member of a board of education, he or she would know enough about how children become literate that policy makers and educators would share a common body of knowledge. It will take generations for us to get beyond where we are now. But if we begin now, we'll get there.

[i]   Kucer, S.B. (1985). Predictability and readability: The same rose with different names? In Claremont Reading Conference Forty-Ninth Yearbook, M. Douglass (Ed.), 229-246. Claremont, CA: Claremont Graduate School.

[ii]    Rhodes, L.K. (1979). Comprehensionand predictability : An analysis of beginning reading materials. In New Perspectives on Comprehension, J. Harste and R. Carey (Eds.) Monograph in Language and Reading Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University School of Education.

[iii]    Goodman, K. (1965). A linguistic study of cues and miscues in reading. Elementary English 42, 639-43.

[iv]    Nicholson, T., Lillas, C. and Rzoska, M.A. (1988). Have we been misled by miscues? The Reading Teacher 42, 6-10.

[v]    Stanovich, K. E. (1991). Word recognition: Changing perspectives. In Handbook of Reading Research, vol. 2, Barr, R.,  Kamil, M.L., Mosenthal, P. and Pearson, P.D. (Eds.), 418-452. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

[vi]   Ruddell, R.B. (1965). The effect of oral and written patterns of language structure on reading comprehension. The Reading Teacher 18, 270-75.

[vii]   Tatham, S. (1970). Reading comprehension and materials written with select oral language patterns: A study at grades two and four. Reading Research Quarterly V, 402-26.

[viii]   Bruce, D. J. (1964). The analysis of word sounds. British Journal of Educational Psychology 34, 158-170.

[ix]   Rosner, J. (1974). Auditory analysis training with prereaders. The Reading Teacher 27, 379-384.

[x]  Liberman, I., Shankweiler, D., Fischer, F.W., and Carter, B. (1974). Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 18, 201-212.

[xi]  See, for example, chapter 2 in M. Moustafa (1997). Beyond Traditional Phonics: Research discoveries and reading instruction. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

[xii]  Scholes, R.J. (1988). The case against phonemic awareness. Journal of Research in Reading 21(3), 177-89.

[xiii]  Treiman, R. (1983). The structure of spoken syllables: Evidence from novel word games. Cognition 15, 49-74.

     _________ (1985). Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: Evidence from children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 39, 161-181.

[xiv]  Goswami, U. (1986). ChildrenĦs use of analogy in learning to read: A developmental study.  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 42, 73-83.

     __________ (1988). Orthographic Analogies and Reading Development. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 40A(2), 239-68.

   Goswami, U. and Mead, F. (1992). Onset and rime awareness and analogies in reading. Reading Research Quarterly 27, 150-62.

[xv]  Moustafa, M. (1995). ChildrenĦs productive phonological recoding. Reading Research Quarterly 30(3), 464-76.

[xvi]  Tunmer, W.E. and Nesdale, A.R. (1985). Phonemic segmentation skill and beginning reading. Journal of Educational Psychology 77, 417-427.

[xvii]  Holdaway, D. (1982). Shared book experience: Teaching reading using favorite books. Theory into Practice 21, 293-300.

[xviii]  Moustafa, M. and Maldonado-Colon, E. (1999). Whole-to-parts phonics instruction: Building on what children know to help them know more. The Reading Teacher 52(5), 448-58.

[xix]  Freppon, P. (1991). ChildrenĦs concepts of the nature and purpose of reading in different instructional settings. Journal of Reading Behavior 23 (2),139-63.

[xx]  Cantrell, S.C. (1999). Effective teaching and literacy learning: A look inside primary classrooms. The Reading Teacher 52(4), 370-78.

[xxi]  Sacks, C.H. and Mergendoller, J.R. (1997). The relationship between teachersĦ theoretical orientation toward reading and student outcomes in kindergarten children with different initial reading abilities. American Educational Research Journal 34(4), 21-39.

[xxii]  Juel, C. and Minden-Cupp, C. (2000). Learning to read words: Linguistic units and instructional strategies. Reading Research Quarterly, 35 (4), 458-492.

[xxiii]  Eldredge, J.L., Reutzel, D.R., and Hollingsworth, P.M. (1996). Comparing the effectiveness of two oral reading practices: round-robin reading and the shared book experience. Journal of Literacy Research 28(2), 201-25.

[xxiv]  Anderson, R.C., Wilkinson, I.A.G. and Mason, J.M. (1991). A microanalysis of the small-group guided reading lesson: Effects of an emphasis on global story meaning. Reading Research Quarterly XXXVI, 417-41.

[xxv]  Bransford, J. D. and Johnson, M. K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11, 717-726.

[xxvi]  Spilich, G. Vesonder, G., Chiesi, H. And Voss, J. (1979). Test processing in domain-related information for individuals with high and low domain knowledge. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 18, 275-290.

[xxvii]  Pearson, P.D., Hansen, J., Gordon, C. (1979). The effect of background knowledge on young childrenĦs comprehension of explicit and implicit information. Journal of Reading Behavior, XI (3), 201-209.

[xxviii]  Lipson, M. Y. (1983). The influence of religious affiliation on childrenĦs memory for text information. Reading Research Quarterly XVIII, 448-457.

[xxix]  Recht, D.R. and Leslie, L. (1988). Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readersĦ memory of text. Journal of Educational Psychology 80, 16-20.

[xxx]  Stevens, K. C. (1982). Can we improve reading by teaching background information? Journal of Reading 25, 326-329.

[xxxi]  Wells, G. (1986). The Meaning Makers. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.

[xxxii]  Heath, S. (1983). Ways with Words. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[xxxiii]  Feitelson, D. and Goldstein, Z. (1986). Patterns of book ownership and reading to young children in Israeli school-oriented and nonschool-oriented families. The Reading Teacher 39, 924-30.