How reading begins: A study of preschoolers' print identification strategies

This investigation examined the strategies employed by preschool children w hen identifying noncommercial print appearing in their kindergartens (names on personal lockers). In contrast to previous research that has relied hea vily on commercial materials, such as labels and logos, and has not reveale d strong links between environmental print identification and conventional word identification, we found that most 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, w ere attending to print rather than to contextual cues. We also observed a w ide variety of reading strategies in this sample. The existence of Ehri's ( Ehri & Sweet, 1991; Ehri & Wilce, 1987) phonetic-cue reading was confirmed as a naturally occurring phenomenon as well as a hitherto unknown strategy we labeled visuographic reading. Clear-cut support was obtained for a devel opmental distinction between prephonetic and phonetic strategies, and weake r support was obtained for a finer 4-way differentiation among contextual d ependency, visuographic, phonetic-cue, and alphabetic reading. We also unde rtook an experimental training study designed to elucidate the causal facto rs underlying developmental progress in word identification. Children train ed in specific alphabetic skills (phonological awareness and letter knowled ge) made significantly more progress in reading strategy than matched child ren trained in print awareness. Collectively, these results point to a caus al role for alphabetic and phonological skills in the development of presch ool word identification.