TRAINING OF POOR READERS PHONOLOGICAL DECODING SKILLS - EVIDENCE FOR SYLLABLE-BOUND PROCESSING

A flash card computer program designed to increase decoding speed in r eading was evaluated with a sample of 55 eight- to twelve-year-old: Du tch poor readers by using a pretest-training-posttest control group de sign. The reading level of the poor readers was comparable to the read ing level of normal readers in grade two. After 8 weeks of practicing (twice a week) for 30 minutes per session, children in the training gr oup showed substantial improvements in decoding speed not only on pseu dowords directly practiced during the training, but also in untrained pseudowords and in existing words. The no-training control group did n ot improve in decoding speed from pre- to posttest. The results, furth ermore, indicate that syllable-bound processes play a role in phonolog ical decoding in Dutch, and that the flash card method used in this st udy stimulates poor readers to decode letter strings into syllabic uni ts, which leads to an increase in decoding speed. The role of the syll able in phonological decoding and the potential of a specific flash ca rd technique as a means to improve decoding skills of poor readers are discussed.