Journal Article Critique Essay -- essays research papers

Research Article 1 Roberts, T. (2003). Effects of Alphabet-Letter Instruction on Young Children’s Word Recognition [Electronic Version]. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (1), 41-51. Title The title of the article gave a fair representation of the topic as it was clear and concise in the wording. The title encompassed the idea that alphabet letter instruction on young children’s word recognition would be explored through experiments and analysis. Reading on through the article it was evident that the effects of alphabet letter instruction on you children’s word recognition were addressed. Introduction Experimental studies have been undertaken throughout the years in relation to alphabet letter instruction. The first of these experiments were undertaken with kindergarten and year one students in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The purpose of these early experiments was to examine the hypothesis that letter-name knowledge played a causal role in the relationship between letter-name knowledge and early reading. If knowledge of letter names was a causal factor, then instruction that increased children’s letter-name knowledge should increase early reading performance. It was concluded from these early studies that there was little educational benefit to be gained from letter-name instruction. A man by the name of Ehri in 1983 critiqued these early studies and concluded they suffered from a number of methodological flaws. The concluded flaws included training may have been too short and not thorough, treatment groups differed, training did not include instruction in how to use letter-name knowledge for word reading and training the children in small groups resulted in insufficient learning. Since the early studies and Ehri’s conclusions a great deal of research has demonstrated that letter knowledge is integrally involved in word recognition. The hypotheses and purpose of this later study was to examine anew the effects of letter-name knowledge associated with instruction on beginning phonetic word recognition with methodology correcting for the flaws of previous studies. After instruction the children’s ability to learn 3 types of word spellings was examined. An argument was then formulated that efforts to increase children’s attention to letter information are needed, given its clear importance in early reading. Method The subjects for this stud... ...ponent. The core of this difference seem to centre around how children should be helped to read words not in their sight vocabularies, with parents highly valuing the use of word phonetics and teachers highly valuing the use of context. There were no limitations and future research noted in this study. Critique This article discussed the views and opinions of both parents and teachers in regards to beginning reading. Literacy development is a major issue within early primary classrooms. Parent’s views on this were that literacy development is the responsibility of the school. The foundation of literacy definitely comes from the school but it is at home where it is practiced and reinforce and may even overarch the schools responsibility. Children whose parents are unable to assist them at home with their literacy development definitely fall out in respect to ongoing help and support. Children in my primary school classes whose parents were unable to help them struggled with their reading, word recognition and literacy skills the entire way through primary school. This shows that literacy development is not primarily the schools responsibility but the child’s parents at home also.