DOCUMEBT RESUiE ED,124 889 95' CS 002 733 AUTHOR Berdiansky, Betty;.. And Others TITLE Design for Sequencing Spelling-To-Sound Correspondences for the SWRL Reading Program. Technical Report No 47. INSTITUTION Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, Los Alamitos, Calif. SPONS AGENCY Office 9f Education (DREW), Washington,0D.C. REPORT NO 3WRL-TR-47 PUB'DATE 31 Oct 73 NOTE -184p.; Not available in hard copy due to marginal legibility of original document EDRS PRICE MF-$0.83 Plus Postage. HC Not Available from EDRS. DESCRIPTORS *Beginning Reading; *Phoneme Grupheme Correspondence; Primary Education; Program Descriptions; *Reading Instruction; *Reading Programs; Technical Reports IDENTIFIERS *Southwest Regional Laboratory; SWRL 0 ABSTRACT Froi a 9,000-word leiicon, a set of .:spelling -to- sound. correspondences was developed to systematically organize possible content for beginning reading instruction. With, the aid.of computer sorting procedures, correspondences and correspondencs.exemplars were sequenced according. to criteria of productivity, regularity, generalizability, and.phonological equivalence. This report describeS sequencing criteria.anX methodology, and the specifici.sequence; in addition, all words are listed (including irregularly-spelled words, proper names, contractions, and abbreviations), sequenced by and within correspondences. (Author) 0 0 ********************************************44************4************ * Documents acquired-by ERIC include many informal unpublished - * * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makeS6every effort 4c * to obtain the best copy. available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the'quality. * * of the microfiChe and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). BOBS is not * * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * smpplied by EDRS are th'e best that can bemade from the original. ************************************************************4e********** 0 U S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION L WELFARE NATIONAL INSTITUTE Oc EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO- DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGIN o //TING IT POINTS OF .VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED 00 NOT NECESSARILY REPRE SENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY 'Cr% SWRL -EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND -DEVELOPMENT co Co TECHNICAL REPORT 47 r1 C o er w O DESIGN FOR SEQUENCING SPELLING7TOTSOUND CORRESPONDENCES FOR . THE SWRI, READING PROGRAM AV Betty Berdiansky, George Stanton, and Bruce Cronnell ABSTRACT . From a 9,000-word lexicon, a set of spelling-tosound correspondences was developed to systematically organize possible content for beginning reading instruction. With the aid of computer sorting procedures, corre- spondences and correspondence exemplars were sequenced. according to cri- teria of productivity, regularity, generalizability, and phonological equiValence. This report dastribes.sequencing cciteria and methodology, and the specific sequence; in addition, all words arm* listed (including irregularly-spelled words, proper names, contractions, and abbreviations), sequenced by and within correspondences. o r\§ copy. CONTENTS Page 0 INTRODUCTION 1 Identification of the Lexicon 1 Development of Spellingr-to-Sound Corre- 1 spondence Rul.es Preliminary Sequence 3 Program Implications. and Advantages 4 Section I GENERAL SEQUENCING CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGY 7' General Sequencing Criteria 7 Rationale for Unit, Block, and Year Divisions 7 Computer Processing of Sequence, Rules, and 9 Exemplars Within-Rule Seqbencing Criteria 10 Irregular Words 10 - Grapheme-Unit Pronunciation Variability 12 Section II ,DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE SEQUENCE 15, First Year 15 Second Year 27 Third Year 45 Fourth Year 60 Section III CRITERIA''FOR WITHIN-RULESEQUENCING 71 First -.and Second-Year Word Lists 74 Third -Year Word List 77 Fourth Year Word List 80 Section IV SEQUENCED WORD LISTS 83 0 First-Year Word List ..-(Blocks 1-4) :- 83 Second-Year Word.14st (Blocks 5-14) 87 Third-Year Wor#,I,' t (Blocks 15-22) 99 Fourth-Year Wordfist(Blocks 23-27) 113 SectiOn V SEQUENCEDIRREGULARLY-SPELLED WORDS 121 First Year 121 Second Year 122 a Third. Year 124 Fourth Year 129 iii Section VI SEQUENCED PROPER NAMES 135 Sequenced Proper Names for First Year 135 SequenCed Proper Names for Second Year 136 Sequenced Proper-Names for Third Year 138 Sequenced Proper Names for Fourth Year '139 Sequenced Irregularly-Spelled Proper Names 140. Section VII UNSEQUENCED ADDITIONAL WORDS 143 Section VIII SEQUENCED CONTRACTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS 147 Appendix A AEY TO PRONUNCIATION AND SYMBOLS 161 Appendix B GLOSSARY 165 Appendix C SUMMARY OF RULE SEQUENCE , 169 . Appendix D SPELLING-TO-SOUND CORRESPONDENCES: RULE 175 DESCRIPTION, EXAMPLES, POSITION IN SEQUENCE Appendix E NUMBER OF WORDS SEQUENCED FOR READING 185 INSTRUCTION REFERENCES . 187 iv DESIGN FOR SEQUENCING SPELLING-TO-SOUND CORRESPONDENCES FOR THE SWRL READING PROGRAM Betty Berdiansky, George Stanton,:and Bruce Cronnell NT] The Reading Program of SWRL Educational Research and Development is founded on the use of spelling-to-sound correspondences. Correspon- dence rules are used 4o teach the skill of decoding printed words because spelling-sound patterns of, English are generally regular and specifiable by means of a manageable number of rules (Venezky, 1967, 1970). Since the regularities of English spelling-to-sound patterns far outnumber the irregularities, a rule-based approach will provide transferable elements for decoding new words, and the few irregularities can be learned as sight words. For a detailed discussion of the merits of such an approach, and the use of spelling-to-sound correspondences 1. in such atreading program, see Desberg and Berdiansky (1968) and Berdiansky, Cronnell, and Koehler (1969). IDENTIFICATION OF THE LEXICON The first step in the design of this reading program was the specification of a lexicon appropriate for children at the kindergarten through third-grade level. Twenty-nine different sources were consulted in this regard, including the Rinsland (1945) list for elementary school children, preprimer to fourth-grade reading materials, published word lists, children's responses to word association tasks, children's TV programs, and children's verbal behavior in song and in play.. Approx- imately 9,000 words were Selected which were believechto be in the recognition, if not activ4 vocabulary of K-3children.This provided an adequate base for study ing the spelling-to-sound correspondences needed in beginning reading, as well as an ample supply of words for actual use in the reading program. All words not already categorized by the Rinsland list were screened by SWRL staff, and categorized- as appropriate to either the K-1 or 2-3 grade levels. DEVELOPMENT OF SPELLING -TO -SOUND CORRESPONDENCE RULES After specification of the lexicon, the spelling -to -sound corres- pondence rules were developed-,based primarily on the work of Venezky CO 1 -; (1967, 1970). Venezky's rules were-modifid somewhat to enable the reader to proceed directly from spelling to/sound. .Moreover, the Study of spelling-to-sound correspondences ims'limited to the 6,000 one- and two-syllable words in the SWRL lexicon, since these were believed to 'be easier and more usefUl than polysyllabic words for beginning readers. Although there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, a total of 69 grapheme units were identified for the lexicon." This larger number is due to the fact that grapheme units were considered to be not only single consonants- and vowels (e.g., m, e) but also sequences of letters, which act as a unit: 1. double consonants, e.g., mm, tt; 2. consonant digraphs, i.e.,two consonant letters whose pronun- ciatIon cannot be determined fromthe correspondences for the individual' letters, e.g., sh, th; 3. strings of letters whichcommonly function together as units, e.g., ck, It; 4. secondary vowels, i.e., two or more Vowel letters with a single corresponding pronunciation, e.g., au; /ea. A total of 166 correspondences were established for the one- and two - syllable words in the lexicon. (A list of all correspondenceS, with examples, is found in Appendix D. See Berdiansky et al. (1969) and'Cronnell (1971a), for a complete description of the correspondences used in this project.) :However, for nearly two- thirds (42) of the 69 grapheme units, one correspondence rule was sufficientfor 15 of the grapheme units, only" wo_rules wereAteeded; for the remainder, 7 required from three to. five rules. It was the primary vowels Sa, e, i, o, u, y), with 11 to 16 correspondence rules each7, that appreciably raised the total number.orules establiihed for the lexicon. This latter result is not very surprising considering the well-known variability of English vowel spellings. The large number of correspondences may imply an unwarranted degree of complexity. The following four points should clarify this issue. 1 See Berdiansky, Cronnell, and Koehler (1969) for greater detail re- garding the development of the correspondence rules, as well as the lexicon specification. 41. 3 1. Many correspondences are generali2able-across several grapheme.. units (e.g., correspondences for final.VCe ). This is particularly true for primary vowels where there are 10 such cases; i.e., there are 50 individual letter. .Oorrespondence rules which can be reducedto 10 general vowel correspondences (referred to as "general primary vowel