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Although alphabetic writing systems are structured according to the phonemic principle that graphemes represent phonemes, alphabetic writing systems differ in the variability of these mapping relations (Venezky, 1999; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Seymour, Aro, and Erskine (2003) categorized alphabetic languages along two dimensions: orthographic depth and syllabic complexity. Shallow writing systems exhibit consistent mappings between graphemes and phonemes, whereas deep orthographies contain inconsistencies. Languages with simple syllabic structures have open consonant-vowel (CV) syllables with few consonant clusters, whereas complex languages have numerous closed consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables and complex consonant clusters. The English writing system stands apart from other writing systems in being both deep and complex. As a result, beginning readers' rate of development in English is much slower. In fact, Seymour et al. (2003) found that learning to read in English took twice as long as learning in more shallow orthographies.
One feature of English complicating the task of working out grapheme-phoneme relations is that regularities extend beyond single-letter-sound correspondences. Ziegler and Goswami (2005) refer to this as the problem of grain size. From the start, beginning readers in English are confronted with inconsistencies in single-letter-sound correspondences as they attempt to construct mappings between orthography and phonology. Some resolution is achieved as they learn to pay attention to larger orthographic units. These orthographic units include two- and three-letter patterns such as the LL in bell , the CK in back , the SH in ship , the NG in sing , the TCH in match . They include onset and rime spellings that recur in different words, such as the common rimes -all , -ook , -ing , and-ake . Knowledge of these regularities is needed to attain word reading skill in English. One purpose of the present study was to examine when beginning readers become aware of and are able to use units larger than single letters, specifically, doubled letter units, to read and remember words.
Ehri has proposed phase theory to portray children's development in learning to read words from memory by sight (Ehri, 1999, 2005; Ehri & Wilce, 1985). People used to believe that sight words were learned by remembering associations between visual features of the words and their meanings without any contribution from letter-sound relations (Barron,...