PETER BRYANT & TEREZINHA NUNES The time that it takes children to learn to read varies greatly between different orthographies, as the chapter by Sprenger-Charolles clearly shows, and so do the difficulties that they encounter in learning about their own orthography. Nevertheless most people, who have the chance to learn to read, do in the end read well enough, even though a large number experience some significant difficulties on the way. Most of them eventually become reasonably efficient spellers too, even though they go on make spelling mistakes (at any rate if they are English speakers) for the rest of their lives. So, the majority of humans plainly does have intellectual resources that are needed for reading and writing, but it does not always find these resources easy to marshal. What are these resources? Do any of them have to be acquired? Do different orthographies make quite different demands on the intellect? Do people differ significantly from each other in the strength and accessibility of these resources? If they do, are these differences an important factor in determining children's success in learning to read and write? These are the main questions that the different chapters in this section on Basic Processes set out to answer.
Al. Childhood Conceptions of Literacy.- A2. Phonology and Spelling.- A3. Linguistic Processes in Reading and Spelling: The Case of Alphabetic Writing Systems: English, French, German and Spanish.- A4. Connectionist Models of Children's Reading.- A5. Morphology and Spelling.- A6. Children's Self-Perception as Readers.- B1. The Development of Comprehension Skills.- B2. Text and Cognition.- B3. The Use of Context in Learning to Read.- B4. Reading Stories.- B5. Computers and Writing.- Cl. Reading and Spelling Difficulties.- C2. The Concept of Dyslexia.- C3. Developmental Dyslexia: Evidence from Brain Research.- C4. Epidemiology: Genetic and Social Influences on Reading Ability.- C5. Reading Comprehension Difficulties.- C6. Early Identification.- C7. Early Intervention.- C8. Individual Differences in Dyslexia.- C9. Specific Speech and Language Difficulties and Literacy.- C10. Reading by Touch in Blind Children and Adults.- C11. Deafness and Reading.- Introduction: Teaching Literacy: What Practices, When and Why?.- D1. Literacy in Time and Space: Issues, Concepts and Definitions.- D2. Teaching Reading: A Historical Approach.- D3. The Cognitive Consequences of Literacy.- D4. Comparative Studies of Instructional Methods.- D5. Early Emergent Literacy.- D6. The Linguistic Consequences of Literacy.- El. Phonological Awareness and Learning to Read: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective.- E2. Morphology, Reading and Spelling: Looking Across Languages.- E3. Bilingualism and Reading.- E4. Grammatical Awareness Across Languages and the Role of Social Context: Evidence from English and Hebrew.- E5. Literacy, Socialisation and the Social Order.- E6. Segmentation in the Writing of Mayan Language Statements by Indigenous Children with Primary Schooling.- E7. Paths to Literacy for Deaf BritishSign Language (BSL) Users.
