Phonic Knowledge and Its Relation to The Spelling and Reading Achievement of Fourth Grade Pupils

THERE IS no close agreement concerning the role of phonic training in the acquisition of reading and spelling skills although this problem has been discussed and studied over the years. However, there is some indication that children learn the more essential phonic principles whether or not formal instruction in phonics is given them, and t ha t this knowledge is related to reading skill at the elementary grade levels. T?te (1), comparing the reading progress of first grade children given phonic drill with those trained in the look and say method, observed that children in both groups knew some fundamental phonic principles at the end of the training period. When Tiffin and McKinnis (3) investi gated the relation between reading skill and the application of phonic principles to the pronunciation of nonsense-words by children in the fifth through the eighth grades, they did not consider the method by which the phonic principles were acquired. However, correlations ranging from . 55 to . 70 between reading skill and phonic scores suggest a sub stantial relation between knowledge of phonics and skill in reading. The present study is concerned with the relation of phonic knowledge irrespective of how it was acquired, to spelling and reading achievement. It was designed to investigate: (a) the level of phonic knowledge of fourth grade pupils, (b) the relation between phonic knowledge and reading and spelling skill at this grade level, and (c) what differences, if any, exist in the phonic knowledge of good and poor spellers and of good and poor readers.