Silent e

Abstract: The script-dependence hypothesis was tested through the examination of the impact of Russian and Hebrew literacy on English orthographic knowledge needed for spelling and decoding among fifth graders. We compared the performance of three groups: Russian–Hebrew-speaking emerging triliterates, Russian–Hebrew-speaking emerging biliterates who were not literate in Russian (but only in Hebrew) and Hebrew-speaking emerging biliterates. Based on similarities between Russian and English orthographies, we hypothesised that Russian–Hebrew-speaking emerging triliterates would outperform both other groups on spelling and decoding of short vowels and consonant clusters. Further, we hypothesised that all groups would face similar difficulties with novel orthographic conventions. Russian–Hebrew-speaking emerging triliterates demonstrated advantages for spelling and decoding of short vowels and for decoding of consonant clusters. All three groups experienced difficulty with spelling and decoding the digraph th as well as the split digraph (silent e).

Abstract: Many previous studies of children's spelling have adopted a narrow approach, examining one linguistic structure at a time and paying little attention to differences among children or changes with development. We broadened the focus by examining two different, but potentially related, patterns (stressed syllabic /r/ and letter-name vowels) and by tracking changes in performance from fall to spring of first grade. The results show how children move from using one letter for each phonological unit (e.g., SR for sir; KON for cone) to appreciating the function of “extra” letters (e.g., the vowel letters i of sir and e of cone). Errors such as SRE for sir may arise during this process, reflecting an overgeneralization of the silent e pattern. The results are generally consistent with the view that spelling becomes more “orthographic” with development. However, the course of development is not always as predicted by existing stage theories.

Abstract: Two experiments are reported in which an attempt is made to identify those parts of words and sentences that readers pay particular attention to during fluent silent reading. Using a technique first reported by Corcoran (1966), we asked university students to cross out all the letter e’s appearing in a text they read. In the first experiment the nature of the text was systematically varied (there were various degrees of difficult, easy, and nonsensical texts); in the second experiment the instructions to subjects were varied (to pay attention to or ignore meaning). The primary results are 1) contrary to Corcoran’s (1966) findings, there is not an acoustic factor in this task (i.e., silent e’s are as readily detected as pronounced e’s); 2) there is a strong tendency, even with the most nonsensical texts, to miss a greater proportion of e’s at the end of words; 3) e’s in unstressed syllables are more likely to be missed than e’s in stressed syllables; 4) there are several grammatical and lexical effects (i.e., the linguistic function of the e to a large extent determines the probability that it will be missed); and 5) the position of a word within a sentence and its position on each line of text also contribute substantially to the probability that any e’s in the word will be missed. The implications of the above results for a theory of reading are discussed. This paper has two aims: to attack the idea that acoustic factors play a significant role in fluent silent reading, and to demonstrate that one of the methods that has been used to investigate acoustic factors is in fact a sensitive tool for studying the micro-structure of the reading process.

Abstract: Summary To explore the role of acoustic factors in visual detection, this study employed 40 deaf and hearing Ss. Ss were requested to cancel all the letters “e” in a passage from Treasure Island. Results were analyzed in terms of probabilities of missing a pronounced or silent e and the e in the word “the.” Hearing and hard of hearing Ss were more likely to miss silent e's than pronounced e's. There was no significant difference between silent and pronounced e's for the profoundly deaf. Deaf and hearing Ss missed significantly more e's in “the” than pronounced or silent e's. The deaf, when compared to the hearing Ss, were more efficient in detecting pronounced and silent e's. They did not differ significantly from the hearing Ss in detecting the e in “the.”