Rhyming ability, phoneme identity, letter-sound knowledge, and the use of orthographic analogy by prereaders

Two current models of the use of orthographic analogy claim that (a) beginning readers can make orthographic analogies based on rhyming and (b) considerable experience recoding individual letter sequences involving phonemes is a prerequisite. The study tested the first model and had implications for the second model. Rhyming, phoneme identity, letter-sound knowledge, and vocabulary were measured in 66 prereaders with a mean age of 5 years 8 months. Children then received teaching that varied experience with onset and rime and with words with the spelling intact or segmented. The study produced evidence that children with high-prereading skills can make orthographic analogies when beginning to read. However, final phoneme identity, not rhyming, was the best discriminator between children who read analogy test words and those who did not. The evidence supports a synthesis of the two models.