The Role of Letter Names in Learning to Read is Still Curious

Donald Durrell and Helen Murphy did considerable research into the value of letter names for beginning readers.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/n2bhujsl5xo8x29s0wu72/Letter_Names_Durrell.pdf?rlkey=frtq5cziy92hgxu02wm1zk5hy&e=1&dl=0

Thank you for your blog. You mention that "teaching letters along with PA multiplies the PA effect (Byrne-Fielding-Barnsley, 1995). It almost triples the payoff." When the NRP found that teaching PA "with" letters was more impactful, I was under the understanding this meant using the visual representation of the letters to represent the sounds during PA activities is what creates the triple impact of improved PA, not using the actual names of the letters during PA. I am wondering if there are two ideas here. One being that using a physical presentation of letters "during" PA activities improves PA. The other is that teaching PA "and" teaching letter names (as opposed to not teaching letter names) increases reading achievement. I suppose what I am asking is that is teaching PA using a visual representation of letters what gives us triple the payoff or is it teaching PA "and" teaching letter names? Thank you!

Harriet--
The study compared oral PA with PA with alphabet, it was not a sounds versus alphabet study.
The research that you cited did not find any consistent benefit from sounds before letters (there were multiple conditions and it was only superior in one of them)... which has been true of past studies (https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/letter-names-or-sounds-first-you-might-be-surprised-by-the-answer). There is no reliable evidence showing that starting with sounds is superior to starting with letters (seems to depend on what the students already know).

tim

Don-
You are correct. Both Durrell and Murphy provided a good deal of correlational evidence indicating that the kids who knew their letters earlier made the greatest early progress in learning to read.
tim

Danna-
You are making a distinction that we did not make as the National Reading Panel. It is certainly possible some of those NRP studies did not tell kids the letter names, though that would be unusual.

tim

Is there a reference for Seidenberg, 2018 about the theory as to why we should teach letter names?

Thank you!

Gina--

Language at the Speed of Sight. Basic Books.

tim

Thank you, Dr. Shanahan! I have it. ????

It seems plausible to me that the emphasis on the names, specifically, is somewhat missing the point. I would expect that the positive factor for these children is that they know the letter shapes. They can distinguish between these various arrangements of lines and curves, and they have a label to attach to them. The specific label probably isn't exceptionally important.
My observation is that by 1st grade children who have had reasonable instruction know that "m" says /m/. I can't think of an exception. However, I have met a few over the years who still struggle to associate that name/sound combo with the correct assortment of squiggles.

Jamie-

I’m not sure it is missing the point. All objects have names. Some would like to tell kids the sounds associated with the letters as the names, but that means that the letters have many names and sometimes no names (since they are silent). Having a visually recognizable shape with many visual versions and many acoustic versions but a single name that summarizes that is quite useful to readers apparently.

Tim

Oh, I am definitely not advocating for ditching letter names -- though I wouldn't mind changing a few to predict the sound more consistently. I'm simply theorizing that if we look at it as letter identification and take the name debate out of the picture, the reason for the predictive value becomes obvious to me. A child who enters school knowing that "t" and "r" are different meaningful things has the first crucial foundation for literacy. A child who sees meaningless squiggles has to spend key instructional time building that foundation.

From Jamie: A child who enters school knowing that "t" and "r" are different meaningful things has the first crucial foundation for literacy. A child who sees meaningless squiggles has to spend key instructional time building that foundation.

Diane McGuinness speculates that the reason letter name knowledge correlates with reading outcomes is because of experience with paired-associate learning and not with knowing the names of letters per se. I believe it was Rebecca Treiman who conducted a study comparing the UK (emphasis on sounds) to the US (emphasis on names) and found initial outcomes based on differences in those two approaches but no significant difference in end-of-first grade reading ability.

The correlation makes sense to me...sound to symbol correspondence. Children need to learn both the letter names, the symbols of written language, and the sounds that they represent. Experienced teachers understand that this is an important distinction to make when teaching the alphabetic principle and they teach it explicitly. When a young reader confuses the two and calls the symbols the sound and vise versa it is a sign on confusion that needs to be addressed. When children clearly understand this alphabetic principle they can talk about the letters and sounds in words. That is important.

When we teach a child whose primary language is not English we use those names to make important distinctions for them. "In Spanish, the letter J makes the /h/ sound, in English the letter J makes the /J/ sound." When we orally spell a word, we spell with the symbols, the letter names, yes?

Dr. Shanahan, the topics in your blog makes us think about language and literacy in a deeper way. Mary Baker-Hendy

Karen-
No, it is a pretty wide mix of studies over a very long time (100 years)... some are time, many perhaps most are not. They are truly measuring knowledge not RAN.

tim

Hi

In the blog you state the following:

"...teaching letters along with PA multiplies the PA effect (Byrne-Fielding-Barnsley, 1995). It almost triples the payoff. Teaching PA improves reading, teaching PA along with letter names improves it even more. Much more."

Having read Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley (1995) a couple of times now, I'm not sure that this study does show anything about the teaching of PA along with letter names compared to just teaching PA. The study compares teaching PA using some resources with not teaching PA at all using those same resources (instead focusing on things like general pattern spotting). In other words, the study shows that teaching PA is beneficial compared to not teaching PA. (Even then, there is also no clear suggestion that the experimental group in this study were even taught letter names. The picture of the letter was present when trying to spot objects that began or ended with that sound, and the participants were told what sound that letter 'made'.) I also looked at the two prior studies linked to this one (as this is a follow up of a 1991 study and another follow up was conducted in 1993). Again, I found nothing to support the statement that "teaching letters along with PA multiplies the PA effect".

Is there a different study that shows this, perhaps?

Or am I missing something in Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley (1995)?

From experience, I appreciate the practical advantages to instruction of pupils knowing letter names, and I know there are lots of studies that show correlations between letter name knowledge and other literacy skills. And I certainly appreciate that PA instruction in the presence of visible letters appears to be considerably more beneficial than oral-only PA instruction. But I can't find anything yet to support your the statement from the blog that I quoted above. I would appreciate being directed towards anything that shows the effect you describe.

Chris--

I regret to say that you are correct in your evaluation of this claim. I have checked with the senior author of the studies that I interpreted (Brian Byrne) and he, too, though not entirely certain about the matter given the distance in time, agrees with your conclusions. He believes that they DID NOT use letter names in their intervention. I am sorry for my misinterpretation... it means that there are no studies that provide direct evidence that teaching letter names has any impact on learning to read. Thanks for your careful eye.

tim

I have nothing but respect for you, Professor Shanahan. Thank you for all the work that you do and for your openness to discussion.

Re: Let’s face it. Everything has a name. Pretending that letters are an exception won’t improve reading achievement, and teaching the sounds as names will have limited value and add unnecessary confusion...
Yes! How is one supposed to talk about letters without mentioning their names...they aren't Voldemort.

Hi Dr. Shanahan!

I may be getting into the weeds a bit here, but my question is: is it essential for children to learn letter names before they learn the sounds, or should their teacher be instructing on both letter name and letter sound together?

And my potentially weedier follow-up question: does that answer depend on the ages of the students?

Thank you!

Dr. Shanahan,

So after reading the correction I am still wondering why primary students do the DIBELS LNF (letter naming fluency) subtest.

Thanks!

Pretty hard to teach the sounds of letters without naming them or, when you do name them, children don't know what letter you're talking about. Letter names are pedagogically useful because they are terms (like many others) used in the language of instruction for phonics, spelling, etc..

Joanne-
There is one certain benefit and one possible benefit. The certain one is if you are trying to identify which children are likely to have difficulties in learning to read... the LNF test should be part of the collection of measures that you would use to to do that. As for the possible benefit: there are two points of view about teaching letter names -- one is that they do not matter and may even be confusing to kids (e.g., Samuels, McGuinness) and the other is that they are helpful and should be taught (e.g., Ehri, Seidenberg). There is no direct research on which to pick between those choices. If the latter one is correct (and I think it is), then LNF will reveal an important need, if the former is, then you can safely skip the test.

tim

I've just finished listening to an interview with Linnea Ehri where she said she watched a Tik Tok video featuring a teacher using Elkonin boxes to teach segmentation and having students say the letter names rather than sounds--which, Ehri emphasized, is definitely not what we should be doing. I disagree with David that it's hard to teach the sounds of letters without naming them. That part is actually quite easy (and what I did teaching kindergarten), and since segmenting and blending involve sounds, not names, it's easy to focus lessons on the sounds. Letter names are "pedagogically useful" as labels, but there can be so much confusion, even among teachers, about their application to segmenting and blending that this can undermine reading instruction as demonstrated in that Tik Tok video.

Alexandra--

Here is a piece a wrote on that very subject.
https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/letter-names-or-sounds-first-you-might-be-surprised-by-the-answer
tim

So, does this sounds correct?
1. Letter naming remains one of our best predictors of future reading success, although the reason why isn't quite clear.
2. There is no research that proves teaching letter names to children who have low LNF scores will improve their reading, however many experts believe it's helpful as long as we aren't spending an inordinate amount of time on it.

This continues to fascinate me...that it's such a strong predictor but may or may not be all that useful to teach. This would be a great research study for someone!

As a reading intervention teacher, I’ve long been an advocate of referring to the the letters by sound, rather than name. The Greeks figured out a good system for the names: provide a nonsense syllable that begins with the sound of the letter. If that were our system, there would be no controversy. But then the Romans screwed it up by making some letter names start with the sound of the letter and other names end with the sound. Then new letters got added and the letter names got even more confusing. So, for years I had students (way fewer than 50%) who entered first grade thinking they knew the sounds of the letters because they ‘knew’ that B said /b/ and D said /d/ therefore L, M, N, F, S, and X all said/e/. The worst was getting U, Y and W all tangled up. No amount of practice eliminated the strong idea that U said /y/ and Y said/w/. I had to create a series of lessons explaining the system: there were easy letters, medium hard letters, hard letters (like the vowels) and then there were a couple of downright tricky letters. It’s time spent with confused children that makes people like Diane McGuinness think there must be an easier, more straightforward way to literacy.

Faith-
Yes, that is a good summary.

tim

"No amount of practice eliminated the strong idea that U said /y/ and Y said/w/."

As Halloween approaches, I will think about my first grader who wrote a yonderful yitch story! (He didn't attempt the word 'wonderful' but that is how he spelled 'witch'.)

This is something to sort out , I think , preschool level. My mother and I taught hundreds of three year olds to begin reading particularly those with handicaps . At this age songs like 'Old Macdonald had a Farm' were helpful distinguishing names from the 'noises ' they make. Onomatopoeia words and poems, along with alliteration, assonance and tongue twisters should be included in any preschool programme. Unfortunately most children in NZ preschools for 3-4 year olds learn the alphabet song based on names of letters. This is often not very good since frequently they haven't even learnt the shape it refers to, let alone the sound. I encourage all parents to buy an alphabet freize to put on the wall and to revise daily for about 10 minutes concentrating on identifying the shapes of sounds and the names. Jolly phonics, see free alphabet -phoneme song on line, concentrates on focusing on the sounds and actions accompanying the picture and letters eg 'm m m m 'and rubbing 'full' stomach but I like an emphasis on the shape as well so two mountains side by side for /m/ or m. I do wonder which is best? I torture myself trying to think of a freize that combines both sound and shape aspects. I have always been led to believe most of the letter names have sound elements of the phoneme present as well eg t and /t/. This is certainly not true of w. And of course for the long vowels the names are also the phoneme. It seems silly not not learn the letters as well for oral spelling purposes.