Journal of Literacy Research

Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor

Readers in High School
Catherine G. Penney
Psychology Department,
Memorial University of
T hirty-three poor readers participated in an experi-
mental test of a method to teach decoding skills.
Twenty-one students in the experimental condition were
Newfoundland,
St. John’s, Newfoundland, given approximately 18 sessions of individual tutoring in
Canada which they practiced associations between letter patterns
and pronunciations for pronounceable parts of words. A
control group of 12 students remained in their class in-
stead of receiving the tutoring program. Standardized
tests of word identification, word attack, and passage
comprehension were administered before and after the
tutoring program. Analyses of covariance were used to
compare performance of experimental and control partic-
ipants on the reading measures. Students in the experi-
mental group showed greater improvements on all
measures than did students in the control condition when
the effects of initial scores were statistically controlled.

Many children and adults are poor readers and have dif-
ficulty decoding words from print. To achieve fast and
effortless word identification a reader must understand
how letter patterns map onto pronunciation and, for
printed words that have not been previously encoun-
tered, must be able to produce an approximate pro-
nunciation. If the approximate pronunciation can be
mapped onto a known word, lexical and semantic in-
formation can then be retrieved. For many children the
first step of learning associations between letter pat-
terns and pronunciation is difficult and these children
often do not develop adequate decoding skills. This
JLR article reports an experimental investigation of a tech-
V. 34 No. 1 nique designed to teach decoding skills to a group of
2002
PP. 99-118 high school students with reading difficulties.

The technique investigated was based on the Glass

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Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor Readers in High School

Analysis (Glass & Glass, 1976), in which the student rehearses sequences of letters
that correspond to pronounceable units — whole words, syllables, or rimes. (The
rime corresponds to the vowel sound and any following consonant sounds in a syl-
lable.) The student does not attempt to pronounce isolated phonemes (except oc-
casional vowel sounds) and does not blend phonemes to make words. The
rationale underlying the Glass Analysis distinguishes between reading, which in-
volves processing the meaning of words, and decoding, which is the process of
translating letter patterns into sounds. The assumption is that the student should
learn decoding separately from reading to minimize the cognitive load. To focus the
learner’s attention on the relation between letter patterns and sounds, words are
taught in the absence of context (sentences or pictures). The goal of decoding train-
ing is to develop an automatic response to letter patterns; what is not desired is
the use of conscious problem-solving strategies or the application of rules.

Different approaches to literacy and different theories about reading and reading
disabilities have given rise to a variety of remedial reading techniques and pro-
grams. The Glass Analysis technique investigated here is based on studies showing
that most individuals with reading difficulties have decoding problems arising from
deficient phonemic awareness — an inability to analyse words into their con-
stituent phonemes (e.g. Stanovich, 1982, 1988). Because poor readers do not per-
ceive the individual phonemes, they are unable to attach letters to these
phonemes. The Glass Analysis word identification drills consist of rehearsing asso-
ciations between letter sequences and their pronunciation where the letter se-
quences form pronounceable parts of words. By associating letter sequences with
pronounceable units rather than with individual phonemes, the Glass Analysis
would appear to offer a means of teaching decoding to students who have poor
phonemic awareness.

Rationale for Using the Glass Analysis

There are at least three reasons for expecting that teaching associations between
letter patterns and their pronunciations at the level of syllables and rimes will be
effective in teaching decoding skills even for students with low levels of phonemic
awareness. First, the ability to segment a syllable into onset and rime develops be-
fore and may be prerequisite to phonemic awareness (Treiman & Zukowski, 1991).
(The onset of a syllable is the initial consonant sound or group of consonant sounds
in the syllable. A syllable must have a vowel sound; it may or may not have conso-
nant sounds before and after the vowel sound.) Treiman and Zukowski (1991)
showed that preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade children could all identify
words that contained identical syllables (e.g. hammer and hammock or compete and

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 Journal of Literacy Research

repeat). The younger children were better able to identify common onsets or rimes
than common phonemes in pairs of words. For example, they understood that
plank and plea began with the same sound (where pl constitutes the onset) or that
spit and wit ended with the same sound (i.e. the rime), but they had difficulty iden-
tifying common phonemes when those phonemes constituted part of the onset or
rime (as in steak and sponge or smoke and tack). It was as though the children could
not analyse the onset or rime into the constituent phonemes.

Using phonological awareness tasks that involved blending, segmentation, isola-

tion, and deletion of sub-syllable linguistic units Stahl and Murray (1994) also found
evidence that phonological processing at the level of onsets and rimes was strong-
ly related to early reading acquisition. Stahl and Murray found that the difficulty of
phonological awareness tasks depended on the linguistic level of the units being
used, with best performance for onsets and rimes followed by processing involving
the vowel and terminal consonant. The children had the most difficulty when they
had to deal with consonant phonemes embedded within a consonant cluster at the
beginning or end of the word (e.g. black or sharp). Ability to process individual con-
sonants within word-initial or word-final consonant clusters did not appear to be a
pre-requisite for reading. Stahl and Murray pointed out that the children appeared
to treat consonant clusters as units which could be represented by a sequence of
two letters. Thus the children could decode words beginning or ending with a con-
sonant cluster even though they did not understand that each letter in the cluster
represented a separate phoneme.

The work of Treiman and Zukowski (1991) and of Stahl and Murray (1994) suggests
that children first learn to segment words into syllables and subsequently they learn
to segment syllables into onsets and rimes. Only later do children learn to segment
onsets and rimes into their constituent phonemes. If onsets and rimes are phono-
logical units available to young children who have not developed awareness of
phonemes constituting onsets and rimes, it seems reasonable that onsets and
rimes could be appropriate units for teaching decoding.

A second reason for teaching letter-sound correspondences at the level of rimes

is that spelling-sound correspondences are more regular at this level than at the
level of individual phonemes (Stanback, 1992, Treiman, Mullenix, Bijeljac-Babic,
1995; Wylie & Durrell, 1970). Treiman et al. (1995) found that rimes had more
consistent pronunciations than either isolated vowels or combinations of initial
consonant plus vowel. Stanback (1992) analysed a vocabulary of 17,602 words
and found 824 different rimes. Of these, 208 were unique in that they occurred

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Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor Readers in High School

in only one word. Of the remaining 616, 491 (or 79%) were consistent in pronun-
ciation. Given the low percentage utility of phonic generalizations and their cog-
nitive complexity (Adams, 1990), it may be more useful to teach regular rime
patterns than phonic generalizations.

The third reason for teaching letter-sound correspondences at the level of rimes is
that the rime may be a natural unit for beginning readers. When “sounding out”
unfamiliar words, successful beginning readers do not use grapheme-phoneme as-
sociations; instead, evidence indicates that children use larger units (Glass & Burton
1973; Hardy, Stennett, & Smythe 1973; Rubeck 1977). Rubeck (1977) replicated
Glass and Burton’s finding that second- and fifth-grade students attempted to pro-
nounce familiar letter patterns corresponding to more than one phoneme, manip-
ulating the pronunciations until they obtained the word; children did not produce
sounds for individual letters or digraphs and then blend the sounds into a word.
Moustafa (1995) examined successful nonsense word reading to determine
whether the child had used a phoneme-blending strategy or onset-rime analogies.
The onset-rime analogies accounted for 95% of correct nonsense word reading.

There is evidence that young children can use rime analogies to read unfamiliar
words. In Peterson and Haines’ (1992) study children were given a clue word, told
what it was, and then asked to read a target word which shared either the initial
consonant and vowel, the rime, or two letters with the clue word. Replicating ear-
lier work by Goswami (1986, 1988), they found that children performed best when
the target word shared the rime with the clue word. Greaney and Tumner (1996),
Muter, Snowling, and Taylor (1994), and Wang and Gaffney (1998) also found that
first-grade students were able to use rime analogies but performed better if the
clue word was present than if it were not.

The results of investigations of teaching reading based on onsets and rimes as units
indicate some value in this approach for younger children. Wise, Olson, and
Treiman (1990) used two versions of a remedial reading program to teach poor
readers in second to fifth grades. A talking computer highlighted orthographic seg-
ments of a word visually at the same time as it pronounced them. The highlighted
segments corresponded to onsets and rimes in one condition (e.g. cl - ap, d - ish),
and to the initial consonants and the vowel or the two final consonants in the sec-
ond condition (e.g. cla - p, di - sh). On an immediate word identification test the
onset-rime condition produced higher performance. Bruck and Treiman (1992)
taught first-grade children to read a set of 10 clue words, and then taught them tar-
get words sharing either the rime, the initial consonant and vowel, or just the

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vowel. Children trained on words sharing the rime with the clue words learned the
target words faster than if the target and clue words shared the initial consonant
and vowel or only the vowel.

Levy, Bourassa, and Horn (1999) and Levy and Lysynchuk (1997) taught word iden-
tification to kindergarten children and second-grade children reading below grade
level and compared conditions involving segmenting words into phonemes or into
onsets and rimes with a whole-word method involving no segmentation. The chil-
dren learned fastest with the onset-rime segmentation training, and least quickly
with the whole-word method. Peterson and Haines (1992) found that regardless of
initial phonological ability, kindergarten children trained in the rime analogies
(rhyming words with the same spelling patterns, sometimes called phonograms)
made greater gains in analogical word reading than did the untrained children. Ehri
and Robbins (1992) found that the ability to read by rime analogy may require a cer-
tain minimal level of decoding knowledge or a certain sight vocabulary.

Greaney and Tunmer (1996) trained poor readers in the use of either rime-based
analogies or contextual cues to assist word identification. Participants read text
passages twice and between the two readings, the rime-analogy training group
were given words containing the target rime pattern to read and spell. The con-
textual-cue group was encouraged on the second reading to read the entire sen-
tence and use context to help decode words they could not read. The two
groups did not differ on the mean number of errors made on the first reading
of a text passage, but the rime-analogy training group made fewer errors on the
second reading than did the control group. Thus, it appeared that reading and
spelling words with the same rimes helped students decode those words on a
subsequent presentation.

In a replication study, Greaney, Tunmer, and Chapman (1997) worked with reading-
disabled children (averaging 8.5 years of age) and used a longer training period.
Measures of reading words in isolation, pseudowords, and text passages showed
that the children trained to use rime analogies had a greater increase in reading
achievement than did the children trained to use context cues.

The studies reviewed above indicate that beginning readers or poor readers in the
early grades can use rime analogies to read new words. Work by Moustafa (1995),
Goswami (1986, 1988), and Peterson and Haines (1992) shows that children per-
form better when analogies are based on rimes rather than on other parts of the
word such as the onset plus vowel. Beginning readers or poor readers can be

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Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor Readers in High School

trained to use rime analogies to identify words, and subsequent word identifica-
tion is improved by this training. However, in none of the studies described above
was the rime-based method used with teenagers who were poor readers. One of
the goals of the experiment reported here was to determine whether a training
program based on rime analogies would work with older students, in this case high
school students who had been identified by their teachers as having serious read-
ing difficulties.

In reading remediation studies, the comparison tends to be between programs

consisting of different activities (e.g. Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider,
& Mehta, 1998; Lovett, Lacerenza, Borden, Frijters, Steinback, & De Palma, 2000).
The problem in interpreting such studies is that experimental effects cannot be
attributed to a single activity or experimental variable. Thus one does not know
which activities in the program are most beneficial. In the study reported here,
the remedial program involved oral reading of prose passages, the Glass Analysis
word identification drills, and tests of reading or spelling isolated words. The ex-
perimental students were taken from a reading course and given individualized
tutoring in place of their regular classes; the control students remained in their
classes and continued with regular course work. With this design it was possible
to determine whether the combination of Glass Analysis drills and oral reading is
an effective component of a remedial reading program or whether these activi-
ties contribute little.

Because the students differed widely in their reading achievement, it was not
possible to develop training and test materials that could be used for all students.
Different students read different passages and did the Glass Analysis word iden-
tification exercises on different words. Rather than developing individualized
tests for each student, the same standardized measures of reading achievement
were used for all participants. Although standardized measures will be less
sensitive than tests based on the actual material taught, standardized tests are
widely used to assess reading achievement and are familiar to many reading
teachers and researchers.

Students in the tutoring program practiced associations between letter patterns

and pronunciations, activities that were predicted to produce greater increases in
word identification and word attack skills of the tutored students than of the con-
trol students. Because both experimental and control students were in a high-
school credit course designed to increase their reading comprehension, increases
in comprehension scores were expected for both groups. The Word Identification,
Word Attack and Passage Comprehension subtests of the Woodcock Reading

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Mastery Test (WRMT) (Woodcock, 1987) were used to test these hypotheses.

The reading course had been developed by a group of regional school boards for
high school students with long-standing difficulties in reading which interfered
with their academic achievement. The course emphasized teaching students to
read for meaning with the goals of reading to learn, reading to function in society,
and reading to satisfy personal interests. Consistent with the stated goal of the
course, teachers had a lot of freedom in selecting reading material that was geared
to students’ interests and level of reading skill. Students were exposed to a variety
of different types of text including short essays collected in graded readers, articles
from newspapers, labels on commercial products, and the provincial multiple-
choice test for a driver’s license. Because of the strong meaning-based approach,
the course did not include word identification drills or spelling practice.

Method
Design and Procedure
The original plan was to assess the reading skills of all students and then assign stu-
dents randomly to experimental and control conditions. Half of the students would
receive the tutoring program while the control students attended their reading
classes. After the experimental participants completed the tutoring program, all
students would again be assessed, and the control students would receive the
experimental tutoring. The second round of tutoring would be followed by an
assessment of all students. Students tutored in the first cycle were expected to per-
form better on the second assessment than the untutored students, but on the
third assessment, the control students, who received tutoring in the second cycle,
were expected to improve and perform at the same level as the first group.

Problems arose in the implementation of this plan, and not all aspects of the de-
sign could be accomplished. Funding was not received until the late fall of 1994,
which meant that the project did not begin until December. Many of the students
had poor school attendance and did not show up for appointments. The school
board required that students be excused only from reading and language arts
courses or from periods assigned as remedial periods in order to participate in the
experiment. The students’ poor attendance and the restriction on times available
for tutoring created difficulties in completing assessments and the tutoring pro-
gram. The original plan was to offer 20 tutoring sessions, but this was reduced to
between 15 and 18 sessions. Assignment of students to early or late-tutoring con-
ditions was the responsibility of the teachers in the schools because of the sched-
uling difficulties, and thus the assignment to groups was not random. The late start

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Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor Readers in High School

to the project meant that the school year ended before the second round of tutor-
ing could take place.

The final design was a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with 21 partici-
pants in the experimental condition receiving the tutoring program, and 12 partic-
ipants in the control condition. The dependent variables were the raw scores on
the second administration of three subtests of the WRMT Test (Word Identi-
fication, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension) administered after the experi-
mental group had received the tutoring program. Three different ANCOVAs were
carried out, one on each of the dependent measures, with the score on the first ad-
ministration of the same subtests as the covariate, and condition (experimental or
control) as the independent variable. In addition, the three reading measures were
combined into a composite measure and an ANCOVA carried out with the com-
posite measure as the dependent variable.

Of the 12 control participants, only 6 subsequently received the tutoring program.

Four of the students did not return to school the following year, and 1 student’s
reading achievement had improved and she did not require the tutoring. The sixth
student was not expected to benefit from the tutoring because of low intelligence
as indicated by a standard score of 60 on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test –
Revised (PPVT) (Dunn & Dunn, 1981), and a standard score of 79 on the Raven’s
Progressive Matrices (RPM) (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1993). This student’s standard
scores were 10 (ten) on both administrations the Word Identification subtest, 39 on
the Passage Comprehension subtest, and 41 and 36 on the Word Attack.

Participants
The schools were located in two adjacent municipalities that form the largest urban
area in the province. The population of the two municipalities combined is ap-
proximately 150,000 which is around one-quarter of the province’s population. At
the time of the study, all schools in the province fell under regional denomination-
al school boards; the participating schools were all under the protestant school
board. All schools were centralized high schools with 650 to 800 students. All stu-
dents in the project were Caucasian, which is representative of the local population,
and students came from a wide range of social classes.

All students enrolled in the reading course were invited to participate in the
project, and 46 agreed, returning permission slips and completing the first assess-
ment. Nine students (5 female and 4 male) dropped out of school after the first
assessment. A t-test to compare the mean reading scores of students who dropped
out with those who remained in the study showed no statistically significant

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differences. Two male students received the initial assessment and began the tu-
toring program, but refused to complete it. Two control participants did not receive
the second assessment after the control period and before the tutoring program.
Of the 33 remaining subjects, 21 were included in the experimental (tutored) group
and 12 in the control group.

The 21 students who received the early tutoring program (9 females and 12 males)
and 11 control students (2 females and 9 males) who had not been tutored were
given the second administration of the Word Identification, Word Attack, and
Passage Comprehension subtests of the WRMT (Woodcock 1987) in April or May
1995. An additional male student, assigned to the control condition, dropped out
of school before the second assessment, but returned to school in November of the
following year when he agreed to resume his participation in the project. He was
given the second assessment at this time and his data are included with those of
the control subjects. The interval between first and second assessments was eleven
months compared to 4 or 5 months for the other control subjects.

Tests
In the initial assessment, the Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage
Comprehension subtests of the WRMT were administered, and the PPVT. Between
January and April 1995, the RPM was administered to all participants except one, a
female in the experimental group. Between April and June 1995, the three subtests
of the WRMT were readministered to all students. The median split-half reliability
coefficients for the PPVT is .80 and the test-retest reliability coefficient is .78 (Dunn
& Dunn, 1981). For the WRMT Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage
Comprehension subtests, the split-half reliability coefficients are .86, .84, and .68
respectively (Woodcock, 1987). For the RPM, Llabre (1984) reported a median split-
half reliability coefficient of .90, and median test-retest reliability coefficient of .82.

The Tutoring Program

The tutored students were excused from reading or basic English classes, or from
remedial periods normally used for individual or small group tutoring; control stu-
dents remained in their regular classes. A tutoring session was a class period of 56
minutes. During tutoring sessions, oral reading of text alternated with Glass
Analysis word identification drills. Students were also tested on spelling and read-
ing of words in isolation that had previously been drilled by the tutor using the
Glass Analysis procedure. Text passages were selected from the material available
for the course; these varied considerably in content and style. Tutors used their
judgement to select passages of sufficient difficulty that the student was likely to
make errors. The students read aloud from the assigned text, and the tutor noted
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Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor Readers in High School

words that the students read slowly or incorrectly. These words were then drilled
using the Glass Analysis (Glass & Glass, 1976) procedure outlined in the next sec-
tion of this article. After the words had been drilled, the students reread the pas-
sage. If there were many errors in the second reading, the tutor provided additional
word drills and had the students read passages a third time.

Originally 20 tutoring sessions were planned for each student, but because of high
absenteeism, the tutoring program was terminated after a student received 18 ses-
sions. Some students received as few as 15 sessions before the second assessment
was administered.

Five different tutors (four females and one male) participated in the project. Three
of the tutors were certified high school teachers who had been hired either as part-
time or substitute teachers by the school board. One tutor was an elementary
school teacher who wanted research experience before entering an audiology
program. The fifth tutor, a university graduate, was employed by the School Board
to work with students identified as having special needs.

Training program for tutors. Tutors received written instructions that showed how
to record reading errors and outlined the procedure for the Glass Analysis drills (see
next paragraph). A brief rationale was provided explaining that poor readers have
difficulty segmenting words into phonemes, and because of this, the drills were to
teach students associations between letter patterns and sounds for pronounceable
units such as syllables and rimes. An example set of word drills was included for a
letter pattern (ull) with two pronunciations (hull and pull) to illustrate how both pat-
terns could be taught. The tutors each had one, hour-long training session during
which they observed the author working with a student. Tutors kept a written
record of the errors made by the student and the words drilled in each lesson.

Glass Analysis Word Drills. The Glass Analysis word identification drills focussed on
words with regular or frequent correspondences between letters and sounds.
Irregularly spelled words were taught individually, and words with exceptional pro-
nunciation but regular spelling (e.g., what, have) were taught as exceptions to the
regular pattern. To drill the ad pattern, the tutor was instructed to print one or two
words with a consonant followed by the pattern (e.g., bad and sad) and to ask the
student to read these words. If the student read a word correctly, the tutor simply
said good or correct; if the student could not read the word, the tutor simply pro-
nounced it. The tutor would then ask, “What do the letters a-d say?” or “How do
you spell ad?” Again, a correct answer was rewarded; if the student gave no answer
or an incorrect one, the tutor simply gave the answer. The tutor would then write

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one or two words beginning with a digraph such as ch or th followed by the letter
pattern being taught and would then ask the student to read the words and
pronounce the rime a-d. The procedure would be repeated with words beginning
with a consonant cluster (e.g., glad or Brad) and two-syllable words (e.g., saddle or
gladly). The student would be asked to pronounce and spell parts of the word such
as sad or addle or ly. If the student was successful with two-syllable words, multi-
syllabic words were introduced.

Throughout the word drills, the questions focused on pronounceable units which
were typically rimes and syllables and occasionally onsets followed by a vowel
sound (e.g., no in piano or tu in constitution), but the student’s attention could also
be directed to small words embedded in bigger words if the pronunciation was
consistent in both words (e.g., tent in consistent). Students did not pronounce
phonemes in isolation except for occasional single vowel sounds (e.g., o in open);
nor did they blend phonemes into words or segment words or syllables into
phonemes. They did not segment words or syllables into onsets and rimes, but
they did pronounce words, syllables, and their constituent rimes in response to the
question, “What do the letters .... say?” No mention was made of spelling rules or
phonic generalizations; the emphasis was on teaching by analogy and on using sev-
eral words to illustrate a particular spelling-pronunciation pattern.

The words which received the Glass Analysis drills were selected from errors stu-
dents made during oral reading of the passages. When students read passages the
first time, the tutor noted the errors and simply corrected them. After the first read-
ing, the tutors did the Glass Analysis drills for words on which the students had
erred. In addition to the words from the reading, the tutor had to add a number of
additional words containing the target spelling patterns so that the drill for each
word included three or more other words with the same pattern. The tutor used
his or her discretion in selecting these additional words for the word identification
drills. After the word identification drills had been completed, the passage was
again read aloud by the student.

A Sample Lesson. In one set of lessons, the tutor selected a passage titled ‘Maiden
Voyage’ by Tanya Aebi (1991). During oral reading of the passage, among other
errors, the student misread became, excerpts, stemmed, and deteriorated. To teach
became, the tutor drilled the words be, same, tame, came, and became. The tutor
also drilled become to help the student distinguish became and become. For
excerpts, the tutor drilled excel, and excellent to teach the ‘ex’ pattern; to teach the
‘erpt’ pattern, the tutor drilled the word serpent, and the nonsense words cerp, cert,

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Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor Readers in High School

and cerpt. For stemmed, the tutor drilled the words hem, stem, hemmed, and
stemmed. For deteriorate, the tutor’s notes show that the following words and word
fragments were drilled: deter, infer, terior, interior, inferior, teriorate, teriorated,
deteriorate and deteriorated. When tested on spelling of became, and excerpts, the
student spelled both words correctly. The student spent two full lessons on this
particular text passage.

Results
Table 1 presents means, standard deviations and ranges for the participants’ ages
in months, PPVT standard scores, and RPM raw scores for the 12 control and 21 tu-
tored subjects. According to Raven (1981), raw scores at the 25th, 50th and 75th
percentiles for children aged 15 years, six months are 42, 47 and 51 respectively.
Using Raven’s (1981) norms, the participants’ scores ranged from the bottom one
percent to the 94th percentile. PPVT standard scores ranged from well below aver-
age to the average range. A t-test indicated that there were no significant differ-
ences between tutored and control participants’ ages, PPVT standard scores or RPM
raw scores. However, a comparison of participants’ raw scores on the PPVT revealed
a statistically significant difference in favour of the control group. The means were
127.0 and 117.1 for control and experimental groups respectively, (sds = 11.5 and
12.5), t(30) = 2.244, p < .05.

Table 1. Comparison of Tutored and Untutored Groups on Nonreading Measures.

Mean SD Range
Measure Tutored Untutored Tutored Untutored Tutored Untutored

Age in Month 207.7 205.7 15.5 13.8 184-237 185-233

Peabody 74.7 83.9 12.5 12.9 49-98 60-110

Vocabulary
(Standard Scores)

Raven’s Matrices 35.3 38.8 9.9 8.4 16-55 25-52

(Raw Scores)

To assess the effectiveness of the experimental treatment, analyses of covariance

(ANCOVAs) were conducted to compare the tutored and control groups on raw
scores for the three reading measures. Each subject had 2 scores on each reading
subtest, 1 from the first assessment and 1 from the second assessment. The first
score was used as the covariate and the second score as the dependent variable.
Table 2 presents means and standard deviations of raw scores for the two admin-
istrations of three reading measures for experimental and control conditions.

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 Journal of Literacy Research

Table 2. Mean raw scores and standard deviations by treatment group, time
of assessment, and measure.

Treatment Group and Assessment

Tutored (N=21) Untutored (N=12)
Pre Post Pre Post
Measure Mean(sd) Mean(sd) Mean(sd) Mean(sd)

Word Identification 65.3 (13.6) 75.9 (16.5) 69.9 (13.9) 74.0 (16.8)
Maximum Score = 106

Word Attack 22.3 (10.5) 28.0 (11.4) 26.2 (9.6) 27.3 (10.6)
Maximum Score = 45

Passage 35.7 (8.0) 43.3 (8.8) 41.3 (7.7) 43.6 (8.9)

Comprehension
Maximum Score = 68

For the ANCOVA on Word Identification scores, the main effect of group was sta-
tistically significant, F (1, 30) = 13.7, p < .001, MSE = 28.3, 2 = .314. The adjust-
ed means (and standard errors) were 70.6 (se = 1.55) for the control group and
77.8 (se = 1.17) for the tutored group. For the ANCOVA on Word Attack raw scores,
the group effect was statistically significant, F (1,30) = 5.41, p < .027, MSE = 27.5,
2 = .153. Adjusted means (and standard errors) were 24.9 (se = 1.53) for the con-
trol group and 29.4 (se = 1.15) for the tutored participants. For Passage
Comprehension raw scores the group effect was statistically significant, F (1, 30) =
11.8, p < .001, MSE = 16.2, 2 = .283. The adjusted mean scores (and standard er-
rors) for the control and tutored groups were, respectively, 40.0 (se = 1.21) and
45.3 (se = .90).

The three reading measures were highly correlated, ranging from .665 to .851 for
the first assessment and from .747 to .936 for the second assessment. Thus, an ad-
ditional analysis was conducted using a composite of the 3 reading measures. The
age-based standard scores for the three reading measures were averaged for each
participant. To control statistically for the difference between tutored and control
groups on the initial assessment, an ANCOVA was carried out with the composite
score on the second assessment as the dependent variable and composite score on
the first assessment as the covariate. When performance on the initial assessment
was statistically controlled, the effect of tutoring was statistically significant, F(1,
30) = 28.1, p < .001, MSE = 28.6, 2 = .484.

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The difference between tutored and control students was statistically signifi-
cant, but does it have any practical significance? At the initial assessment the 12
control students had an average reading grade equivalent on the Total Reading
Composite measure of the WRMT of 5.6; tutored students had an average grade
level of 4.5. These reading grades represent a barely functional level of literacy.
In the second assessment however, the control students improved by 1.3 read-
ing grade levels to 6.9, which is notable given that their average rate of
achievement over the previous 10 or 11 years of schooling was approximately 1
grade level for every 2 years in school. But the gains for the tutored group were
larger: from grade 4.5 to 7.2 within four months. High school students who
were far behind in their reading achievement benefitted from the tutoring with
the Glass Analysis word identification drills and made substantial gains in their
reading achievement. High school is not too late to begin a remedial reading
program, and meaningful gains can be made.

Reanalysis with Three Students Excluded

The students who participated in the experiment showed large variability in their
reading skills; even so three students stood out as being noticeably different from
others. One student, according to her teacher, had difficulty comprehending texts,
but this did not appear to be due to a decoding problem as she had a standard
score of 111 on the first administration of the Word Attack subtest. (This student
is discussed in more detail in the Discussion.) Two additional students (1 in the tu-
tored group and 1 in the control group) had low scores on both the PPVT and the
RPM (standard scores of 60 for both students on the PPVT and standard scores of
79 and 78 on the RPM). These low scores suggest generalized cognitive deficits
rather than reading or decoding problems.

Thus, the ANCOVAs on the three reading measures and on the composite meas-
ure were redone with these three students excluded. The ANCOVA on the Word
Identification raw scores showed a statistically significant effect for group, F (1,
27) = 34.5, MSE = 16.2, p < .001, 2 = .561. Adjusted means were 69.8 (se =
1.32) for the control group and 79.4 (se = .92) for the tutored students. There
was a statistically significant group effect for Word Attack raw scores, F (1, 27) =
4.52, MSE = 26.8, p < .05, 2 = .143, with adjusted means of 25.6 (se = 1.67)
and 30.0 (se = 1.17) for control and tutored students respectively. For the
Passage Comprehension measure, the group effect was again significant, F (1, 27)
= 11.2, MSE = 14.1, p < .005, 2 = .293, with adjusted means of 40.6 (se = 1.28)
and 46.0 (se = .87) for control and tutored students respectively. Finally, the com-
posite reading measure showed a significant group effect, F (1, 27) = 44.2, MSE
= 20.0, p < .001, 2 = .621 with adjusted means of 75.2 (se = 1.48) and 87.5

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(se = 1.02) for control and for tutored students respectively. Omitting the three
exceptional students did not change the overall pattern of results and the signif-
icant differences between control and tutored participants was found for all three
reading measures and the composite measure as well.

Discussion
The experiment reported here was intended to determine the effectiveness of the
Glass Analysis word identification drills as a method for teaching decoding skills to
high school students with reading difficulties. The Glass Analysis drills teach asso-
ciations between letter patterns and their pronunciations for pronounceable units
such as syllables or rimes. The use of rimes as units for teaching decoding has been
found to be effective in younger children (e.g. Levy, Bourassa & Horn, 1999; Levy &
Lysynchuk, 1997; Peterson & Haines, 1992), but has not previously been tested with
adolescents.

Students enrolled in a ‘reading-for-meaning’ course were excused from classes for

15 to 18 sessions of individualized tutoring. During the tutoring sessions, students
read aloud passages of text and their reading errors were noted. After reading of
each passage, the students performed Glass Analysis word identification drills for
words on which they had made errors. After the word identification drills, the stu-
dents re-read the text passage. To assess their progress, the students were given
the Word Identification, Word Attack and Passage Comprehension subtests of the
WRMT before and after the tutoring program. The 21 students receiving the tu-
toring program were compared to 12 control students from the same reading
course who did not receive the tutoring program but were assessed at the same
times as the tutored students. Larger increases in Word Identification and Word
Attack scores were predicted for the tutored than for the control students, but
equal increases in Passage Comprehensive scores were expected for both groups.

ANCOVAs were conducted on raw scores for each of the three reading measures
comparing the tutored and control students, with the first test score as the covari-
ate and the second test score as the dependent variable. The ANCOVAs indicated a
significant group effect on each of the three reading measures after the effects of
initial reading score had been removed, with the tutored students showing higher
scores on tests of reading words in isolation, reading of pronounceable but mean-
ingless nonsense words, and supplying a missing word from a short text passage.
The age-based standard scores on the three reading measures were combined into
a composite score. The ANCOVA on this measure showed a significant effect of tu-
toring when the effects of initial score were statistically controlled.

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Teaching Decoding Skills to Poor Readers in High School

The tutoring program was designed to improve decoding skills, so the increases in
Word Attack and Word Identification scores were expected. Even though all stu-
dents received comprehension training in their reading course, the control stu-
dents did not show as much improvement in reading comprehension between the
first and second assessments as did the tutored subjects. According to the simple
view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), reading comprehension is the product of
decoding skill and language comprehension ability. Students with good language
comprehension ability may have poor reading comprehension because of limited
decoding skill. Students in the study reported here had severe decoding difficulties
as shown by their low Word Identification and Word Attack scores at the beginning
of the study. On the first assessment, tutored students had a mean standard score
of 64.2 (sd = 18.5) on the Basic Skills Composite score of the WRMT which com-
bines Word Identification and Word Attack Scores. The score corresponds to an av-
erage reading grade equivalent of 4.3, sd = 1.8. Control students had a mean
standard score of 76.4 (sd = 15.3), and reading grade equivalent of 5.0, sd = 1.7.
The low level of decoding skills is likely to limit the reading comprehension of the
participants in the study. When they could not decode the important words in texts
they were reading, they could not grasp the meaning of those texts.

The Glass Analysis word identification drills addressed the decoding difficulty di-
rectly and taught students to decode the words. The improvement is reflected in
an increase in the Basic Skills Composite standard score to 82 (sd = 21.4). This
score corresponds to a reading grade equivalent of 7.6 (sd = 4.8), an increase of
3.2 grade equivalents. The control students, increased their Basic Skills Composite
score to 81 (sd = 20.4), and their reading grade equivalent to 6.6 (sd = 4.4), an in-
crease of 1.6 grade equivalents. When students learned to decode the difficult but
often informative words in a passage, they were better able to extract the meaning
of what they were reading, as shown by the increase in Passage Comprehension
scores. For the participants of the study, the individualized tutoring in decoding
skills, in combination with the comprehension training received in class, was more
effective in increasing reading comprehension than was the equivalent amount of
time spent on course material without the word identification training. For high
school students with difficulties in decoding, comprehension training by itself may
have limited effectiveness because it does not address the underlying cause of the
comprehension difficulty. When the decoding problem is addressed, however, the
students’ decoding skills improve and they are then able to benefit from compre-
hension training.

One student is noteworthy because she differed from the other students in the
study. This student, according to the reading teacher, had difficulty comprehending

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 Journal of Literacy Research

texts that she read, but she did not appear to have a decoding problem. When first
tested, she achieved standard scores of 80, 111, and 95 on Word Identification,
Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension respectively. After the control period,
her standard scores were 109, 114, and 99. A spelling test gave a standard score of
99, but her standard score on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices was below 80. On
a listening comprehension test she obtained a standard score of 97 and on the
PPVT her score was 95. Unlike the majority of students in the study whose reading
comprehension was limited by their poor decoding skills, this student’s reading
comprehension appears to be limited by her language skills as measured by listen-
ing comprehension and PPVT. The increase in the three reading scores over the
control period suggests that she did benefit from the meaning-based approach of
the reading course in which she was enrolled.

The experiment reported here demonstrates that a rime-based word identification

program is effective in developing decoding skill; what the experimental findings
do not make clear is why this particular method works. It may be that using rime-
based units to teach letter-sound patterns is a critical factor, and the existing liter-
ature on younger children supports this view, but there are several other possible
variables which may be important. First, students received individual tutoring, an
approach which maximizes the efficiency of the lesson and minimizes distractions.
Second, the words selected for the word-identification drills were taken from text
passages, and the student reread the same text passages after doing the drills.
Thus, the word-identification drills were made directly relevant to reading of mean-
ingful text, which may have motivated students and increased their attention to
the word drills.

A third variable to be considered is the use of multi-syllabic words in the word-iden-

tification drills. Poor readers are known to have difficulty sounding out multi-sylla-
ble words (e.g. Adams, 1990, page 128). Training the pronunciation of rime units
or syllables and then having students pronounce those familiar units embedded in
multi-syllable words may be a key factor in improving word attack skills. Greaney,
Tunmer, and Chapman (1997) also obtained improvements in pseudoword reading
when they included two-syllable words in their rime-based training method.
Whether training with multi-syllable words is critical to the development of word
attack skills is an issue that requires investigation.

A fourth point pertains to the magnitude of the improvements found in the study.
There was an increase in mean reading grade equivalent of approximately three
grades during 3 to 4 months of the project for students who had previously im-
proved at a rate of less than one grade level for every two years in school. How can

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this happen? One hypothesis can be offered. The students in the study had been in
school for ten or eleven years and had been exposed to written language through-
out this period. At the start of the study, they could read many words, but their low
Word Attack scores indicate that they had not abstracted rules about pronunciation
of orthographic patterns.

Drilling words in groups containing the same orthographic patterns forced stu-
dents to attend to the regularities in spelling and pronunciation. Instead of learn-
ing how to read specific words, they learned how to recognize and pronounce
orthographic sequences corresponding to syllables and rimes. Rather than just
teaching students to read more words, the Glass Analysis word identification drills
may have helped students to organize their existing knowledge in terms of fre-
quent spelling patterns rather than individual words. Because the students prac-
ticed recognizing and pronouncing letter sequences in several different words, they
learned how to apply their knowledge to reading new words containing familiar
patterns. Thus, the large benefits observed in this study may have resulted from a
combination of the reorganization of existing knowledge into a more useful for-
mat, the acquisition of new knowledge integrated into this format, and then prac-
tice in applying this knowledge to decoding unknown words.

Author Note
Financial support for the project was provided by the former Literacy Policy Office of the Department
of Education, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
I would like to thank Barbara Hopkins for telling me about the Glass Analysis technique, for liaison
with the school board, and for her help and support throughout the project. Without her, the project
would never have been done.
The staff of the schools involved in the project deserve special thanks, as do the reading tutors.
Reading tutors were Colleen Bishop, John Fahey, Jody Gedge, Brenda Halley, and Jennifer Scurlock.
I would also like to thank my colleague, Malcolm Grant, for assistance with the statistical analyses.

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