VALIDATION OF THE SYLLABIC METHOD FOR TEACHING READING AND WRITING IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

We are presenting a validation study to assess the efficacy of the "syllabic method" for teaching reading and writing abilities in the area of Modena (Italy). Two groups of typically developing children attending their first year of primary school participated in the study: in the experimental group (n = 79) reading and writing were approached with the syllabic method proposed by Bertelli, Belli, Castagna and Cremonesi (2013), whilst in the control group (n = 59) a standard teaching method was used (based on phoneme-to-grapheme instructions). To monitor and measure reading and writing achievement different tasks were proposed: a novel task with 20 words to read and write, and classic tests of reading and writing commonly used in clinical practice (speed and accuracy of reading a passage, text comprehension and spelling). Results show that the experimental group of children significantly outperformed the control group in terms of speed and accuracy of reading, whereas there was no difference between groups in written text comprehension tasks. The study shows that, for the Italian language, reading and writing can be better approached with a method based on presenting syllables instead of phonemes.