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Background: Struggling at medical school incorporates academic failure, course disruption and early course exit. Struggling is usually multi-factorial involving academic, personal, financial and health factors. Struggling students may fail to engage with available support. First year students are particularly susceptible as they transition to university and a professional career. Methods: The study aim was to explore medical students' own voices on struggling and assess how they match up to existing literature. During one academic year, all first year medical students at the University of Birmingham (UK) who opted to leave or were required to withdraw (n = 52) were asked to participate in an individual exit interview. Fifteen students responded and fourteen (27%) agreed to be interviewed. Interviews were face to face (n = 10), telephone (n = 3) and via email (n = 1). Interviews were unstructured and led by a general open question. Framework analysis identified key data themes. Results: Students described year one of medical school as a critical transition. They simultaneously needed to adapt to being a university student, a medical student and a doctor. A six-group typology of students emerged, each of which struggled with one or more of these adaptations. The groups were: wrong degree choice, mental health problems, acute crisis, at capacity, slow starter and family rock. Some students experienced an isolated problem from within this typology. Most had a multi-factorial story of struggling. Mental health problems and acute crises were the most common issues. Early professional identity formation was a key hurdle. Help-seeking behaviours were varied. Conclusions: This study explores the narratives of medical students who struggled from an early stage and presents a data-driven typology of their issues. It advances existing qualitative understanding of this topic, which to date is predominantly derived from educator perceptions and not specific to early course issues. Although our results broadly cohere with existing knowledge, we also present novel findings which may reflect our focus on first year students. Issues around early professional identity formation may reflect the increasing emphasis on professionalism in medical school curricula. Listening to these narratives could help university staff to identify students at risk of struggling for targeted support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work suggests that written text produced by university students with dyslexia is scored lower than that produced by their peers. The present study used a digital writing tablet to examine the writing process and the quality of text written by university students with dyslexia. Revision behavior during and after writing was also investigated. Thirty-two university students with dyslexia (mean age, 20 years), were compared with 32 typically developing (TD) students matched by age. Students composed a written text in response to an expository essay prompt. In line with previous research, students with dyslexia made a higher number of spelling errors and their essays were rated as poorer than TD students. However, students with dyslexia were comparable to their peers on measures of time spent writing, amount of text produced, and the temporal analyses (handwriting execution, pause times). Students with dyslexia made significantly more revisions to spelling during and after transcription than their peers, although other revision behavior was similar across groups. Explanations for the finding of poor writing quality are explored. Importantly, the findings suggest that continued support with spelling and writing is needed for university students with dyslexia. Instruction directed toward effective revision strategies may also prove useful. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This study reports on the effectiveness of an early reading intervention, based on current research on early reading acquisition, and aligned to Norwegian orthography. Thirteen schools were randomly assigned to one of two interventions or a control condition. First grade students (n = 744) were screened at school entry, and children at risk of reading difficulties (n = 140) were identified. At-risk students in schools allocated for intervention received comprehensive teacher-led instruction also containing an individually-delivered computer component. The only difference between the two interventions was whether the computer application had adaptive learning features. Both interventions had significant impact on reading and spelling with no significant difference between the two different intervention conditions. Findings indicate that Norwegian children identified to be at-risk at school entry can profit from intensive intervention that combines training in letter knowledge with explicit instruction in phonetic decoding and word recognition, free spelling, connected text reading and shared reading. Highlights • A multi-component reading intervention for students at risk for RD is proposed. • The proposed intervention is evaluated in a sample of Norwegian first graders. • Intervention students outperform controls on reading and spelling after treatment. • Adaptive and fixed computer applications are evaluated and found equally effective. • At-risk children receiving intervention showed parallel growth with not-at-risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study considers the role of early speech difficulties in literacy development, in the context of additional risk factors. Method: Children were identified with speech sound disorder (SSD) at the age of 3% years, on the basis of performance on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology. Their literacy skills were assessed at the start of formal reading instruction (age 5%), using measures of phoneme awareness, word-level reading and spelling; and 3 years later (age 8), using measures of word-level reading, spelling and reading comprehension. Results: The presence of early SSD conferred a small but significant risk of poor phonemic skills and spelling at the age of 5% and of poor word reading at the age of 8. Furthermore, within the group with SSD, the persistence of speech difficulties to the point of school entry was associated with poorer emergent literacy skills, and children with 'disordered' speech errors had poorer word reading skills than children whose speech errors indicated 'delay'. In contrast, the initial severity of SSD was not a significant predictor of reading development. Beyond the domain of speech, the presence of a co-occurring language impairment was strongly predictive of literacy skills and having a family risk of dyslexia predicted additional variance in literacy at both time-points. Conclusions: Early SSD alone has only modest effects on literacy development but when additional risk factors are present, these can have serious negative consequences, consistent with the view that multiple risks accumulate to predict reading disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spelling is a prerequisite to expressing vocabulary in writing. Research has shown that children with dyslexia are hesitant spellers when composing. This study aimed to determine whether the hesitant spelling of children with dyslexia, evidenced by frequent pausing, affects vocabulary choices when writing. A total of 31 children with dyslexia, mean age 9 years, were compared to typically developing groups of children: the first matched by age, the second by spelling ability. Oral vocabulary was measured and children completed a written and verbal compositional task. Lexical diversity comparisons were made across written and verbal compositions to highlight the constraint of having to select and spell words. A digital writing tablet recorded the writing. Children with dyslexia and the spelling-ability group made a high proportion of spelling errors and within-word pauses, and had a lower lexical diversity within their written compositions compared to their verbal compositions. The age-matched peers demonstrated the opposite pattern. Spelling ability and pausing predicted 53% of the variance in written lexical diversity of children with dyslexia, demonstrating the link between spelling and vocabulary when writing. Oral language skills had no effect. Lexical diversity correlated with written and verbal text quality for all groups. Practical implications are discussed and related to writing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term grammar is elastic and flexible, a result of changing conventions in the grammatical tradition since the time of Greek philosophers and of the variety of senses that the term can convey. This paper will explore two sources of evidence that serve to shed light on the understanding of grammar in the eighteenth century, namely the divisions into primary constituents (orthography, orthoëpy, etymology, syntax and prosody) and the subsidiary content that accompanies the main parts of grammar (e.g. punctuation, lists of irregular verbs, figurative syntax). It will be shown that there is a great deal of uniformity and consistency in the enumeration of the primary parts of grammar, but also a rich variety of patterns and a richer overall variety in secondary material. Building on Ian Michael's work on the English grammatical tradition, and using data from the Eighteenth-Century English Grammars database, this study will contribute to recent work in linguistic grammaticology by providing insights into what eighteenth-century writers considered essential for a good knowledge of grammar, at a time when proper and correct knowledge of English was a key instrument for social advancement, and a time when the growing literacy and readership revolutionised the print culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the effects of differing intensity levels of acute exercise on preadolescent academic ability. In a repeated measures design, 18 preadolescent participants (mean age±S.D.=9.8±1.4 years: 9 male and 9 female) completed the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT 4) following 20 minutes of rest, 20‐minutes on a cycling ergometer at 50% maximal heart rate reserve (HRR), and 20‐minutes on a cycling ergometer at 75% HRR on separate days. Exercise was found to improve spelling irrespective of intensity level. Moderate levels of exercise improved reading although the effect of high levels of intensity is less clear. Both intensity levels impaired arithmetic, whilst sentence comprehension was unaffected. These findings further support the past research that indicates acute bouts of exercise can selectively improve cognition in preadolescent children. However, the present study finds no support for the notion that increasing the intensity of exercise accentuates benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined, in 180 children aged from 6 to 9 years, to what extent irregular word reading and spelling were predicted by vocabulary knowledge, reading frequency, orthographic processing and nonword reading skill. Consistent with models of reading highlighting the quasi-regular nature of irregular words, it was found that nonword reading was a large and significant predictor of irregular word reading even when entered into a regression analysis after all of the other variables. However, irregular word spelling was equally well predicted by orthographic and nonword reading skills. The results are discussed in relation to models of word reading and reading development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptualizing the underlying representations and cognitive mechanisms of children's spelling development is a key challenge for literacy researchers. Using the Representational Redescription model ( Karmiloff- Smith), Critten, Pine and Steffler (2007) demonstrated that the acquisition of phonological and morphological knowledge may be underpinned by increasingly explicit levels of spelling representation. However, their proposal that implicit representations may underlie early 'visually based' spelling remains unresolved. Children ( N = 101, aged 4-6 years) were given a recognition task ( Critten et al., 2007) and a novel production task, both involving verbal justifications of why spellings are correct/incorrect, strategy use and word pattern similarity. Results for both tasks supported an implicit level of spelling characterized by the ability to correctly recognize/produce words but the inability to explain operational strategies or generalize knowledge. Explicit levels and multiple representations were also in evidence across the two tasks. Implications for cognitive mechanisms underlying spelling development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spelling variation, although present in all varieties of English, is particularly prevalent in SMS text messaging. Researchers argue that spelling variants in SMSes are principled and meaningful, reflecting patterns of variation across historical and contemporary texts, and contributing to the performance of social identities. However, little attempt has yet been made to empirically validate SMS spelling patterns (for most languages, with the notable exception of French) and verify the extent to which they mirror those in other texts. This article reports on the use of the VARD2 tool to analyse and normalise the spelling variation in a corpus of over 11,000 SMSes collected in the UK between 2004 and 2007. A second tool, DICER, was used to examine the variant and equivalent mappings from the normalised corpus. The database of rules and frequencies enables comparison with other text types and the automatic normalisation of spelling in larger SMS corpora. As well as examining various spelling trends with the DICER analysis it was also possible to place the spelling variants found in the SMS corpus into functional categories; the ultimate aim being to create a taxonomy of SMS spelling. The article reports on the findings from this categorisation process, whilst also discussing the difficulty in choosing categories for some spelling variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have shown evidence of positive concurrent relationships between children's use of text message abbreviations ('textisms') and performance on standardized assessments of reading and spelling. This study aimed to determine the direction of this association. One hundred and nineteen children aged between 8 and 12 years were assessed on measures of general ability, reading, spelling, rapid phonological retrieval, and phonological awareness at the beginning and end of an academic year. The children were also asked to provide a sample of the text messages that they sent over a 2-day period. These messages were analyzed to determine the extent to which textisms were used. It was found that textism use at the beginning of the academic year was able to predict unique variance in spelling performance at the end of the academic year after controlling for age, verbal IQ, phonological awareness, and spelling ability at the beginning of the year. When the analysis was reversed, reading and spelling ability were unable to predict unique variance in textism usage. These data suggest that there is some evidence of a causal contribution of textism usage to spelling performance in children aged 8-12 years. However, when the measure of rapid phonological retrieval (rapid picture naming) was controlled in the analysis, the relationship between textism use and spelling ability just failed to reach statistical significance, suggesting that phonological access skills may mediate some of the relationship between textism use and spelling performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 86 deaf children aged between 12 and 16 years were recruited from schools for the deaf, specialist units attached to a school, and mainstream schools. Approximately one-third used hearing aids, one-third had received a cochlear implant before 42 months, and one-third had been implanted later. The 3 subgroups were matched for age and nonverbal IQ, and all had an unaided hearing loss of at least 85 dB. Assessments revealed mean reading ages that were several years below chronological age for all 3 groups. However, participants in the hearing aid group performed best. Reading levels were not predicted by age of diagnosis or degree of hearing loss, but there was a relationship between reading level and presence of phonetic errors in spelling. There were also differences in educational setting, with the great majority of children in the hearing aid group in a school for the deaf and relatively more of the children with cochlear implants being educated in a unit or mainstream setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spelling is an area where the varieties of English beg to differ. Whereas British and American English have long been considered as having stable and juxtaposed spelling traditions, this has not been the case for newer varieties such as Australian English. This paper shows that Australian English indeed has its own spelling traditions and that they are not the result of haphazard choices from British and American English. In fact today's Australian spelling is the result of a fascinating historical process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treiman and Cassar (1996) argued that young children are capable of assembling spellings from their constituent morphemes. The present study aims to replicate the methodology used by Treiman and colleagues to investigate whether young children in the UK are using morphological spelling strategies. Eighty-three children between five and nine years took part in the study. The children completed a test of single word reading, alongside a spelling test consisting of 16 one-morpheme words (e.g., taste) SYS:Font ID=NCI;and 16 two-morpheme words (e.g., raced).SYS:Font ID=NCI; The results provide no evidence that young children are using morphology to aid their spelling, and are discussed in relation to models of spelling development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brief discussion is presented of the use of "ize" rather than "ise" in most current day journals. The need for editors and authors to be consistent in their spelling remains an issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the long-term effectiveness of two differing models of early intervention for children with reading difficulties: Reading Recovery and a specific phonological training. Approximately 400 children were pre-tested, 95 were assigned to Reading Recovery, 97 to Phonological Training and the remainder acted as controls. In the short and medium term both interventions significantly improved aspects of children's reading, Reading Recovery having a broader and more powerful effect. In the long-term, 3½ years after intervention, there were no significant effects on reading overall, though Reading Recovery had a significant effect for a subgroup of children who were complete non-readers at 6 years old. Phonological Training had a significant effect on spelling. The short and medium-term effects demonstrate that it is possible substantially to reduce children's reading problems. The long-term effects raise doubts about relying on early intervention alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This longitudinal project identified young children at risk of literacy difficulties and asked why some of these children fail to benefit from phonologically based intervention. Reception class children were screened to identify a group at risk of literacy difficulties and a matched group of children not at risk. Profiles were compiled for each child including measures of reading, spelling, memory, rapid naming, vocabulary and phonological awareness. A daily, 15-week, small group intervention was implemented with 67 at-risk children. Those who had not made progress in their literacy following this intervention participated in a second, individually administered intervention. The results indicate that letter knowledge and expressive vocabulary are key factors mediating a child's ability to benefit from a phonologically based intervention. Findings are discussed in the context of a lexical restructuring account of the development of spoken word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study examined the effect of phonological awareness intervention that focused on syllable and rhyme awareness on the acquisition of literacy and the development of phonological awareness skills 2 years post intervention. The longitudinal study compared two groups of children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds in the United Kingdom. One group received a program of phonological awareness intervention and one did not. Method: Ninety-nine children received a 9-week program of phonological awareness intervention in the summer term of their final preschool year. These children were then assessed on measures of phonological awareness and language in the first term of their first year at school (M age = 4;7 [years;months]) and again 2 years later (M age = 6;8) on measures of phonological awareness and literacy. One year earlier, a control group of 114 children from the same schools were also assessed at these two points in their schooling on the same measures. This group did not receive any phonological awareness intervention. Results: At the second assessment, the group of children who received phonological awareness intervention performed better than those children who received no intervention (control group) on rhyme awareness and nonword spelling. Surprisingly, however, the control group performed better than the children who had received intervention on the phoneme segmentation task. Conclusion: The phonological awareness intervention that was implemented, which focused on enhancing syllable and rhyme awareness, had little effect on later literacy development and may have interfered with the acquisition of phoneme awareness. Implications for intervention with children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds are discussed in the context of current research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent national developments in the teaching of literacy in the early years in the UK mean that teachers need to have explicit fluent knowledge of the sound structure of the language and its relationship to orthography in order to reach reading effectively. In this study, a group of 38 graduate trainee primary teachers were given a pencil and paper test of phonological awareness as pan of a course on teaching literacy. Results from the pencil and paper test were used as the basis of teaching about the sound structure of words. The test was repeated six months later. The results showed that they did not use a consistent system for segmenting words into component sounds. Though there was substantial improvement on second testing, many trainees still did not show evidence that they had yet developed sufficient insights into the sound structure of words to be able to teach children about phonemes with certainty. It is argued that student teachers need substantial explicit training and practice in manipulating the sound structure of words to enable them to teach this aspect of language confidently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the architectural drawing convention and the role of drawings in the design of interior space in Great Britain. The conventions available to English architectural designers during the period are Orthographic and Perspective drawing. According to the author, perspective now came to be used only to record existing buildings while orthography is to design new ones. In orthography, the designer can generate proportional relationships during the course of drawing out an idea, and to communicate that idea by graphic means rather than by mathematical notation. She adds that new types of drawing evolve to meet new design requirements and, in evolving, they can create, shape and limit the conditions of design.

The article focuses on research correspondent Marketa Caravolas' report on literacy research in Great Britain. Caravolas reports on a growing body of research involving comparisons of literacy development in English-speaking populations as compared with populations speaking other languages. An intriguing and consistent finding of previous studies is that English-speaking children tend to acquire early literacy skills, such as word decoding and spelling, more slowly than do children speaking most other comparison languages with alphabetic writing systems. Philip Seymour of the University of Dundee, Scotland, and his colleagues in 12 European countries conducted cross-linguistic studies of foundational levels of literacy, working within the EC COST Action A8 network. Results revealed that English-speaking children in Great Britain have the poorest outcomes regarding familiar word identification and nonword reading when compared with children from other countries tested.

Reviews web sites that offer guidance to writers concerning the distinctions between English and American language. Recommendation of the Best of the British: The American's guide to speaking British at www.effingpot.com; Dave's excellent site distinguishing Canadian, American British, French, and Spanish spellings; Internet address for Krystal's slightly nutty dictionary of slang.