An Exploratory Study of Word Acquisition among First-Graders at Midyear in a Language-Experience Approach

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Abstract
A sample of one week's creative writing and acquired sight words to date was drawn in January for 594 pupils in twenty-one first-grade classrooms participating in a language-experience reading curriculum. Mean number of sight words was 85.4; number of stories per week, 2.3; and running words per story 54.0. From a random sub-sample of 25 pupils a comparison of sight words with the Lorge-Thorndike Word List showed that 45% fell within the first thousand high frequency category. It was concluded that rate of word acquisition found here compared favorably with that planned for typical basal readers but that word holdings were richer in orthographic information. An informal analysis of misspellings suggested that pupils were using systematic strategies for word production.

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