The Effective Use of Symbols in Teaching Word Recognition to Children with Severe Learning Difficulties: A comparison of word alone, integrated picture cueing and the handle technique

The use of logographic symbols to teach word recognition is controversial. Whilst educational advice typically promotes this practice, the results of controlled studies show it to be ineffective and potentially detrimental to student learning. This study partially resolves this conflict. A comparison is made between a new technique (the Handle Technique), Integrated Picture Cueing and a Word Alone method. The results show that using a new combination of teaching strategies enables logographic symbols to be used effectively in teaching word recognition to children with severe learning difficulties who had previously failed to develop a sight vocabulary.