A brief experiment was designed to examine cognitive flexibility practice embedded in beginning phonics instruction for kindergarteners with limited early literacy learning. Previously tested phonics content included single- and high-frequency two-letter grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs), introduced at a rate of 2–4 correspondences per week. Children entered with minimal alphabet knowledge and were randomly assigned within classrooms, stratified by English Learner status, to one of two conditions delivered individually over 6 weeks: plain explicit phonics (n = 35) or Flex instruction (n = 33) which covered the same Plain phonics content but with teaching tasks for practice switching letter or word dimensions. Results showed that kindergarteners in the Plain condition made significantly greater gains on tasks of writing taught letter-sound correspondences and spelling. Findings inform a rate for introducing letter-sound correspondences and learning of mixed-size GPCs. The Plain explicit phonics focus on initial accuracy had benefits for encoding taught letter correspondences. Findings support future research on effective tasks to develop reading-related cognitive flexibility in beginners, the optimal timing of this practice, and whether it benefits in particular those children most at risk for acquiring this foundational alphabetic knowledge.

设计了一个简短的实验，以检查针对早期识字能力有限的幼儿园学生的语音教学中嵌入的认知灵活性实践。先前测试的拼音内容包括单频和高频两字母音素音素对应（GPC），以每周2-4个对应的速率引入。输入很少的字母知识的孩子，并根据英语学习者的状态分层分配到教室中，在6周内分别交付以下两种情况之一：普通显式语音（n  = 35）或Flex指令（n = 33），涵盖了相同的普通语音内容，但具有用于练习切换字母或单词尺寸的教学任务。结果表明，在平原条件下的幼儿园儿童在写作教学字母与音符的对应关系和拼写方面的任务所获得的收益大大增加。调查结果为介绍字母-声音对应关系和学习混合大小GPC的比率提供了参考。简单的显式语音学专注于初始准确度，对编码教书字母对应有好处。研究结果支持对有效任务的未来研究，以提高初学者与阅读相关的认知灵活性，这种练习的最佳时机以及它是否特别有益于那些最有可能获得这种基础字母知识的孩子。