Significance of Word Length

Abstract

Despite the lack of direct empirical evidence on the issue, much comment from teacher educators has been made about the effect of word length on word recognition. A report of this relationship as found with fourth-grade children is reported here. The results of three tests of this relationship are reported: the percentages of these children’s correct reading of words of varying syllabic lengths; the correlation between these correct reading of words and their syllabic counts; and the correlation between these correct readings of words and their letter counts. None of these statistics supports the conclusion that there is a significant relationship between word length and word recognition.