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Outcomes of two training programs aimed at improving reading speed for 39 German-speaking poor readers in grades 2 and 4 were evaluated. During a 6-week training period, a specific target for children in a computer group was to improve reading of word-initial consonant clusters by practice in associating an orthographic unit with a corresponding phonological unit. Children in a paired reading group read books with an adult tutor. The results showed that, in reading words in which the computer-trained sublexical items were included, both groups exhibited similar improvement. A post hoc analysis suggested that computer training was associated with better reading skills with respect to the trained sublexical items; however, this improvement did not show large generalization effects to the words with the sublexical items. The paired reading group showed a more rapid gain in global word reading fluency than the computer group. Neither of the groups improved their pseudoword reading.

Outcomes of three different types of computerized training in sub-lexical items (word-initial consonant clusters) on reading speed for 39 German-speaking poor readers in Grades 2 and 3 were evaluated. A phonological-orthographic association group, a reading aloud group, and a combined group were compared in performance with an untrained control group. During short-term training, the intervention groups showed higher gains than the control group in reading speed of the trained sub-lexical items and of the words containing the trained segments. No differences were found between the intervention groups. In the development of pseudoword reading, the groups did not show differential improvements. The generalization effect to pseudoword reading was similar, whether the pseudowords contained the trained segment as a syllable or as a non-syllabic letter string. The gains induced by training were specific to the materials used in training and did not induce gains in general reading speed.

The outcome of a training study attempting to increase German speaking poor readers' reading fluency is reported. The aim of the training was to help children establish orthographic representations for a limited set of training words as well as for high-frequency onset clusters. A sample of 20 dysfluent readers (8-11 years) received a computerized training of repeated reading of a limited set of 32 training words over a period of up to 25 days. Each day training words were presented up to six times with a special emphasis on the onset segment. Post-tests were carried out one and five weeks after the last training day. A considerable decrease in reading times could be achieved for the trained words that remained stable for both post-tests, however, even for the limited set of training words a remarkable amount of repetitions did not lead to age adequate word recognition speed. Generalization to untrained words starting with a trained onset cluster (transfer words) was statistically reliable but small.