Preschool predictors of learning to read and spell in an additional language: a two-wave longitudinal study in a multilingual context

The study explores whether foundational skills of reading and spelling in preschool (age 5–6) predict literacy skills cross-linguistically in an additional language in Grade 1 (age 6–7). A sample of linguistically diverse preschool children completed tasks of phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, verbal-short term memory, rapid automatized naming, and lexical knowledge in the language of preschool instruction Luxembourgish. The children were followed-up in Grade 1 where literacy skills were assessed in the language of schooling, i.e., German, after five months of literacy instruction. German was a non-native language for all children. Longitudinal correlations confirm that individual differences in single word/pseudoword reading and spelling in German in Grade 1 can be predicted by all the foundational literacy skills that were assessed in Luxembourgish. Path analyses showed that phonological awareness in Luxembourgish emerged as the strongest unique predictor of Grade 1 literacy skills in German. The second unique preschool predictor of Grade 1 literacy skills was letter-sound knowledge. Results are consistent with the view that literacy development in an additional language builds upon similar building blocks as literacy acquisition in a first language, at least for languages that are typologically close. However, current findings suggest that respective contributions between predictors and literacy skills in children learning to read in an additional language may vary from patterns observed in studies with children acquiring literacy in their first language.

Second Graders’ Grapho-Motor Skill Learning and Verbal Learning: The Effects of Socio-Educational Factors

Introduction: Children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families, and in particular, those with a lower level of maternal education, show lower fine-motor skills and lower vocabulary scores than their SES peers whose mothers have a higher level of education. Furthermore, low SES children frequently have difficulties in reading and spelling. These difficulties are attributed to deficits in the acquisition of skills through practice, such as those required for developing visual-motor routines, alongside deficits in the intentional acquisition of knowledge, such as those required in verbal learning. The aim of the current study was to test the effect of two background factors: low maternal education (ME) and risk of reading and spelling difficulties on practice-dependent learning of a motor task and intentional learning of a verbal task in second graders from low SES families.Methods: In 2016/17, 134 low-SES second graders with higher and lower ME (95 typical learners and 39 with reading and spelling difficulties) were assessed with (a) the Invented Letter Task (ILT; a grapho-motor skill learning task) across five time-points (initial- and end-training Day 1; initial- and end-training Day 2; and 2-weeks post-training), as well as an ILT transfer task; and (b) The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT; an intentional word-learning task in which a word list is read to children for five learning trials and is recalled 20 min later).Findings: Lower ME was associated with surplus segments in the performance of the motor task and its transfer to a novel condition as well as with lower recall on the verbal task, but not with the learning of both the motor and the verbal task. Having reading and spelling difficulties affected motor-task accuracy and also the way children learned the task, as evidenced by surplus segments at the beginning of Day 2, which were reduced with further practice.Conclusion: Low ME affected overall performance level. Reading and spelling difficulties resulted in atypical learning of the motor task. Future research on practice-dependent learning in the context of children coming from low SES families should focus on subgroups within this heterogeneous population.

The Effects of Lexical Tone Awareness on Early Word Recognition, Word Reading, and Spelling From Dictation of Thai Children: A Longitudinal Study

In tonal languages such as Thai, lexical tone (the pitch of a syllable) affects word meaning. This study examined the effects of lexical tone awareness (LTA) on early word recognition and the relationship between these abilities and word reading and spelling in subsequent grades. A longitudinal design was used to assess reading-related skills in 259 Thai children, first in kindergarten (130 girls, Mage=67.25months) and later in Grade 3 (Mage=102.25months). In kindergarten, the children were tested on lexical tone identification and differentiation, early literacy skills, non-verbal IQ, and early word recognition. In Grade 3, they were tested on word reading and spelling from dictation. The hierarchical regression analyses showed that the lexical tone identification skills in kindergarten accounted for 2% of the unique variance in early word recognition. However, none of the LTA skills could predict word reading and spelling from dictation after controlling for other literacy-related skills. These findings suggest that LTA skill positively associated with early word recognition at the kindergarten level, but not for word reading and spelling from dictation at a Grade 3 level.