Cognitive-linguistic skills and motivation as longitudinal predictors of reading and arithmetic achievement: A follow-up study from kindergarten to grade 2

This 3-year longitudinal study examined how motivational tendencies, that is, task orientation and social dependence orientation, as well as cognitive-linguistic prerequisites of reading and math skills (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid naming, oral language comprehension skills, number sequence and basic arithmetic skills) measured in kindergarten (5–6 years), in preschool (6–7 years), and in grade 1, predict decoding, reading comprehension and arithmetic achievement in grade 2. Moreover, the motivational-developmental profiles of children with prospective learning difficulties were compared to the profiles of averagely achieving children. The participants were 139 Finnish-speaking children. Results from regression analyses showed that rapid naming was a unique longitudinal predictor of later decoding skills. Oral comprehension skills accounted for a unique variance in reading comprehension at every time point examined. Motivational orientations started to make unique contributions to subsequent decoding accuracy, reading comprehension and arithmetic from preschool onwards, over and above the effects of prior linguistic and math skills. High task orientation was beneficial for beginning reading, whereas high social dependence orientation was detrimental for reading comprehension and arithmetic. Students who fell behind of others both in reading comprehension and arithmetic experienced the most unfavourable development of motivation already during the first term in grade 1. Implications for instructional practices are discussed.     

The development of motivational orientations as a function of divergent reading careers from pre-school to the second grade

In this study, we examined the developmental relationship of children's motivational orientations and reading skills from pre-school to the 2nd grade. Forty-eight children with differing word reading careers were identified from 115 pre-school non-readers. Pre-schoolers were assessed for cognitive–linguistic skills and motivational orientation (ratings on task-, ego-defensive, and social dependence orientation). The situational manifestations of orientations were observed during construction tasks comprising three pressure episodes. The motivational assessments were replicated (experimenter and teacher ratings) and decoding and reading comprehension tests were administered in the 1st and 2nd grades. On the basis of low, average and high pre-school phonemic awareness and word reading achievement in the 1st and 2nd grades, two regressive and two progressive word reading career groups were formed. The results showed that the regressive and the progressive reading career groups of matching initial phonemic awareness and verbal ability did not differ motivationally at pre-school age, but showed distinctive motivational orientation across contexts by the end of the second school year. A case analysis demonstrates the interactive formation of motivational orientation during reading instruction. These findings suggest that the developmental interaction of learning skills and motivational tendencies contribute to the differing reading careers.     

The development of first graders' reading skill as a function of pre-school motivational orientation and phonemic awareness

This study examined the development of reading skill during the first school year. The predictors were pre-school motivational orientations, coping tendencies, knowledge of the alphabet and phonemic awareness. From 151 pre-school children (6 years of age) rated by pre-school teachers on motivational orientations, 32 non-readers were allocated according to their dominating motivational disposition to one of the following extreme groups: task orientation, social dependence, ego-defensive, and multiple non-task-oriented. Each group included 8 children. The subjects' phonemic awareness and knowledge of the alphabet were assessed. Coping strategies were observed in pre-school during a play-like construction task comprising three induced pressure episodes. At the end of the first grade the children were assessed on word reading skill and again on motivational orientation. Both group comparisons and idiographic analyses were made. Results indicated that pre-school phonemic awareness was associated with first grade word reading skill. Rated task orientation in pre-school enhanced significantly the prediction of fluent word reading. Task-oriented children showed significantly better word reading skill than ego-defensive or multiple non-task-oriented children. Ego-defensive and multiple non-task-oriented subjects showed significantly less task oriented, and more ego-defensive, coping behaviour under pressure than task-oriented subjects. This finding suggests greater vulnerability of ego-defensive and multiple non-task-oriented children which may contribute to diverging reading careers. Idiographic analyses indicated parallel developmental changes in reading skill, motivational orientations and coping patterns confirming the role of motivation in the formation of an individual's reading career.     

Initial mental graphemic representation acquisition and later literacy achievement in children with language impairment: a longitudinal study

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between the ability to quickly acquire initial mental graphemic representations (MGRs) in kindergarten and fourth grade literacy skills in children with typical language (TL) and children with language impairment (LI). The study is a longitudinal extension of a study conducted by Wolter and Apel in which kindergarten children with LI and TL were administered early literacy measures as well as a novel written pseudoword task of MGR learning (spelling and identification of target pseudowords). In the current study (4 years later), the authors administered reading and spelling measures to 37 of the original 45 children (18 children with LI, 19 children with TL). The children with LI performed significantly lower than their peers with TL on all fourth grade literacy measures. For both groups, kindergarten initial MGR acquisition ability significantly related to fourth grade real-word reading and spelling. For the children with LI, kindergarten initial MGR acquisition ability also related to fourth grade pseudoword decoding and reading comprehension. Collectively, the findings suggest that initial MGR learning in kindergarten is an essential skill that may uniquely relate to later literacy abilities.     

Enabling skills in early reading acquisition: A study of children in Latvian kindergartens

Preschool children in Latvia were tested in order to examine the relationships among various enabling skills and early reading performance. A principal component analysis indicated three factors: a phonemic awareness factor, a naming factor, and a short-term memory factor. Multiple regression analyses with word identification and sentence comprehension as dependent variables yielded further support to the powerful role played by phonemic awareness in explaining variance in both these aspects of reading. Unexpectedly, neither naming nor short-term memory contributed to explain unique variance in word and sentence reading. The Latvian orthography is very consistent, and our results provide further evidence to the importance of phonemic awareness in early reading acquisition especially in a transparent language. Therefore, the tasks used when assessing phonemic awareness can be very useful when screening children at risk for developing reading problems. Enhancing children's letter knowledge and phonemic awareness skills should be a priority goal in the kindergarten classroom.     

Predicting reading ability over the long term: The changing roles of letter naming,phonological awareness and orthographic processing

A cohort of 92 children was followed through sixth grade to investigate the relationship of preschool skills and first grade phonological awareness to reading and spelling. In particular, the focus was on the changing roles of letter naming, orthographic awareness, and phonological processing in prediction, as reading experience increased. Preschool letter naming was a consistently significant predictor of reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, and spelling at each grade level, but the preschool orthographic task contributed most to reading comprehension and spelling at the higher grades. Conversely, the contribution of the first grade phonemic awareness measures to reading skills dropped sharply after third grade, although they continued to contribute to spelling prediction. When preschool precursors of phonological processing were examined, letter naming was found to be a predictor of first and third grade phonemic awareness. Findings confirm the importance of letter naming as a predictor and of the role of phonemic awareness in early reading acquisition, but also highlight the contribution of orthographic processing skills to later reading.     

Retrospective analyses of the reading development of grade 4 students with reading disabilities: risk status and profiles over 5 years

This study presents a longitudinal examination of the development of reading and reading-related skills of 22 Grade 4 children identified as having reading disabilities (RD) who had been followed since kindergarten. The analyses were conducted to investigate the patterns of emergence of RD as well as reading ability and risk status across the 5 years. The findings of the study are presented with an examination of the trajectories of the children with RD as compared to Grade 4 typical readers (matched for grade, gender, language status, and school) with a similar profile on literacy skills in kindergarten. The results demonstrate the heterogeneous nature of the trajectory of RD in school-age children; although many of the children with RD were at risk in kindergarten, there was a subsample who did not demonstrate reading and phonological difficulties until the third and fourth grades.     

Development of and Relationship Between Phonological and Motivational Processes and Naming Speed in Predicting Word Recognition in Grade 1

In this 2-year longitudinal study the developmental relationships among letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and task orientation were examined, and linguistic-motivational pathways of word reading acquisition were traced from kindergarten to Grade 1 by means of structural equation modeling. The participants were 100 Finnish-speaking nonreaders. Results showed that kindergarten (5–6 years) letter knowledge predicted subsequent preschool (6–7 years) phonological awareness and task orientation. RAN was a unique longitudinal and concurrent predictor of word recognition, suggesting that rapid naming provides a reliable prediction of prospective word reading ability at least in a transparent language. Controlling for phonological awareness and rapid naming, task orientation contributed uniquely to the prediction of word reading competence, suggesting that motivational and linguistic factors are both at work as children face the gradually growing demands of learning to read and write in Grade 1.     

Early cognitive and home environmental predictors of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Turkish-speaking children

In this study, we aimed to determine the early cognitive and home environmental predictors of reading in Turkish-speaking children. A total of 362 children participated in the study. We monitored the children for 3 years and assessed the home environmental variables and cognitive skills in kindergarten, reading fluency at the end of the first grade, and reading comprehension at the end of the second grade. We found that home literacy environment and socioeconomic status predicted early literacy skills in kindergarten as they also predicted reading fluency and reading comprehension through early literacy in later years. In addition, we found that phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming predicted reading fluency, while language and verbal working memory predicted reading comprehension. The results of the study showed us that it is important to consider reading and reading comprehension in Turkish-speaking children holistically, together with cognitive skills and home environmental variables.     

Differences in reading development among Danish beginning-readers with high versus low phonemic awareness on entering grade one

This longitudinal study explored the relation betweenpreschool phoneme awareness and initial reading development. Distinctions were made between formal and functional letter knowledge and between foundation and subsequent phases of reading development. 44 children with at least average language comprehension were followed from the beginning of grade 1(7 years) until the end of grade 2. They were divided intotwo groups: one group of 21 children with high phonemic awareness (HPA) and 23 children with low phonemic awareness (LPA) on entering grade 1. The results showed persistent group differences in favour of the HPA children regarding letter-knowledge and word reading. The results confirmed a significant impact of functional letter knowledge on the length of the foundation period and on later reading development. Length of foundation period was shown to have a significant impact on reading development at the end of grades 1 and 2. It is argued that phonemic awareness is an indispensable catalystin the development of initial word processing ability.     

Longitudinal predictors of reading comprehension in French at first grade: Unpacking the oral comprehension component of the simple view

According to the simple view of reading (SVR), reading comprehension relies on “decoding” (pseudoword, word reading) and “oral comprehension” skills. Testing 556 French pupils, we aimed at unpacking these two components and tracking their longitudinal development in first grade. We have found that: (1) lower level language skills (vocabulary, syntax) and discourse skills (oral text comprehension) emerged as two dimensions of “oral comprehension”; (2) lower level language skills longitudinally predicted reading comprehension outcomes, above code-related skills; (3) decoding precursors (letter knowledge, naming speed and phonemic awareness) predicted reading comprehension directly, and indirectly, through decoding skills (pseudoword, word reading, text reading fluency); (4) Oral comprehension skills did not favour the development of decoding. Our results support the independency of the SVR components. However, we suggest that a more fine-grained conceptualisation of oral comprehension skills would help to better understand the individual and pedagogical factors influencing the early development of reading comprehension.     

Early Literacy From a Longitudinal Perspective

The goal of this longitudinal study was to examine which skills in early literacy determine the development of word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling in the 2nd grade of the elementary school. A cohort of pupils was followed and tested during the 2nd year of kindergarten and the beginning of the 1st and 2nd grade. It appeared that mainly 2 skills determined the development of word recognition: rapid naming of letters and knowledge of letters. Reading comprehension was predicted to a large extent by vocabulary, rapid naming of letters, letter knowledge, and phonemic awareness. The skills that determined the development of spelling were rapid naming of numbers and letter knowledge.     

The impact of kindergarten learning-related skills on academic trajectories at the end of elementary school

Recent research indicates that children's learning-related skills (including self-regulation and social competence) contribute to early school success. The present study investigated the relation of kindergarten learning-related skills to reading and math trajectories in 538 children between kindergarten and sixth grade, and examined how children with poor learning-related skills fared throughout elementary school on reading and math. Latent growth curves indicated that learning-related skills had a unique effect on children's reading and math scores between kindergarten and sixth grade and predicted growth in reading and math between kindergarten and second grade. In addition, children with poor learning-related skills performed lower than their higher-rated peers on measures of reading and mathematics between kindergarten and sixth grade, with the gap widening between kindergarten and second grade. Between third and sixth grade, this gap persisted but did not widen. Discussion focuses on the importance of early learning-related skills as a component in children's academic trajectories throughout elementary school and the need for early intervention focusing on children's self-regulation and social competence.     

Development of reading skills from K-3 in Spanish-speaking English language learners following three programs of instruction

The development of English and Spanish reading and oral language skills from kindergarten to third grade was examined with a sample of 502 Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) enrolled in three instructional programs. The students in the transitional bilingual and dual-language programs had significantly higher scores than the students in the English immersion program on the Spanish reading and oral language measures and significantly lower scores on the English reading comprehension and oral language measures. Multiple-group path models showed that the predictors of third grade English and Spanish reading comprehension did not differ across the three programs. Spanish phonological/decoding skill and oral language in first grade mediated the association between Spanish phonological/decoding skill and oral language in kindergarten and third grade Spanish reading comprehension. English phonological/decoding, Spanish phonological/decoding skill, and English oral language in first grade mediated the link between Spanish phonological/decoding skill in kindergarten and third grade English reading comprehension.     

Investigating English reading comprehension growth in adolescent language minority learners: some insights from the simple view

The development of reading skills in language minority (LM) learners, particularly during the middle school years, remains unclear despite the increasing need for educators to serve this rapidly growing population. In this study, the English reading comprehension growth of middle school LM learners was investigated using a longitudinal design and the simple view of reading as a theoretical framework. Students were assessed at four time points between fifth and seventh grades on standardized measures of listening comprehension, word reading, and reading comprehension. Individual growth modeling revealed that both listening comprehension and word reading assessed in fifth grade predicted the elevation of students’ developmental trajectories in reading comprehension. However, neither skill predicted students’ growth in reading comprehension, and there was no significant variation across children in growth rates, indicating that students in seventh grade remained on a trajectory established in fifth grade. The implications of the slowing rate of reading comprehension development during the middle school years are discussed.     

Parental involvement in the development of children's reading skill: a five-year longitudinal study

This article presents the findings of the final phase of a 5-year longitudinal study with 168 middle- and upper middle-class children in which the complex relations among early home literacy experiences, subsequent receptive language and emergent literacy skills, and reading achievement were examined. Results showed that children's exposure to books was related to the development of vocabulary and listening comprehension skills, and that these language skills were directly related to children's reading in grade 3. In contrast, parent involvement in teaching children about reading and writing words was related to the development of early literacy skills. Early literacy skills directly predicted word reading at the end of grade 1 and indirectly predicted reading in grade 3. Word reading at the end of grade 1 predicted reading comprehension in grade 3. Thus, the various pathways that lead to fluent reading have their roots in different aspects of children's early experiences.     

Contributions of print exposure to first and second grade oral language and reading in Chile

This study examines the contribution of print exposure to oral language (expressive vocabulary and listening comprehension) and reading (word reading and reading comprehension) in first and second grade in Chile, and tests whether the contribution of print exposure to reading comprehension is mediated by language and word reading skills. Two‐hundred and eighty one children (mean age 6.55 years) participated. Print exposure was measured with a book‐cover recognition task in first grade, and outcomes were measured both in first and second grade. Print exposure had direct effects on all outcomes in first grade and indirect effects in second grade. Effects on first grade reading comprehension were partially mediated by listening comprehension and word reading, but not vocabulary. We discuss the importance of the findings for improving reading comprehension in countries with low access to books.     

Morphological analysis,phonological analysis and learning to read French: a longitudinal study

This paper presents a longitudinal study, from kindergarten to secondgrade, which aims to examine the relationship between morphologicalanalysis, phonological analysis and learning to read. Three phonologicalawareness tasks, five derivational and four inflectional subtests wereadministered to fifty children at each of the three levels. Evolution ofperformance was analyzed through the three years. Data showed that withthe exception of two subtests, performance increased from kindergarten tofirst grade and from first grade to second grade, without reaching ceilingperformance in second grade, at least for morphological subtests. Linksbetween morphological and phonological analyses were very strong: inparticular, syllable segmentation was highly correlated with themorphological subtests in kindergarten while phonemic segmentation wascorrelated with morphological subtests in first and second grade. Therewere also strong links between morphological analysis and reading.Regression analyses showed that while phonological awarenessexplained a major part of variance in first grade, both phonologicaland morphological scores explained significant part of variance of bothdecoding and comprehension reading scores in second grade. Thus, thislongitudinal study contributes to the evidence of a link between bothphonological and morphological analysis and learning to read French.     

Revisiting the home literacy model of reading development in an orthographically consistent language

We examined the applicability of the Home Literacy Model in an orthographically transparent language (Greek). Seventy Greek children were followed from kindergarten until grade 4. In kindergarten they were tested in non-verbal intelligence, vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, rapid naming, and letter knowledge. The parents of the children also responded on a questionnaire regarding the frequency of storybook reading, the number of books at home, and the frequency of teaching letter names, sounds, and words. Reading fluency and comprehension were measured in grade 4. The results indicated that the early home literacy experience variables were related to the emergent literacy skills but did not directly predict future reading skills. Thus, the Home Literacy Model applies to consistent orthographies before any formal reading instruction takes place.     

Predictors of reading skills for kindergartners and first grade students in Spanish: a longitudinal study

This study investigated predictors of word reading and reading comprehension skills using longitudinal data from Spanish-speaking kindergartners (N?=?163) and first grade students (N?=?305) from high SES families in Chile. Individual differences in letter-naming fluency and phonemic segmentation fluency, but not vocabulary, were positive predictors of word reading, over time, for kindergartners. Furthermore, kindergartners with higher letter-naming fluency and phonemic segmentation fluency had a faster rate of change in word reading over time. For first graders?? reading comprehension, word reading, nonsense word fluency, and vocabulary were positively and uniquely related. However, the rate of change in the reading comprehension outcome differed over time by children??s level of vocabulary, nonsense word fluency, and word reading. These results suggest that code-related skills are important for word reading, but vocabulary might not have a direct, unique relation with word reading in a transparent orthography. In addition, phonological decoding fluency appears to contribute to reading comprehension even over and above word reading accuracy in Spanish.