Title
Correlates of early reading performance in a transparent orthography
Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
1-1-2001
Abstract
A cross-sectional study was conducted with 83 first - and 81 fourth graders at the end of the school year to examine factors accounting for early reading performance in Finnish, a transparent orthography with a clear mapping of phonemes onto graphemes. Measures for both grades included reading comprehension, phoneme awareness, and object- and digit naming. Additionally measures of skills in morphology, spelling and a screening battery were administered to the first graders. The sets of measures accounted for 56% of the variance in reading performance in first grade and 64% in fourth grade. Phoneme awareness was strongly related to reading performance and spelling at the end of first grade, but only for less-skilled readers in fourth grade. These results suggest a larger role for phoneme awareness for children learning a transparent orthography than has been suggested in earlier studies. At the same time, listening comprehension contributed more strongly to first-grade reading performance than has been reported for children learning to read English. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Publication Title, e.g., Journal
Reading and Writing
Volume
14
Issue
7-8
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Müller, Kurt, and Susan Brady. "Correlates of early reading performance in a transparent orthography." Reading and Writing 14, 7-8 (2001): 757-799. doi: 10.1023/a:1012217704834.