Literacy predictors and early reading and spelling skills as a factor of orthography

What is it about?

This article examined early literacy skills (sight word recognition, decoding) and specific predictors that are known to influence reading acquisition (phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, working memory capacity) among kindergarten children.

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Why is it important?

This work is important because it takes into consideration language typology and orthographic transparency. Since Croatian is a transparent orthography English is a deep orthography, it was important to see if there are differences in the rate of early literacy acquisition among these groups of children. The results showed that Croatian children had an advantage over English speakers in their phonological awareness skills, phonological memory and working memory capacity which in turn allowed them to have more advanced skills even without specific instructions. It also showed again that English-speaking children need more time to acquire literacy skills.

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