early literacy from a longitudinal perspective

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Early Literacy From a LongitudinalPerspectiveCor Aarnoutse a , Jan van Leeuwe b & Ludo Verhoeven ca Department of Educational Sciences , the University ofNijmegen , The Netherlandsb Statistical Consultancy Group , the University of Nijmegen , TheNetherlandsc Department of Special Education , the University of Nijmegen ,The NetherlandsPublished online: 16 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Cor Aarnoutse , Jan van Leeuwe & Ludo Verhoeven (2005) Early Literacy From aLongitudinal Perspective, Educational Research and Evaluation: An International Journal on Theoryand Practice, 11:3, 253-275, DOI: 10.1080/08993400500101054

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Early Literacy From a Longitudinal

Perspective

Cor Aarnoutsea*, Jan van Leeuweb, and Ludo VerhoevencaDepartment of Educational Sciences, the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands,bStatistical Consultancy Group, the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, andcDepartment of Special Education, the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

(Received 10 March 2003; accepted 19 February 2004)

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.

Introduction

In this study, the aim is to examine the question which skills or components in early

literacy determine the development of word recognition, reading comprehension, and

spelling in the first grades of the elementary school. Early literacy concerns the phase

of written language acquisition in which children during kindergarten (K) and the

first two grades learn the basic principles of reading and writing. In this phase, several

crucial developments occur in connection with literacy: a strong progress in the area

of language comprehension, the emergence of phonological and phonemic

awareness, the identification of words by decoding the graphemes into a coherent

group of phonemes, the comprehension of written words and sentences, and the

spelling of these words and sentences (Verhoeven & Aarnoutse, 1999). These

fundamental developments will be briefly considered before exploring the question

*Corresponding author. Department of Educational Sciences, University of Nijmegen,

Montessorilaan 3, 6525 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Tel. + 31 243612081.

Fax + 31 243615978. E-mail : [email protected]

Educational Research and EvaluationVol. 11, No. 3, June 2005, pp. 253 – 275

ª 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/08993400500101054

ISSN 1380-3611 (print)/ISSN 1744-4187 (online)/05/030253–23

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which skills in early literacy determine the development of word recognition, reading

comprehension, and spelling.

Development of Early Literacy

In both the period of early literacy and the period that precedes this (0 to 4 years), one

can speak of a marked development in oral language skills that constitutes the basis

for written language skills. Language comprehension progresses particularly strongly

during this period. In keeping with Hoover and Gough (1990), we construe language

comprehension (linguistic comprehension) as the capacity to understand or interpret

spoken language. Aspects of language comprehension that strongly develop during

the period of early literacy are listening and vocabulary. Research shows that the

capacity of children to listen with comprehension during this period increases. They

learn to comprehend particular sentence constructions (such as the passive sentence

construction) and to make connections between sentences using their growing

knowledge of deictic words (anaphora) and conjunctions. They also learn to keep

track of the plot of simple dialogues and monologues, to distinguish important from

unimportant information, to predict the events in stories, and to detect important

cause-effect relations (Danks & End, 1987; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1993; Karmiloff-Smith,

1986; Olson, 1977; Verhoeven, 1994). Various studies have also shown that the

vocabulary of children between the ages of 5 and 8 increases strongly. In the mental

lexicon, not only the number of words pertaining to objects, actions, and situations

grows but also the strength of the relations between the words present in the

developing fields of meaning or networks (Beck & McKeown, 1991; Blachowicz &

Fisher, 2000; Nagy & Scott, 2000; Verhallen, 1994; Verhoeven & Vermeer, 1992).

Phonological awareness is – just as morphological, syntactic, and lexical awareness –

the implicit or explicit knowledge that people have of the sound structure of spoken

words. Phonemic awareness concerns the knowledge of phonemes, the speech sounds

or units of sound that are used to build spoken words and to distinguish meanings (cf.

Nagy & Scott, 2000; Tunmer, Herriman, & Nesdale, 1988). Research shows the

development of phonological awareness to progress from the syllable level and the

onset-rime level (in the word bed, the consonant b forms the onset and the following

vowel and consonant ed form the rime) to the phoneme level (cf. Bradley & Bryant,

1983; Goswami, 2000; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974). Treiman

and Zukowski (1991, 1996) showed that phonological and phonemic awareness

progress rapidly in a few years. They demonstrated that virtually all 4-, 5-, and 6-year-

old children are capable of distinguishing the syllables within a word. In onset-rime

tasks, 56% of the 4-year-olds, 74% of the 5-year-olds, and 100% of the 6-year-olds

performed correctly. In phoneme tasks, 25% of the 4-year-olds, 39% of the 5-year-

olds, and 100% of the 6-year-olds perform correctly. It should be noted that the 6-

year-olds had already received 1 year of reading instruction.

Recognition of the fact that words are composed of sounds is important for the

following step within the period of early literacy, namely learning to identify words.

Word identification or word recognition constitutes the foundation of the reading

254 C. Aarnoutse et al.

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process. Word recognition implies, among other things, that children understand the

principle of the alphabet or, in other words, see that the sounds of a spoken word

correspond to the letters of a written word. Every letter of the alphabet represents, in

principle, a speech sound with a meaningful distinction. Word recognition implies at

the level of early literacy that children can transpose the letters of a word into sounds

(the grapheme-phoneme association), connect the sounds to a spoken word, and

assign a meaning to this word (Ehri, 1991; Tunmer & Hoover, 1992). Most children

in The Netherlands master the art of word recognition within a period of 4 months in

the first grade (Mommers, Aarnoutse, Verhoeven, & Van de Wouw, 1993).

Recognition of words via the transposition of a series of letters into sounds is a

fairly slow process in the beginning. To the extent that the child reads more

frequently, word recognition becomes more automatized. This automatization

process, which starts in the first grade, is very important for the further development

of reading comprehension: automatization reduces the memory load and thereby

enables reading comprehension (Perfetti, 1985; Stanovich, 1991; Van Orden &

Goldinger, 1994).

Reading comprehension refers to understanding the meaning of written words,

sentences, and text. Readers try to understand the written message of the writer at

different levels (lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic). Reading comprehension

is an active process, that is affected by complex interactions between the content of

the text itself, the reader’s prior knowledge and goals, and various cognitive and

metacognitive activities and processes (Pressley, 2000; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995).

The simple view of reading (Carver, 1993; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover &

Gough, 1990) claims that reading comprehension depends on two components: word

recognition and linguistic comprehension (listening comprehension and vocabulary).

This theory states that these components are necessary for reading success but neither

one is sufficient by itself. According to this theory, there are developmental changes in

the nature of the relationships between the components themselves. In the early

grades, the components of word recognition and linguistic comprehension are, at

most, weakly related. From the middle grades on, linguistic comprehension

contributes more substantially to reading comprehension than word recognition.

In spelling, the spoken language is converted into graphic symbols using a number

of orthographic rules (Ehri, 1991). According to Templeton and Morris (2000)

spelling represents three layers of information: the alphabetic layer which matches

letters to sounds in a left-to-right fashion; the pattern layer which operates within and

between syllables; and the meaning layer which reflects the fact that word parts that

are related in meaning are usually spelled consistently.

In his developmental model for spelling, Henderson (1990) distinguishes the

following five phases of orthographic knowledge: preliterate, letter name or

alphabetic, within-word pattern, syllable juncture, and derivational constancy. Since

spelling and reading processes use the same orthographic or lexical knowledge, there

is a rather strong relationship between spelling and word recognition (Ehri, 1997;

Perfetti, 1995). The orthographic skills explain a considerable amount of variance in

reading ability.

Early Literacy From a Longitudinal Perspective 255

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Precursors of Word Recognition, Reading Comprehension and Spelling

The question which skills or components of early literacy determine the development

of word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling in the first grades of the

elementary school will now be explored. This question is important for the theory and

practice of early literacy education. For a clear understanding: A certain level of word

recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling constitute the output of early

literacy. Longitudinal research like this study with word recognition, reading

comprehension, and spelling as dependent variables may reveal the relative

contribution of independent variables (precursors) such as phonemic awareness,

knowledge of letters, vocabulary et cetera.

Research studies show that at least three factors or variables play an important role

in explaining and predicting word recognition: phonological and phonemic awareness,

knowledge of the names of letters, and rapid naming. The role of recall of verbal

information in the development of word recognition is still a matter of debate.

Numerous correlation studies in English-speaking countries have shown a

substantial relation between measures of phonological awareness administered to

5-year-olds and tests of word recognition among the same children at the age of 6 (cf.

Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984; Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea, &

Hammill, 2003). Phonological and phonemic tasks appeared to have a predictive

value for word recognition and spelling. Several intervention studies have shown that

phonological and phonemic awareness influences the development of word

recognition. Instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness, especially in

blending and segmentation, resulted in significant effects on word recognition and

spelling. In their meta-analyses, Bus and Van IJzendoorn (1999) and the National

Reading Panel (2000) found overall effect sizes which can be characterized as

moderate-to-strong. Bradley and Bryant (1983) showed in their well-known

intervention study that the phonological awareness of 4- and 5-year-old children

scoring low on a phonemic task could be strongly improved and that instruction on

sound categorization together with connecting the sounds to letters after 3 years still

showed a positive effect on word recognition and spelling. Lundberg, Frost, and

Petersen (1988) found results with their purely phonological awareness program for

Danish kindergartners. The effect size of their program, which did not include letter

manipulation, was small however. Ball and Blachman (1991) demonstrated in their

intervention study with kindergartners that instruction on phonemic awareness

together with instruction on pairing phonemes to letters had a strong effect on the

degree of phonemic segmentation, word recognition, and spelling (cf. Blachman,

Tangel, Ball, Black, & McGraw, 1999). The program Sound Foundations, which

combines phonological training and letter training as well, had a strong effect on

reading and spelling skills (Byrne & Fieldings-Barnsley, 1995). The studies of

Bradley and Bryant (1983), Blachman et al. (1999) and Byrne and Fieldings-Barnsley

(1995) show that both phonemic awareness and knowledge of letters influence the

development of word recognition and spelling. Studies of Byrne and Fieldings-

Barnsley (1995) and Kozminsky and Kozminsky (1995) showed that instruction in


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phonemic awareness is also effective in boosting reading comprehension. This is not

surprising for the very reason that reading comprehension is partly dependent of word

recognition.

In their longitudinal study, Perfetti, Beck, Bell, and Hughes (1987) showed a

mutual relationship between phonemic awareness and reading instruction: phonemic

awareness has a positive effect on learning to read (word recognition) and vice versa:

learning to read has a positive effect on phonemic awareness. According to Ehri

(1997), phonological awareness is not only a precursor of word recognition but also

the outcome of learning to read and to spell.

However, the influence of phonemic awareness on word recognition should be

differentiated. The effect of this ability is probably more time-limited in languages

with a relatively consistent orthography, like Dutch and German, than in languages

with a relatively inconsistent orthography, like English (cf. Frith, Wimmer, &

Landerl, 1998). In their longitudinal study with Dutch children, De Jong and Van der

Leij (1999, 2002) found that phonological awareness did not have an additional effect

on the development of word recognition speed after the end of the first grade. In their

view, phonological awareness is merely important for the acquisition of accurate word

decoding, which most children attain by the end of the first grade in languages with a

relatively consistent orthography.

Research shows that, in addition to phonological and phonemic awareness,

knowledge of (the names of) the letters during the kindergarten years is a good

predictor of early literacy (Ehri & Sweet, 1991; Ehri & Wilce, 1987; Scarborough,

1998). Intervention studies executed by, for example, Bradley and Bryant (1983,

1985), Blachman and her colleagues (Blachman, 2000; Blachman, Ball, Black, &

Tangel, 1994), Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1995), and others show that knowledge

of letters is an important factor in the development of word recognition. Letters

facilitate the perception of phonemes and are essential for the transfer to reading and

spelling.

Research has also shown that rapid naming (naming speed) is related with word

recognition (see for a recent meta-analysis Swanson et al., 2003). Wolf, Bally, and

Morris (1986) showed the naming tasks of Denckla and Rudel (1974), in which

children must name familiar letters, numbers, colors, and pictures as quickly as

possible, to be good predictors of the rapid identification of words by first graders.

Longitudinal research by Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Burgess, and Hecht (1997)

showed phonological awareness and naming speed for visual symbols during the

initial years of elementary education to play an important and independent role in

the explanation of the growth of word recognition. The review study by

Scarborough (1998) showed rapid naming for visual symbols to be just as strongly

related with later reading skills as such other predictor variables as knowledge of

(the names) of letters and phonological awareness. Manis, Seidenberg, and Doi

(1999) also concluded on the basis of their longitudinal research that rapid naming

is strongly related to early literacy and constitutes – in addition to verbal capacity

(language comprehension) and phonological awareness – a good and independent

predictor of reading (cf. Carver & David, 2001). De Jong and Van der Leij (2002)


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found, besides a time-limited effect of rapid naming, that the relation between rapid

naming and word recognition speed was consistently larger during the first 3 years

of the elementary school than its relation with phonological awareness. Van den

Bos, Zijlstra, and Lutje Spelberg (2002) showed a growing connection during the

elementary school years between the speed of naming letters and numbers, on the

one hand, and the speed of word recognition as measured by the One Minute Test

from Brus and Voeten (1973), on the other hand. In another study, Van den Bos

(2000) demonstrated that the naming speed tasks for letters and numbers explain a

substantial amount of the variance in the speed of word recognition for elementary

school and special education children. All of these research findings show that the

rapid naming of visual symbols, or the retrieval of phonological codes from long-

term memory, probably plays an important role in learning to read. Intervention

studies have to make clear that the relation between rapid naming and word

recognition is causally of nature.

Further, it is plausible that recall of verbal information plays a role in word

recognition. How important that role is, is not known however. Liberman,

Shankweiler, Liberman, Fowler, and Fischer (1977) emphasize the integrative

function of verbal working memory and state that the most important task of this

memory function is to facilitate syntactic and other processes at the level of the

sentence. From research it is known that poor readers are often not very capable of

remembering verbal information. Fowler (1988) showed the reading problem of poor

readers to lie in part in a shortage of verbal working memory. These shortages point in

the opinion of Shankweiler, Liberman, Mark, Fowler, and Fischer (1979), however,

not to a general memory problem but to a specific shortage related to the use of

phonological representations in verbal working memory. Poor readers do not,

according to Brady (1991), make adequate use of their verbal working memory

because they have difficulties with the processing of the information in the

phonological code (cf. Dufva, Niemi, & Voeten, 2001). In their longitudinal study

with elementary school children, Wagner, Torgesen, and Rashotte (1994) and

Wagner et al. (1997) found only small effects of verbal working memory on word

recognition. Similar results were found by De Jong and Van der Leij (1999). The last

two studies indicate that the role of verbal working memory on word recognition is

small. Intervention studies can answer the question whether this small role is causally

related with word recognition.

With regard to reading comprehension, four factors are important in explaining and

predicting this skill: rapid recognition of words, listening comprehension, vocabulary

(including knowledge of the world), reading strategies and metacognitive strategies,

and perhaps recall of verbal information.

In early literacy, the components related to word recognition play an important role

in reading comprehension. Decoding as the first step in word recognition gives access

to the meaning of words. If a child cannot decode a word, it cannot comprehend it

(Adams, 1990; Ehri, 1991; Pressley, 2000). The rapid decoding of words is very

important for the comprehension of those words (cf. LaBerge & Samuels, 1974;

Perfetti, 1985). Tan and Nicholson (1997) showed that rapid recognition of words


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improves reading comprehension, probably by freeing up more short-term capacity

for reading comprehension.

According to Sticht (1979), listening comprehension and reading comprehension

‘‘use the same language system for representing the same thoughts, that is, they

share the same meaning system’’ (p.209). He drew this conclusion after successfully

testing the hypothesis that performances on a listening comprehension test

predicted the reading comprehension performances if the decoding ability is

sufficient. Studies of Smiley, Oakley, Worthen, Campione, and Brown (1977),

Danks and End (1987) and Rispens (1990) showed that the relationship between

listening and reading comprehension is rather weak in the first grades of the

elementary school but increases in the middle grades. In a longitudinal study we

found in grade 4 a correlation of .52 between listening and reading comprehension

(Aarnoutse, 1998).

Research shows a strong relationship between vocabulary (including knowledge of

the world) and reading comprehension (Aarnoutse & Van Leeuwe, 1988;

Aarnoutse,Van Leeuwe, Voeten, & Oud, 2001; Nagy & Scott, 2000). Only a few

studies, however, have demonstrated a causal link between increasing vocabulary and

an increase in reading comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). In the 1980s,

Beck and her colleagues showed that intensive instruction in vocabulary improves

reading comprehension (Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982; McKeown, Beck,

Omanson, & Perfetti, 1983). In kindergarten and the first grades of elementary

school, early storybook reading could in the future become an important method to

develop vocabulary and text comprehension (Bus, Van IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini,

1995).

Reading strategies are activities or procedures that readers execute with the goal to

comprehend a text. These strategies can be performed before, during, and after

reading a text. Finding the main idea of a text, connecting anaphora to their

antecedents or inferring the meaning of a word from the context, are examples of

reading comprehension strategies. Metacognitive strategies have to do with the

planning, monitoring, and evaluation of the tasks at hand. With these self-regulatory

strategies the reader steers and controls his own activities. Several intervention studies

have shown that instruction in reading strategies and metacognitive strategies

improves reading comprehension (Aarnoutse & Schellings, 2003; Duffy et al., 1987;

Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Pressley, 1998). Intervention studies in kindergarten have

shown that it is possible to develop and improve text comprehension strategies with

young children by interactive storybook reading (cf. Morrow, 1988; Morrow &

Smith, 1990).

With regard to spelling, it is known that in the alphabetic phase children learn to

read and to spell regular words with a consonant-vowel, a vowel-consonant, or a

consonant-vowel-consonant structure (Henderson, 1990). In that phase, learning to

read, to recognize words, and to spell are almost the same processes (Ehri, 1997).

The children learn to spell words by analyzing the spoken form of these words in

phonemes and by linking these phonemes with the corresponding graphemes.

Thereafter the words are written grapheme after grapheme and controlled by


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rereading. Writing letters facilitates the development of phonemic awareness by

concretizing sounds. The fact that learning to read and to spell are almost the same

processes in the alphabetic phase means that spelling is influenced by phonological

and phonemic awareness, knowledge of the names of letters, rapid naming of visual

symbols, and possibly recall of verbal information.

Research Questions and Expectations

As stated earlier, in this study the focus is on the question which skills or components

in early literacy determine the development of word recognition, reading

comprehension, and spelling in the second grade of the elementary school. We

restricted the study to the following factors: listening comprehension, vocabulary,

conceptual knowledge, phonological and phonemic awareness, letter knowledge,

sentence recall, and rapid naming of letters, numbers, colors, and pictures.

On the basis of the reviewed research we expect that the following skills in early

literacy determine word recognition in the second grade: phonemic awareness, letter

knowledge, rapid naming of letters and numbers and possibly recall of verbal

information. It is hypothesized that rapid naming of letters and letter knowledge

explain most of the variance in word recognition.

With regard to reading comprehension, we expect that listening comprehension,

vocabulary, rapid naming of letters, and perhaps recall of verbal information will

explain a substantial amount of the variance in reading comprehension in the second

grade. It is hypothesized that vocabulary, rapid naming of letters, and letter

knowledge explain most of the variance in reading comprehension. In spelling, the

same skills as those in word recognition will play an important role in predicting

spelling in the second grade of elementary school. It is hypothesized that rapid

naming of letters and letter knowledge explain most of the variance in spelling.

These expectations and hypotheses are based mostly on studies with one

dependent variable (word recognition or reading comprehension or spelling). What

the influences of the above-mentioned factors together are on three dependent

variables cannot be predicted exactly. Research on this matter is yet emerging.

Method

Sample

In a previous study, a stratified random sample of pupils from Dutch elementary

schools was followed from grade 1 to grade 6 (Aarnoutse et al., 2001). A subset of 18

schools with 243 pupils participated in the current study which focuses on early

literacy. Pupils were tested during three periods: period 1 (from April through June of

the 2nd year of kindergarten); period 2 (from August through October of grade 1);

and period 3 (from September through October of grade 2). In the third period, only

a limited number of the children participated. Children left the sample for various

reasons and three schools could not participate any more.


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Measurement Instruments

In the present study, the achievement of the pupils in the areas of language

comprehension and early literacy were important variables. The variables in the area

of language comprehension were vocabulary, listening comprehension, and

conceptual knowledge. The variables assumed to play an important role in learning

to read were phonological and phonemic skills and knowledge of the names of letters.

In addition, a variable pertaining to the recall of orally presented information was

sentence recall. The variables with respect to the speed with which information can be

retrieved and named from memory were tasks for rapid naming letters, numbers,

colors, and pictures.

For each of the aforementioned variables, tests were developed and tested at a

number of schools not belonging to the concerned cohort. For kindergarten, it was

not possible to administer the tests to the class as a whole. Only in grade 1 and 2 of

the elementary school, most of the tests could be administered to the class as a whole.

In the kindergarten classes, the tests were administered either individually or to

groups of six pupils. Prior to the actual testing, all of the teachers were schooled on

the administration of the tests.

Over the course of 3 years, the pupils from the cohort took a variety of tests in the

aforementioned areas. Only a few of the instruments developed could be

administered during all three grades, however.

Vocabulary Test (VOC). This test measures the passive vocabulary of children. For

each item, the pupils are asked to choose from four pictures of objects or actions that

picture that the teacher mentions (‘‘Where do you see a stove? Place a circle around

the stove.’’). The test for the pupils in the 2nd year of kindergarten contained 35

items, was administered in April-May to a group of six pupils and had a reliability

coefficient of .76.

Listening Comprehension Test (LIC). This test measures the extent to which children

are in a position to understand and remember a piece of text read aloud to them. The

teacher reads a piece of text with seven lines, and the pupil is then asked to circle the

picture that best fits the piece of text. The test is administered to groups of six pupils

or to the class as a whole. Different forms of this test were administered to the pupils

in the 2nd year of kindergarten and the pupils in grade 1. The test for pupils in the

2nd year of kindergarten (LICK) consisted of 25 items, was administered in May-

June, and had a reliability coefficient of .71. The test for the pupils in grade 1 (LIC1)

consisted of 30 items, was administered in December, and had a reliability coefficient

of .71.

Conceptual Knowledge Test (CON). This test measures the extent to which children are

familiar with concepts in the area of space (front, back, left, right, middle) and time

(morning, yesterday, spring, the day before yesterday, the day after tomorrow, fall)

along with concepts that refer to the comparative properties of objects (smaller,


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lightest, just as heavy, just as full, shortest). The pupils receive different assignments,

including the picking up and placement of blocks, the derivation of information from

a drawing, and the determination of the width of a strip of paper. The test was

administered individually to the kindergarten group. The test for the pupils in the 2nd

year of kindergarten contained 25 items, was administered in June, and had a

reliability coefficient of .68.

Sentence Recall Test (SER). This test measures the extent to which children can recall

sentences with a length of 9 to 12 words. The teacher reads a sentence one time aloud

and then asks the pupil to repeat the sentence exactly. The test consists of 6 sentences

with 73 items (words) and is administered individually. The test was administered to

the pupils in the 2nd year of kindergarten in April and had a reliability coefficient of

.80.

Rhyming Test (RHY). This test measures the identification of rhyming words. For the

recognition of rhyming words, the teacher pronounces the stimulus word (drink)

aloud and then four other words (line, film, sink, string). The pupil must indicate via

the accompanying pictures which word rhymes with the stimulus word. The test,

which consists of 5 items, was administered to the pupils in the 2nd year of

kindergarten in groups of six in January-February. The test had a reliability coefficient

of .55. (The low reliability was caused by the small amount of items).

Initial Phoneme Test for kindergarten (IPHK) and grade 1 (IPH1). These tests measure

the discrimination of the initial phonemes in words. For the discrimination of initial

sounds, the teacher labels four pictures (feet, teeth, pear, seat) and asks the pupils

which word begins with a particular sound (/t/). The pupils must then circle the

appropriate picture. The IPHK, which consists of 5 items, was administered to the

pupils in the 2nd year of kindergarten in groups of six in January-February. The test

had a reliability coefficient of .69.

The IPH1 test, which consists of 16 items, was administered to the pupils in grade

1 in September-October. The test had a reliability coefficient of .80.

Letter Test (LET). This test measures knowledge of letters. The teacher points to a

letter and the pupil states what letter it is. The test consists of 21 letters. The letters a

and b were used for instruction while the letters c, q, and x were excluded. The test

was administered to the pupils in the 2nd year of kindergarten and grade 1. The test

administered in kindergarten (LETA) in June and had a reliability coefficient of .95.

In grade 1, the test (LETB) was administered in September-October and had a

reliability coefficient of .84.

Naming Letters (NLET), Naming Numbers (NNUM), Naming Pictures (NPIC), and

Naming Colors (NCOL). These tasks measure just how quickly children can retrieve

and name information from long-term memory. The children are given tasks of

naming familiar letters, numbers, pictures, and colors as quickly as possible. The


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tasks consisted of 50 items each. When it appeared that pupils did not know the

relevant letters (i, k, m, n, o, p, r, s, and z), numbers, pictures, or colors, the task was

terminated. The tasks were administered individually in September-October to the

pupils in grade 1. The test-retest reliability was above .80 for all the four rapid naming

tasks. It appeared that the time spent was always lower than 5 min. To get a measure

of speed the time spent was subtracted from 5 min.

The dependent variables in this study were standardized tests on word recognition,

reading comprehension, and spelling: the One Minute Test, the Reading

Comprehension Test, and the Spelling Test.

One Minute Test (OMT). The One Minute Test from Brus and Voeten (1973) for

grade 2 measures the ability to recognize printed words. The test consists of a card

with 116 unrelated words in an increasing order of difficulty. The raw score is the

number of words read correctly per minute. The test consists of two parallel forms:

Forms A and B. The test-retest reliability of this test is .89. Form A of the test (OMT)

was administered individually to the pupils in grade 2 in October.

Reading Comprehension Test (RC). The Reading Comprehension Test from Aarnoutse

(1996a) for grade 2 is intended to measure the ability to comprehend the meaning of

a text. After the reading of a text, the pupils answer a number of questions at the

word, sentence, and text levels. The appropriate answer is selected from four

alternatives. The test consists of nine texts (six informative and three narrative) with a

total of 36 multiple-choice items. This test was administered in October on a class

basis and the reliability coefficient for the test was .89.

Spelling Test (SPEL). The Spelling Test from Aarnoutse (1996b) for grade 2 is

intended to measure spelling skills. The test measures the correct manner of writing

for unchanging words and contains 35 items. The pupils must write the words

presented as part of a sentence without error. The test was administered on a class

basis in October. The reliability coefficient for the test was found to be .90.

Procedure

So seven tests (VOC, LICK, CON, SER, RHY, IPHK, and LETA) were administered

at kindergarten, seven tests (LIC1, IPH1, LETB, NLET, NNUM, NPIC, and

NCOL) in grade 1, and three tests (OMT, RC, and SPEL) in grade 2. By means of

linear structural equation modeling, we will describe the influences of variables in

kindergarten and grade 1 on word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling

in grade 2. In principle, structural equation modeling is performed on a covariance

matrix of complete cases. This might be accomplished by imputation of the missings.

Disadvantage is that imputation and analysis should be repeated a number of times

and the results have to be combined in a proper way (Schafer & Olsen, 1998). An

alternative is to estimate the covariance matrix for incomplete data using ‘‘full

information maximum likelihood’’ (Anderson, 1957), which yields consistent and


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efficient solutions in the case that missingness is at random (MAR) (Wothke, 1999).

We applied this latter method using the saturated model. In this way, the estimated

covariance matrix can be used in subsequent structural equation models.

Results

Sample

The group of 243 pupils consisted of 115 boys (47.3%) and 128 girls (52.7%).

Descriptive statistics of the 243 pupils on the 17 variables are displayed in Table 1.

It is clear from Table 1 that some of the tests are relatively easy. Apparently a lot of

pupils master the skills (nearly) totally. This holds for the Vocabulary Test (VOC)

and the Listening Comprehension Test (LICK) in period 1 and for the Listening

Comprehension Test (LIC1), the Initial Phoneme Test for grade 1 (IPH1), and the

Letter Test (LETB) in period 2.

Table 1 also shows that the number of pupils that attended the test administration

in period 3 was relatively low. To get an impression of the bias that might have been

caused by this drop in the number of pupils, t tests were performed comparing the

group of 78 pupils who completed all three tests in the third period to the group of

165 pupils who did not. Results are given in the last columns of Table 1. It appears

that 5 out of 14 differences are significant and these differences are in favor of the

group that was selected for testing in the third period.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics total group (Columns 1 to 5) and statistics (Columns 6 to 10)

comparing children who attended measurement in third period (N1=number, M1=mean) and

who did not (N2=Number, M2=Mean) by t test (Sig. = two-tailed probability)

Period Name Mean Stand.dev. N N1 M1 N2 M2 Sig.

1 VOC 29.57 3.97 238 77 30.71 161 29.02 .00

1 LICK 21.60 2.89 220 76 22.11 144 21.33 .04

1 CON 19.00 4.38 165 47 19.04 118 18.98 .94

1 SER 43.17 13.60 197 48 44.06 149 42.89 .60

1 RHY 4.03 1.18 224 67 4.52 157 3.82 .00

1 IPHK 4.11 1.27 224 67 4.51 157 3.94 .00

1 LETA 9.36 7.21 202 50 9.78 152 9.22 .64

2 LIC1 27.70 2.21 239 77 27.83 162 27.64 .50

2 IPH1 14.65 2.38 237 77 15.08 160 14.44 .03

2 LETB 19.87 2.25 192 48 20.19 144 19.76 .12

2 NLET 3.90 0.60 211 49 3.95 162 3.88 .39

2 NNUM 3.82 0.59 211 49 3.85 162 3.81 .71

2 NPIC 3.67 0.46 211 49 3.66 162 3.68 .83

2 NCOL 3.65 0.50 211 49 3.66 162 3.65 .90

3 RC 22.76 7.33 93

3 OMT 36.45 15.80 103

3 SPEL 26.00 7.26 97


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Estimating Covariances

As a next step, the covariance matrix of these 17 variables was estimated by full-

information maximum-likelihood on the basis of the saturated model. This matrix

was input to the structural equation analyses. Table 2 contains the correlation matrix

computed from these covariances.

With regard to the dependent variables, it is clear from Table 2 that word

recognition (OMT) and Spelling (SPEL) in the second grade are correlated high

(0.49). Reading comprehension correlates highest (0.49) with vocabulary (VOC) and

second highest (.46) with sentence recall (SER) in kindergarten. Word recognition

(OMT) correlates highest with rapid naming of letters (NLET) (0.53) and numbers

(NNUM) (0.39) in grade 1, probably caused by the speed character of each of these

tests. Spelling also correlates high with rapid naming of numbers (NNUM) (0.49)

and letters (NLET) (0.36), and with letter knowledge (LETA and LETB) (0.48 and

0.50 for grade 1 and kindergarten, respectively).

Structural Equation Models

A basic assumption underlying longitudinal models is that influences are oriented

according to time order. In our case, we have influences of scores obtained in three

successive periods. So influences go from variables in kindergarten to variables in

grade 1 and through them to variables in grade 2. If we assume all these influences to

be present and if we account for correlation between the variables at the same

measurement period, the regressions can be estimated and the model can be tested.

Since this model is far from parsimonious, it is not likely that this model fits the data

well. In fact the fit of this model was found to be poor: Chi-square= 146.077, df = 21,

p= 0.000, gfi=0.940, agfi=0.563, nfi=0.924, rmsea= 0.157. Improvement of the

model fit is achieved by adding those regressions from period 1 to period 3 which are

suggested by theory and indicated by analysis results, that is residuals and

modification indices. In this case, such a relation was the regression of vocabulary

(VOC) at period 1 on reading comprehension at period 3 (RC). By allowing this

effect the fit improved somewhat: Chi-square= 103.684, df = 20, p= 0.000,

gfi=0.957, agfi=0.667, nfi=0.946, rmsea=0.131. A far more parsimonious model

is reached by removing insignificant parameters (regressions and covariances). In this

way, the final model of Figure 1 was estimated and tested.

The fit of this model is satisfactory: Chi-square= 169.052, df = 64, p= 0.000,

gfi=0.919, agfi=0.849, nfi=0.898, rmsea=0.082. It is noted that the regressions

from conceptual knowledge (CON) and rhyming (RHY) on each of the variables in

period 2 failed to be significant. Hence these variables do not occur any more in the

model of Figure 1.

Table 3 contains the percentages of variance explained in the dependent variables

of the final model.

From Table 3 and Figure 1, it is clear that the variance in listening comprehension

in grade 1 (LIC1) is explained for 47%, mainly by sentence recall (SER, regression


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Table 2. Correlations

VOC LICK CON SER RHY IPHK LETA LIC1 IPH1 LETB NLET NNUM NPIC NCOL RC OMT SPEL

VOC 1.00

LICK 0.55 1.00

CON 0.44 0.38 1.00

SER 0.61 0.51 0.47 1.00

RHY 0.58 0.47 0.32 0.47 1.00

IPHK 0.40 0.43 0.37 0.30 0.48 1.00

LETA 0.42 0.39 0.47 0.38 0.36 0.42 1.00

LIC1 0.56 0.56 0.42 0.59 0.37 0.34 0.26 1.00

IPH1 0.25 0.31 0.29 0.32 0.26 0.41 0.32 0.31 1.00

LETB 0.25 0.31 0.20 0.24 0.28 0.34 0.25 0.23 0.26 1.00

NLET 0.25 0.26 0.21 0.29 0.31 0.34 0.41 0.27 0.32 0.41 1.00

NNUM 0.16 0.22 0.28 0.26 0.28 0.32 0.45 0.26 0.32 0.32 0.69 1.00

NPIC 0.27 0.27 0.32 0.40 0.24 0.18 0.33 0.32 0.26 0.22 0.47 0.47 1.00

NCOL 0.16 0.16 0.22 0.25 0.15 0.21 0.29 0.23 0.22 0.15 0.48 0.61 0.60 1.00

RC 0.49 0.43 0.27 0.46 0.43 0.33 0.44 0.31 0.41 0.42 0.43 0.29 0.34 0.21 1.00

OMT 0.14 0.29 0.20 0.04 0.15 0.22 0.34 0.20 0.10 0.35 0.53 0.39 0.24 0.29 0.20 1.00

SPEL 0.09 0.30 0.26 0.22 0.12 0.21 0.50 0.16 0.24 0.48 0.36 0.49 0.30 0.34 0.40 0.49 1.00

266

C.Aarnoutse

etal.

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coefficient 0.32), by listening comprehension (LICK, 0.28), and by vocabulary

(VOC, 0.22) in kindergarten, respectively. It appears that the Initial Phoneme Test in

grade 1 (IPH1) is explained for 20% by a similar test in kindergarten (IPHK, 0.35)

and sentence recall in kindergarten (SER, 0.22). Letter knowledge in grade 1 (LETB)

is explained for the small amount of 12% by the same test from kindergarten (LETA,

0.15), but more importantly by the discrimination of initial phonemes (IPHK, 0.26)

in kindergarten. The naming tasks in grade 1 are partly explained by letter knowledge

Fig. 1. Longitudinal model.

Table 3. Squared Multiple Correlations (SMC) in longitudinal model

period variable SMC

2 LIC1 0.47

LETB 0.12

IPH1 0.21

NLET 0.19

NNUM 0.20

NPIC 0.16

NCOL 0.08

3 RC 0.40

OMT 0.31

SPEL 0.35


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in kindergarten. Letter naming (NLET) is explained additionally by initial phoneme

discrimination and picture naming (NPICT) by sentence recall (SER), respectively.

Reading comprehension (RC) in grade 2 is explained for 40%, mainly by

vocabulary (VOC) in kindergarten (regression coefficient 0.37) and to a lesser extent

by letter knowledge (LETB) in grade 1 (0.20), rapid naming of letters (NLET) in

grade 1 (0.22), and phonemic awareness (IPHI) in grade 1 (0.18), respectively.

Word recognition (OMT) is explained for 31%, mainly by rapid naming of letters

(NLET) in grade 1 (0.48) and for a much smaller amount by letter knowledge

(LETB) in grade 1 (0.15).

Spelling (SPEL) is explained for 35%, in almost equal amounts by letter knowledge

(LETB) in grade 1 (0.35), and rapid naming of numbers (NNUM) in grade 1 (0.39).

Figure 1 shows that, contrary to the expectation, listening comprehension in grade 1

(LIC1) does not have an effect on reading comprehension (RC). It is also remarkable

that phonemic awareness in grade 1 (IPH1) does not influence word recognition

(OMT) and spelling (SPEL) in grade 2. A clear influence of word recognition on

reading comprehension is not found either. The correlation between these variables in

grade 2 is .20 and adding a direct effect from word recognition to reading

comprehension results in an insignificant regression estimate. Moreover, it is noted

that picture naming and color naming do not influence reading nor spelling in grade 2.

Discussion and Conclusions

In this study, the focus was on the question which skills or components in early

literacy determine the development of word recognition, reading comprehension, and

spelling in the second grade of the elementary school.

From this study it appeared that mainly two skills determine the development of

word recognition: rapid naming of letters and knowledge of the names of letters in

grade 1 (and kindergarten). Of these skills, rapid naming of letters is by far the most

important skill. Reading comprehension is predicted to a large extent by vocabulary

from the kindergarten period, by rapid naming of letters, by letter knowledge from

grade 1 (and kindergarten), and by phonemic awareness in grade 1 (and

kindergarten). The skills that determine the development of spelling are letter

knowledge from grade 1 (and kindergarten) and rapid naming of numbers in grade 1.

These results are for the most part in line with our expectations. It appeared

however, that phonemic awareness plays a less important role in predicting word

recognition and spelling than expected. The same holds for the influence of listening

comprehension in predicting reading comprehension. It appeared furthermore, that

recall of verbal information does not have a direct effect on word recognition, reading

comprehension, and spelling. It has an indirect effect on reading comprehension via

phonemic awareness.

With respect to the longitudinal effects, three matters stand out:

1. The strong prediction of rapid naming of letters in the beginning of grade on

word recognition and to a lesser degree on reading comprehension. The fact that


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rapid letter naming strongly predicts word recognition, suggests that being able

to rapidly name letters or to retrieve the phonological codes of letters from long-

term memory is one of the most important factors of word recognition. Rapid

letter naming appears to be a far more important predictor of word recognition

than letter knowledge and phonemic awareness that in this study works via rapid

letter naming (cf. Scarborough, 1998). This study suggests that rapid naming of

letters pertains more to orthographic knowledge than to phonemic awareness (cf.

Bowers, Golden, Kennedy, & Young, 1994; Kirby, Parrila, & Pfeiffer, 2001;

Wolf & Bowers, 1999). In the final model (see Fig. 1), rapid naming of letters is

stronger related to letter knowledge in kindergarten (LETA) as the basis of

orthographic skill than to phonemic awareness in kindergarten (IPHK).

According to Manis et al. (1999), letter naming tasks call upon other skills than

phonological tasks. In the final model, rapid letter naming is, nevertheless,

influenced by phonemic awareness.

2. The strong prediction of letter knowledge during the kindergarten period and

grade on spelling and reading comprehension and to a lesser extent on word

recognition. Letter knowledge is not only a predictor of word recognition and

spelling (cf. Ehri & Sweet, 1991; Manis et al., 1999), but also of reading

comprehension.

3. The decreasing influence of phonemic awareness from kindergarten to grade 1.

In the final model (see Fig. 1), the role of phonemic awareness is stronger during

the kindergarten period than in the beginning of grade one. In the kindergarten

period, phonemic awareness influences both letter knowledge and rapid naming

of letters.

The fact that phonemic awareness in grade 1 does not have an effect on word

recognition and spelling in grade 2 could be explained by the fact that the phonemic

awareness test in grade 1 (IPH1) was very easy. Another explanation is based on the

studies of Frith et al. (1998) and De Jong and Van der Leij (1999, 2002), who found

that the effect of phonemic awareness is more time-limited in languages with a

relatively consistent orthography, like German and Dutch, than in languages with a

relatively inconsistent orthography, like English. The fact that listening comprehen-

sion in this study does not have an effect on reading comprehension is difficult to

explain. It is possible that the low difficulty level of the Listening Comprehension

Test (LIC1) has played a part. It is also possible that the difference between listening

and reading comprehension in this period is greater than expected. From Figure 1 it

is clear that reading comprehension in grade 2 is for an important part explained by

components of word recognition, like rapid naming of letters, letter knowledge, and

phonemic awareness.

The research reported here has not only implications for the theory of early

literacy but also for educational practice. The study shows that in early literacy at

least four skills are important for beginning reading, namely rapid naming of

letters (and numbers), knowledge of letters, vocabulary and phonemic awareness.

The study confirms the decision of some intervention studies (Byrne & Fieldings-


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Barnsley, 1995; Blachman et al., 1999) to develop exercises aimed at phonemic

awareness together with knowledge of letters (e.g., the ABC wall). The study

suggests also that in languages with a relatively consistent orthography the

influence of phonemic awareness on word recognition is probably stronger during

the kindergarten period than in the first grade. The study emphasizes above all the

importance of rapid naming of letters (and numbers). The question whether and

how this naming speed can be improved is not known yet. Separate exercises for

rapid naming of letters and other visual symbols are presumably not desirable.

Naming speed is probably best promoted within the context of reading fluency (cf.

Good, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 2001; National Reading Panel, 2000). Future

research should show which learning activities are most suited and effective in

improving reading fluency, of which naming speed is a component. Finally, this

study emphasizes the importance of vocabulary for the development of reading

comprehension. From intervention studies it is known that reading aloud in small

groups and in an interactive way promotes not only oral language comprehension

but also vocabulary development (cf. Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Van Elsacker

& Verhoeven, 1997).

In closing, some limitations on the present study should be mentioned. First,

the results of this longitudinal study were not based on a nationally representative

sample of schools. This implies that the results may not be generalized. Second,

some of the developed measurement instruments were easy or had moderate

reliability coefficients. It is possible that these two factors have influenced the

predictive power of these tests negatively. Third, a relatively high number of pupils

missed the tests, which functioned as dependent variables. The analyzed group

scored above average. It is clear that in a next study these shortcomings should be

prevented.

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early literacy from a longitudinal perspective

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