Deborah L. Speece

A longitudinal analysis of the connection between oral language and early reading.

Abstract To clarify the relationship between oral language and early reading development, the authors administered to 39 children a broad range of oral language measures in 3 areas (metalinguistics, structural language, and narrative discourse); measures of background variables (IQ, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, family literacy); and measures of reading ability (word recognition, pseudoword reading, passage comprehension) in kindergarten and in 1st and 2nd grades. The authors used regression analyses to identify parsimonious models that explained variance in early reading. The main finding of the study was that semantic abilities (i.e., oral definitions and word retrieval), not phonological awareness, predicted 2nd-grade reading comprehension. As expected, phonological awareness skill in kindergarten predicted single-word reading at 1st and 2nd grades. The finding that semantic skills predicted passage comprehension suggests that the importance of different oral language skills to early reading varies as a function of language domain, reading skill, and measurement point.

Responsiveness to General Education Instruction as the First Gate to Learning Disabilities Identification

Most definitions of learning disabilities (LD) include a qualification that adequate general education instruction was received and the child with LD did not benefit. Rarely is this tenet assessed in either practice or research before a diagnosis is made. We review three studies that investigated childrens responsiveness to general education reading instruction as an indicator of need for more intensive interventions. Adequacy of instruction was quantified by childrens level and rate of progress, compared to classmates, as measured by curriculum-based measures of oral reading fluency. We found that the response-to-instruction model tested was valid in that (1) children who differ from their peers on level and slope of performance (dual discrepancy) have more severe academic and behavioral problems than children who have IQ-achievement discrepancies or low achievement; (2) children who demonstrate persistent nonresponsiveness over three years differ from other at-risk children on reading, reading-related, and behavioral measures; and (3) at-risk children who participated in specially designed general education interventions had better outcomes than at-risk children who did not participate. We conducted additional analyses to assess low achievement definitional variations and found that they lack sensitivity and coverage compared to a dual discrepancy definition.

Treatment Validity as a Unifying Construct for Identifying Learning Disabilities.

The purpose of this article is to revisit the issue of treatment validity as a framework for identifying learning disabilities. In 1995, an eligibility assessment process, rooted within a treatment validity model, was proposed that (a) examines the level of a students performance as well as his/her responsiveness to instruction, (b) reserves judgment about the need for special education until the effects of individual student adaptations in the regular classroom have been explored, and (c) prior to placement, verifies that a special education program enhances learning. We review the components of this model and reconsider the advantages and disadvantages of verifying a special education programs effectiveness prior to placement.

Initial Evidence That Letter Fluency Tasks Are Valid Indicators of Early Reading Skill

This longitudinal investigation evaluated the validity of letter-name fluency (LNF) and nonsense word fluency (NWF) measures as indicators of early reading skill with a sample of 39 kindergarten children. In the spring of kindergarten and first grade, these children responded to a battery of language, reading-related, and reading measures. Construct and social consequential validity were evaluated through concurrent and predictive criterion-related validity coefficients, multiple regression analyses, and classification analysis. Evidence supportive of validity was found for both fluency measures, with NWF receiving the strongest support. Both fluency measures were more sensitive to poor reader status in first grade than any other measure when reading was defined by oral reading fluency. These findings extend the usefulness of NWF to the early identification of kindergarten students.

A Longitudinal Study of the Development of Oral Reading Fluency in Young Children At Risk for Reading Failure

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of oral reading fluency in a sample of first-grade children. Using growth curve analysis, models of growth were identified for a combined sample of at-risk (AR) and not-at-risk (NAR) children, and predictors of growth were identified for the longitudinal AR sample in first and second grade. Large and serious differences in reading fluency growth between the AR and NAR samples were apparent early, replicating other reports. Theories of sight-word learning and reading fluency were supported, in that letter-sound fluency was a uniquely significant predictor of first-grade reading fluency. The effects of phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming were mediated by the other variables in the model. Growth in first-grade oral reading fluency accounted for the most unique variance in second-grade growth and end-of-year performance. The results suggest that word reading fluency should be regarded as developing concomitantly with early word recognition rather than as a later-developing skill.

Unresolved Mysteries How do Metalinguistic and Narrative Skills Connect with early Reading

In both special education and speech-language pathology literature, it is commonly assumed that childrens reading difficulties have their roots in early oral language disabilities. Data to support this assumption are most evident in studies that demonstrate a reciprocal relationship between the metalinguistic skill of phonemic awareness and word decoding. The purpose of this review was to examine the contribution of other oral language abilities to early reading performance. Specifically, we examined studies that assessed metasemantics, metasyntax/metamorphology, and narrative discourse in relation to word decoding or reading comprehension with children in kindergarten through third grade. We found that although phonemic awareness retained its prominence as a predictor of early reading skills, metasyntactic ability often accounted for significant variance. There was also an indication that narrative discourse skill is related to reading performance. We hypothesize that narrative discourse and other metalinguistic skills may gain importance developmentally once children acquire some initial skill in decoding An analysis of definitional, measurement, and theoretical issues provides direction for further study.

The relevance of oral language skills to early literacy: A multivariate analysis

This study examined relationships between oral language and literacy in a two-year, multivariate design. Through empirical cluster analysis of a sample of 88 kindergarten children, four oral language subtypes were identified based on measures of semantics, syntax, metalinguistics, and oral narration. Validation efforts included (a) concurrent and predictive analyses of subtype differences on reading, spelling, and listening comprehension measures based on a priori hypotheses and (b) a comparison of the teacher classification of the children with the empirical classification. The subtypes represented high average, low average, high narrative, and low overall patterns of oral language skill. The high average subtype received the most consistent evidence for validation. The pattern of validation results indicates that the relationship between oral language and literacy is not uniform and suggests a modification of the assumption that oral language skills have a direct role in reading acquisition.

The contribution of oral language skills to the development of phonological awareness

Phonological awareness skills are prerequisite to early reading, yet the development of phonological awareness is an understudied phenomenon. To identify factors that contribute to the development of phonological awareness, we investigated the longitudinal relationships among child background factors, structural oral language, and phonological awareness in a sample of 52 children from kindergarten to second grade and a subsample of this group who were nonreaders in kindergarten. Background measures were IQ, family literacy, socioeconomic status, and childs primary language; oral language measures were receptive and expressive semantics, syntax, and morphology; phonological awareness was measured by segmentation and blending. Principal component analysis of the structural language measures yielded a general oral language factor score. Regression analyses indicated that the background variables were unique predictors of kindergarten general oral language skill but did not predict phonological awareness skills. General oral language accounted for significant and substantial unique variance in phonological awareness each year for both the full sample and the subsample of nonreaders, controlling for reading ability. These findings suggest general oral language may contribute to the development of early reading through its significant influence on the development of phonological awareness.

Reciprocal Teaching Goes to College: Effects for Postsecondary Students at Risk for Academic Failure.

This study investigated the effects of a structured reading comprehension technique, reciprocal teaching, on postsecondary students at risk for academic failure. The sample comprised 50 at-risk students enrolled in a community college who participated in either the reciprocal teaching or cooperative learning condition. The reciprocal teaching group performed significantly better than the comparison group on reading comprehension and strategy acquisition. There were no differences on perception of study skills. In secondary analyses, poorer readers in the reciprocal teaching condition benefited differentially, outperforming poorer readers in the comparison condition on both reading comprehension and strategy acquisition measures. That a structured reading comprehension strategy for college-age students was effective has implications for the design of remedial courses at 2- and 4-year colleges.

Fluency Has a Role in the Simple View of Reading

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) suggests that the components of reading comprehension are decoding and linguistic comprehension. Given research that suggests that fluency is a separate construct from decoding and linguistic comprehension in fourth grade, the aim of this study was to examine the role of fluency in the SVR model. Analyses of data from 248 fourth-grade children explored whether the influence of fluency on reading comprehension is direct or whether fluency plays an indirect role on reading comprehension as a mediator or moderator of decoding. Structural equation modeling and latent regression analyses revealed that reading fluency plays a mediating role in explaining the relation between decoding and reading comprehension. This novel finding is placed in the context of studies that reported either a direct effect or no effect of reading fluency in SVR.