Search results for "English orthography"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Orthographic depth and its impact on universal predictors of reading: a cross-language investigation
2010
Alphabetic orthographies differ in the transparency of their letter-sound mappings, with English orthography being less transparent than other alphabetic scripts. The outlier status of English has led scientists to question the generality of findings based on English-language studies. We investigated the role of phonological awareness, memory, vocabulary, rapid naming, and nonverbal intelligence in reading performance across five languages lying at differing positions along a transparency continuum (Finnish, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, and French). Results from a sample of 1,265 children in Grade 2 showed that phonological awareness was the main factor associated with reading performance…
Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies
2003
Several previous studies have suggested that basic decoding skills may develop less effectively in English than in some other European orthographies. The origins of this effect in the early (foundation) phase of reading acquisition are investigated through assessments of letter knowledge, familiar word reading, and simple nonword reading in English and 12 other orthographies. The results confirm that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. There are some exceptions, notably in French, Portuguese, Danish, and, particularly, in English. The effects appear not to be attributable to difference…