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Literacy predictors and early reading and spelling skills as a factor of orthography Cross-linguistic evidence* Elena Zaretskya, Jelena Kuvac Kraljevicb, Cynthia Corec and Mirjana Lencekb aUniversity
Croatia /
of Massachusetts Amherst, USA / bUniversity of Zagreb, Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA
cFlorida
The majority view of reading development maintains the importance of specific cognitive and linguistic abilities, e.g. phonological awareness (PA) and vocabulary and verbal working memory (VWM). Another factor in attaining literacy may be the language of exposure, e.g. whether it has a transparent or a deep orthography. This study examines the interaction between known predictors for literacy development and the orthography. It focuses on early levels of literacy (decoding and spelling) amongst children with typical language development. English-speaking (deep orthography) and Croatian-speaking (transparent orthography) kindergarteners were assessed on measures of vocabulary, PA, functions of verbal working memory, and early literacy skills at the beginning of the kindergarten year. The results indicate that a transparent orthography (Croatian) increases early decoding and encoding skills and they show expected correlations between PA, vocabulary, and early literacy abilities. English speakers did not show these correlations at the onset of the kindergarten year. We postulate that the nature of the deep orthography requires some instructional time for English-speaking children before PA and vocabulary will show predictive validity for reading acquisition. Keywords: vocabulary, phonological awareness, verbal working memory, early literacy skills, transparent orthography, deep orthography, Croatian, English
of vocabulary (Gathercole et al. 1992) and phonological awareness (Goswami & Bryant 1990). Empirical data also provides strong support for the importance of verbal working memory (VWM) as an essential component for developing phonological awareness skills (Hulme et al. 2005). Years of research in early literacy development have also pointed to the role of the ambient language in the development of phonological awareness and subsequent reading (Zaretsky 2002; Caravolas & Bruck 1993; Patel, Snowling & de Jong 2004). Given the evidence of the importance of specific skills that predict and promote reading achievements in children at the early stages of reading and spelling development, the nature of the relationship between influential factors predictive of early literacy and the language of exposure is essential to our understanding of the process in view of the orthographic depth hypothesis (Katz & Frost 1992). It alludes to the fact that a transparent orthography may provide a better support for word recognition than a deep orthography by relying on the phonological form of the word. In turn, our understanding of the interactive nature between known predictors for reading and orthography may also enhance our understanding of possible differences in the use of cognitive skills underlying the process of reading acquisition in its early developmental stages. The present study examines the nature of interaction between reading prerequisites such as PA, vocabulary, and VWM, and early literacy skills, including alphabet knowledge (naming and production), inventive spelling, basal (sight words) word reading, and decoding in two groups of children from different linguistic backgrounds, namely English and Croatian. Given the differences in phonological structure and orthography between these two languages, we hypothesize that the ambient language plays a significant role in the development of PA and subsequently may influence the degree of ease in early attempts in decoding and spelling among typically developing children at the beginning of the kindergarten year.1 This hypothesis implies that Croatian kindergarteners should show advantages in performing PA tasks and exhibit better spelling and decoding skills than their English-speaking peers as a result of the former’s exposure to a transparent orthography. In addition, we hypothesize that aspects of VWM such as phonological memory and working memory capacity may show between group differences in the way they influence acquisition of phonological awareness and early literacy skills as a factor of orthography. Our aim was to establish the interactions between different aspects of VWM and tasks measuring PA skills in all participants at this age, given the specific nature and requirements for PA awareness tasks. We seek to examine the predictive relationship between vocabulary, PA, and VWM on the one hand and children’s early knowledge of the alphabet, their invented spelling, and their decoding skills on the other at the onset of the kindergarten year prior to the beginning of formal reading instruction as a factor of language of exposure.
Elena Zaretsky, Jelena Kuvac Kraljevic, Cynthia Core and Mirjana Lencek
1.1 The influential factors in reading acquisition 1.1.1 Phonological awareness Phonological awareness (PA) skills have been shown to be critical for subsequent reading (Goswami & Bryant 1990; Muter et al. 1998; Nation & Hulme 1997; Hoien et al. 1995). PA is the ability to explicitly manipulate the structure of the spoken word. Research has shown that the ability to manipulate individual phonemes within a word structure is a better predictor of early reading skills than the manipulation of onsets and rhymes (as larger and considerably easier discriminative units) (Hulme et al. 2002). While the link between phonological awareness and reading is well established, the nature of this relationship is less clear, in particular whether PA is an essential precursor to alphabetic literacy or a skill that develops with exposure to the alphabetic principle (Wesseling & Reitsma 2001; Caravolas & Bruck 1993). To be able to identify and manipulate subparts of spoken words such as syllables, onsets, rhymes, and individual phonemes, a child has to develop good phonological representations of the lexical entries (Metsala 1999). Difficulties performing different PA tasks may reflect less refined, imprecise systems of phonological representation (Wesseling & Reitsma 2001). 1.1.2 The role of Verbal Working Memory in the development of phonological awareness and vocabulary acquisition PA presumably relies on underlying cognitive functions such as verbal working memory (VWM) (Hulme et al. 2005; Oakhill & Kyle 2000). Moreover, different phonological awareness tasks may depend on different aspects of VWM, depending on the nature of the task. For example, tasks that require single operations are considered to be dependent on the function of short-term memory or phonological memory (PM) only, while tasks that require both storage and processing components are more likely to be the function of working memory (Wagner & Torgesen 1987). Yopp (1998) described a phoneme segmentation task as relying on a single operation, while Oakhill & Kyle (2000) proposed that sound categorization tasks, such as ‘odd one out’, may require more than one operation, e.g. both storage and processing of information. The substitution task may also rely on aspects of working memory capacity, as it requires holding the representations of all sounds of the word in memory while also transposing a sound in order to make a new word. The role of working memory functions in vocabulary development has also received a fair share of attention in the research literature, effectively showing that children with good phonological memory, as measured by non-word repetition, are better at learning new vocabulary items (Gathercole & Baddeley 1990a, 1990b). Poor non-word repetition is now considered to be a distinguishing factor between
typically developing children and children with specific language impairment across different languages and different orthographies (Conti-Ramsden 2003; Palmovich, Kuvac & Kovacevic 2007). Baddeley (2003) argued that non-word repetition as well as PA skills are good predictors of future reading performance. The literature in the area of early reading development also stresses the importance of good receptive vocabulary (Gathercole et al. 1992; Nation & Snowling 1998). The predictive role of phonological memory for vocabulary development, for developing phonologically complete lexical representations for PA, and the subsequent role of vocabulary as well as PA in early reading skills together add up to strong connections among PM, vocabulary, PA and reading acquisition. 1.1.3 The role of phonological composition of language and orthography in the development of phonological awareness and early reading skills Research in early literacy development provides ample evidence on the role of the ambient language in the development of PA and reading. Empirical evidence supports the assumption that there are differences in the progress of reading acquisition in children learning to read in transparent versus deep orthographies (Frith, Wimmer & Landerl 1998; Cossu et al. 1998). Fundamental differences in the phonological structure of languages and the nature of their orthography have been postulated to account for observed differences (Symour, Aro & Erskine 2003). The phonological structure of the spoken language may influence children’s earliest awareness of the sublexical structures of words, such as onset and rhyme and individual phonemes (Caravolas & Bruck 1993; Widjaja & Winskel 2004; Cheung et al. 2000), which ultimately projects to the awareness of phoneme–grapheme correspondences. For example, Caravolas and Bruck (1993) showed that Czech kindergarteners were more aware of complex onsets than their English-speaking counterparts because of the frequency of the occurrence of clusters in the Czech lexicon and the variety of complex consonant clusters in Czech compared to English. Similar results were seen in a comparative study between Russian- and English-speaking pre-readers (Zaretsky 2002). Yavaş and Core (2001) found that bilingual English-Spanish speaking kindergarten children were better able to segment singleton consonant codas compared to their monolingual English-speaking peers. They postulated that this advantage resulted from differences in Spanish and English phonology. English permits many more coda consonants than Spanish, and bilingual children who are faced with acquiring both phonological systems may be more attuned to this difference than monolingual children. Widjaja and Winskel (2004) also found that there is a marked difference in the order of acquisition of phonological awareness skills between young speakers of English and Indonesian due to language-specific phonemic structures. Thus, the phonotactic structure of the language that the child is learning affects PA, which in turn affects early literacy.
Elena Zaretsky, Jelena Kuvac Kraljevic, Cynthia Core and Mirjana Lencek
One additional language-specific factor in predicting early literacy that is attracting the attention of researchers is the influence of orthography on the development of PA and future reading skills. Transparent orthographies are those in which there is a nearly one-to-one relationship between letter and sound, while deep orthographies have many-to-one, one-to-many, or even many-to-many phoneme–grapheme correspondences. Differences between transparent and deep orthographies may affect the trajectory of acquisition of PA and possibly give children exposed to transparent orthographies an advantage at the earlier stages of reading acquisition (Seymour et al. 2003). Several studies provide evidence that orthographic representations in a language that has one-to-one letter–sound correspondences allow young learners to master components of PA awareness skills with more ease than their counterparts who are exposed to a language with a deep orthography (Widjaja & Winskel 2004; Cheung et al. 2001; Caravolas & Bruck 1993). 1.2 Differences between English and Croatian 1.2.1 Phonological systems The phonological systems of English and Croatian are similar in some ways and different in others. English utilizes 44 phonemes (according to IPA 1999) represented by 26 letters while Croatian has 30 phonemes represented by 30 letters. Although there are 24 consonant phonemes in English vs. 25 in Croatian, English and Croatian share many elements in their consonant inventories. Under the guidelines established by the International Phonetic Association (IPA 1999), ‘same’ sounds are those that have the same acoustic features, ‘similar’ sounds differ with respect to one minor feature (e.g. dental versus alveolar), and ‘different’ sounds are acoustically substantially different (e.g. ‘r’ in English which represents a palatal approximant vs. ‘r’ in Croatian which represents a palatal trill). Under this framework, there are 12 consonant sounds that are the same between the two languages, 8 sounds that are similar, and 7 sounds that are different. (Table 1.) Table 1. Consonant sound inventory in English and Croatian English
English has 5 to 6 vowel letters (depending on whether or not is counted as a vowel letter) that represent a very complex system. The actual duration of an English vowel phoneme may change in stressed versus unstressed position and
in phrase-final versus phrase-internal position, which could be confusing for a new writer (Venezky 1967). Different accounts suggest up to 12 simple vowel and five to eight diphthong sounds (Dewey 1923; Ladefoged 1982, as pointed out by Caravolas & Bruck 1993). In contrast, standard Croatian has 5 monophthongal vowels and one diphthong /ie/, with reports of other diphthongs used in nonstandard dialects of Croatian (Skaric 1991; Jelaska 2004). Three digraphs in Croatian represent single consonant sounds (, , and ). There is an additional digraph (not considered to be a part of the alphabet), and one trigraph which is especially problematic for young spellers (see Jelaska 2004; Jelaska & Gulesic-Machata 2005). In addition, English and Croatian are different in many ways in terms of their intrasyllabic structure and in terms of the allowable combinations of consonant clusters. For example, in English [s] and [r] or [t] and [l] cannot be adjacent in the initial position, but in Croatian these consonant combinations are allowed (srce — ‘heart’, tlo — ‘ground’). Although both languages are phonotactically constrained, the general distribution of phonemes in Croatian is free and can be located in any position in the words. Croatian also permits a greater variety of phonemes in clusters in the onset position compared to the English language. 1.2.2 Orthographic systems Although both languages utilize the Latin alphabet, the Croatian alphabet is considered to be a variant, called ‘Gaj’s Latin alphabet’ (Mogus 1996). English and Croatian orthographies have some other key differences as well. Consistency in sound–letter associations and primarily one-to-one phoneme–grapheme correspondence, i.e. “the phonological forms of words are transparently represented in the orthography” (Gontijo, Gontijo & Shillcock 2003: 136), makes Croatian a transparent orthography. There are few exceptions to the one-to-one relationship. Those that do exist consist of three digraphs, each of which represents a single phoneme. English spelling, on the other hand, does not have a one-to-one sound– letter correspondence but rather many-to-one or one-to-many ways of mapping phonemes onto graphemes (Gontijo et al. 2003). Grapheme–phoneme correspondences vary based on the positions the letters take within the words and the words’ provenances and histories. As much as 20% of all word types in English violate the rules of regularization (Hanna & Hanna 1959). English orthography is, therefore, described as deep or opaque. English orthography uses many digraphs to represent single vowel phonemes, e.g. represents /i/, and represents /o/. There are several consonant digraphs that consistently represent English phonemes such as for /∫/ and for /t∫/. On the other hand,
represents two phonemes, ‘theta’ (/θ/) and ‘eth’ (/ð/). The sound–letter correspondence for vowels is also highly variable. For example, there is no single orthographic representation of the
Elena Zaretsky, Jelena Kuvac Kraljevic, Cynthia Core and Mirjana Lencek
vowel ‘schwa’; any of the five orthographic vowels and several vowel digraphs can represent schwa. The described differences between English and Croatian orthography simplify the decoding process in Croatian compared to the same process in languages with a non-transparent orthography, despite the fact that digraphs representing one sound in Croatian (, and ) have to be learned and require teaching. The decoding process in English, on the other hand, requires some direct teaching due to its orthographic representations, effectively influencing the rate of reading development (Seymour et al. 2003). 1.3 Present study As seen from the reviewed literature, the investigation of cross-linguistic influences on the development of literacy requires special attention. Despite the numerous studies that allude to observed differences in the comparative ease of performing phonological awareness tasks and advantages in their decoding skills by children exposed to transparent orthographies, there is still a lack of studies that directly assess other influential factors in reading acquisition discussed above, such as lexical ability and aspects of verbal working memory, including both phonological memory and working memory capacity. The potential differences that may be present in children’s psycholinguistic profiles at the onset of formal reading instruction as a factor of orthography would be a convincing argument for studying languagerelated differences in PA and other literacy related skills. Based on the need for studies that address potential differences in underlying pre-requisite skills and the interaction of these skills which influence reading acquisition in children who are exposed to different orthographies, our research questions were as follows: 1. Is there a difference between underlying linguistic and cognitive skills that are considered a prerequisite for reading acquisition in children exposed to languages with different phonological and orthographic structures? Specifically we were concerned with vocabulary knowledge, verbal working memory and phonological awareness. We expected that children in both groups would show comparable lexical skills but may differ in regards to VWM and PA. 2. Do children exposed to a language with a transparent orthography and different phonological structures show an advantage in overall PA skills? Based on the previous research we expected to find Croatian children to be more advanced concerning PA. 3. Is the predictive nature of vocabulary, PA and VWM on the early literacy skills the same for children exposed to languages with different phonological structure and orthography types, transparent and opaque? Finding differences in
the relationship between the predictive and outcome variables will strengthen the claim that the phonological and orthographic structure of the ambient language plays a role in reading development. 4. Do children exposed to a transparent orthography show advantages in early reading and spelling tasks? We expected to see higher scores in decoding and encoding measures among Croatian speakers. 2. Method 2.1 Participants Forty-four children at the beginning of the kindergarten year participated in this study: 21 English-speaking kindergarteners (5;1–6;1; M = 5;5, SD = .32) and 23 Croatian-speaking kindergarteners (5;6–6;8; M = 6;1, SD = .47). The t-test revealed that the age differences between the two groups of participants were significant (t = −4.443, df = 42, p =
