The relations between socioeconomic status (SES) and language skills at the onset of reading acquisition has not received much attention in research. In this study, a standardized battery of oral and written language tests was administered to 127 Arabic-speaking children at the end of first grade. SES-related differences were found in a line of oral language measures (vocabulary, syntax, morphology, and listening comprehension), but not in phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN), nor in any of the reading components (decoding, word reading, reading comprehension and orthographic knowledge). These findings point to a distinction between two groups of language skills with regard to their relations with SES in the first year of reading instruction. The results imply that SES should not be regarded as a mediating factor in the development of PA, RAN and reading in first grade among novice readers of Arabic.

To capture the complexity of foreign language literacy acquisition, we investigated cognitive skills underlying word reading, sentence reading, word vocabulary and sentence vocabulary in three different foreign languages. Students fluent in Dutch simultaneously acquired three foreign languages that differed in orthographic transparency and writing system (Spanish, French, Chinese). Cognitive skills at the start of literacy acquisition (Grade 7) were longitudinally related to literacy attainment in each of the foreign languages after two years of instruction (end of Grade 8). Structural equation regression models indicated that three areas (word and sentence vocabulary, and sentence reading) related most strongly to verbal and nonverbal intelligence, indicating the involvement of academic skills. For word reading the influence of cognitive skills appeared language specific. Across languages, native reading skills seemed to be employed to varying degrees of efficiency to decipher foreign words, more so for foreign languages with a smaller orthographic distance from the native language.

The role of morphology in word recognition during reading acquisition in transparent orthographies is a subject that has received little attention. The goal of this study is to examine the variables affecting the fluency and accuracy for morphologically complex word reading across grade levels in Spanish. We conducted two word-naming experiments in which morphological complexity and word frequency were factorially manipulated. Experiment 1 was a cross-sectional study with 2nd-, 4th- and 6th-grade children as participants. In Experiment 2, a longitudinal study, a sample of the children in 2nd and 4th grades in Experiment 1 were retested with the same stimuli 2 years later in order to explore the evolution of morphology and frequency effects. Analyses of reading latencies and accuracy in both experiments showed that grade and frequency affected both reading fluency and accuracy. Morphology only affected fluency, irrespective of grade. In accordance with previous literature in Italian, we conclude that when learning to read in transparent orthographies, morphology mostly benefits reading fluency since accurate pronunciation can be achieved through grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules.

This research was designed to establish the importance of phonological awareness and print awareness in learning to read Spanish. A sample of 136 preliterate Spanish children (70 boys and 66 girls) whose ages ranged from 5.1 to 6.6 years (average age 5.6 years) participated in the study. The results, using path analysis, from this longitudinal study support the existence of a relationship between phonological awareness and reading. Moreover, the findings of this study reveal the importance of syllabic awareness, at least in Spanish, in the development of other levels of phonological awareness and in its early relation with reading. The results also confirm the existence of a relationship between print awareness and reading comprehension.