Previous studies have shown that phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and verbal memory span are reliable correlates of learning to read in English. However, the extent to which these different predictors have the same relative importance in different languages remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results from a 10-month longitudinal study that began just before or soon after the start of formal literacy instruction in four languages (English, Spanish, Slovak, and Czech). Longitudinal path analyses showed that phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and RAN (but not verbal memory span) measured at the onset of literacy instruction were reliable predictors, with similar relative importance, of later reading and spelling skills across the four languages. These data support the suggestion that in all alphabetic orthographies, phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and RAN may tap cognitive processes that are important for learning to read.

All alphabetic orthographies use letters in printed words to represent the phonemes in spoken words, but they differ in the consistency of the relationship between letters and phonemes. English appears to be the least consistent alphabetic orthography phonologically, and, consequently, children learn to read more slowly in English than in languages with more consistent orthographies. In this article, we report the first longitudinal evidence that the growth of reading skills is slower and follows a different trajectory in English than in two much more consistent orthographies (Spanish and Czech). Nevertheless, phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and rapid automatized naming measured at the onset of literacy instruction did not differ in importance as predictors of variations in reading development among the three languages. These findings suggest that although children may learn to read more rapidly in more consistent than in less consistent orthographies, there may nevertheless be universal cognitive prerequisites for learning to read in all alphabetic orthographies.

The present study investigated the moderating role of orthographic consistency on the development of reading comprehension in four language groups (English, n=179; Spanish, n=188; Czech, n= 135; Slovak, n=194) from kindergarten to grade 2. In all languages, early variations in phoneme awareness/letter knowledge, RAN, and emerging decoding skills, but not oral language, predicted variations in decoding skills at the end of grade 1; these in turn predicted reading comprehension in grade 2. For the three consistent orthographies (Spanish, Slovak and Czech), kindergarten language skills were another significant predictor of grade 2 reading comprehension. This effect was absent in the English sample where variations in decoding skills were a more powerful predictor. These results provide the first longitudinal evidence for effects of orthographic consistency on the development of reading comprehension and provide support for the simple view of reading.

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