We examined whether akshara knowledge, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and RAN predict variability in word and nonword reading skills in Grade 1 to 4 children (N = 200) learning to read Sinhala. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that akshara knowledge had the strongest unique association with both word and nonword reading accuracy across grades.Akshara knowledge and RAN predicted word and nonword reading fluency. The impact of phonological memory and syllable awareness on reading was mostly mediated by akshara knowledge, and phoneme awareness was not uniquely associated with word reading skills in any grade. These results suggest that there are multiple cognitive correlates of accurate and fluent word reading in Sinhala, and akshara knowledge is the most important predictor of learning to read words. The findings have implications for the literacy acquisition, development, and instruction in alphasyllabaries.

We examined whether global instruction of complex akshara and explicit phoneme-level instruction of akshara impact the development of phoneme awareness and its association with akshara knowledge and word reading accuracy. The participants were 100 Sinhala-speaking children from Grades 4 and 5 in Sri Lanka. Phoneme awareness showed stronger growth and a significant relationship with word reading accuracy and akshara knowledge only after children received explicit phoneme-level instruction in akshara construction. Both word reading accuracy and akshara knowledge predicted phoneme awareness, but the opposite was not true. The results suggest that phoneme awareness in Sinhala is sensitive to the method of reading instruction, and, contrary to the studies in alphabetic languages, it does not have a bidirectional relationship with reading. Phoneme-level instruction 3 Instruction matters to the development of phoneme awareness and its relationship to akshara knowledge and word reading: Evidence from Sinhala. A number of longitudinal and intervention studies have shown that phonological skills provide a critical foundation for learning to read in alphabetic orthographies and that the relationship between phonological skills and reading is bidirectional (e.g., Caravolas, Lervåg,

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