Predictors of individual differences in the foundation of early literacy young children.

The development of reading skills is underpinned by oral language abilities, with phonological skills appearing to have a causal influence on the development of early word-level literacy skills, and reading comprehension ability depending in addition on broader (semantic and syntactic) language skills. Here, we report a longitudinal study of children at family-risk of dyslexia, children with preschool language difficulties and typically developing controls. Preschool measures of oral language predicted phoneme awareness and grapheme-phoneme knowledge just before school entry which in turn predicted word-level literacy skills shortly after school entry. Reading comprehension at 8½ years was predicted by word-level literacy skills at 5½ years and by language skills at 3½ years. These patterns of predictive relationships were similar in both typically developing children and those at-risk of literacy difficulties. Our findings underline the importance of oral language skills for the development of both word-level literacy and reading comprehension skills.