Barns tidiga läsutveckling En studie av tidiga språkliga och kognitiva förmågor och senare läsutveckling

Sammanfattning: The overall aim of this study is to analyze and describe the reading of a group of pupils in a preschool class and grade 1 and to search for links between preschool language and cognitive skills and early literacy development.A total of 49 pupils participated in the study and their literacy development was analyzed over two consecutive years in preschool class and grade 1, partly by teacher evaluations and partly by reading tests. In the autumn term of the preschool class the pupils’ phono­logical awareness, letter knowledge, impressive and expressive voca­bulary, short-term memory and syntactic skills were tested. The main aim was to examine how these skills predicted reading in preschool class and grade 1.Single correlation analyses revealed that phonological awareness, letter knowledge, short-term memory and syntactic skills were sig­nificantly related to literacy development, whereas these patterns of prediction were not found regarding verbal skills.When analyzing the unique contribution of every single predictor to explain variations in reading ability, phonological awareness gives a specific additional contribution to reading abili­ty in preschool class, whereas letter knowledge gives an addi­tion­al contribution both in preschool class and grade 1. These patterns of prediction were not found regarding more general verbal skills or memory. When prior reading ability is also taken into consideration, the prediction of the analyzed preschool skills declines and it is mainly the prior reading ability that is significantly related to literacy deve­lopment.This study indicates the importance of success in early literacy development. To make this possible for all students the teachers must be able to identify the developmental stage to build upon. An impor­tant conclusion is that reading education must rely on a solid theoreti­cal basis and the use of a diagnostic approach.