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Poster P1

Thursday stream 4-6 Session 11.35 - 12.50 Length 25 minutes

Pre-cursors of reading and spelling in the regular Greek orthography: Evidence from kindergarten children

Dimitris Nikolopoulos and Costas Porpodas

Department of Education, UNIVERSITY OF PATRAS, Patras, Greece dnikolop@patreas.upatras.gr

Abstract

This paper will review the research findings of a study examining the development of various cognitive & linguistic skills in kindergarten and their predictive relationship to reading and spelling one year and two years later on. A comprehensive test-battery was administered to 42 6 years-old Greek-speaking monolingual children, focusing on four areas of metacognitive skills: print awareness, syntactic awareness, phonological awareness, and phonological processing skills. The participants also completed a battery assessing their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, sight-vocabulary reading skills, basic arithmetic skills and nonverbal reasoning. Some of these skills (e.g. alphabetic reading/spelling skills, phonological awareness skills) were re-assessed early in Grade-1 (3-4 months after the commencement of schooling) to examine the impact of the exposure to a regular orthography on the development of these skills. The development of alphabetic skills and reading ability was assessed several times in grade-1 (middle and end of grade 1) using a variety of reading measures. Most of these skills will be re-assessed in grade-2. The planned statistical analyses will explore the development, contribution and predictive power of each metacognitive skill to the development of early literacy skills in a regular orthography. Theoretical, diagnostic, and educational implications will be discussed.