Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies

Several previous studies have suggested that basic decoding skills may develop less effectively in English than in some other European orthographies. The origins of this effect in the early (foundation) phase of reading acquisition are investigated through assessments of letter knowledge, familiar w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe British journal of psychology Vol. 94; no. 2; pp. 143 - 174
Main Authors Seymour, Philip H. K., Aro, Mikko, Erskine, Jane M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.05.2003
British Psychological Society
John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Subjects
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Decoding
Development
Developmental psychology
Educational Status
English language
Europe
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Indo-European languages
Language
Language Development
Linguistics
Literacy
Male
Orthography
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading
Reading readiness
Reading skills
Sociology
Europe
Human
Cross linguistic study
Reading
Language
Language development
Cognition
Orthography
Child
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Summary:Several previous studies have suggested that basic decoding skills may develop less effectively in English than in some other European orthographies. The origins of this effect in the early (foundation) phase of reading acquisition are investigated through assessments of letter knowledge, familiar word reading, and simple nonword reading in English and 12 other orthographies. The results confirm that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. There are some exceptions, notably in French, Portuguese, Danish, and, particularly, in English. The effects appear not to be attributable to differences in age of starting or letter knowledge. It is argued that fundamental linguistic differences in syllabic complexity and orthographic depth are responsible. Syllabic complexity selectively affects decoding, whereas orthographic depth affects both word reading and nonword reading. The rate of development in English is more than twice as slow as in the shallow orthographies. It is hypothesized that the deeper orthographies induce the implementation of a dual (logographic + alphabetic) foundation which takes more than twice as long to establish as the single foundation required for the learning of a shallow orthography.
Bibliography:istex:EB6517F55353355E86BBA9771224A157EBE290B1
ark:/67375/WNG-NJLKBMS8-Q
ArticleID:BJOP151
National representatives of the EC COST Action A8, especially: H. Wimmer, University of Salzburg, Austria; J. Leybaert, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; C. Elbro, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; H. Lyytinen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; J.‐E. Gombert, University of Brittany, and M. T. le Normand, Hô s pital de la Salpêtriére, France; W. Schneider, University of Würzburg, Germany; C. Porpodas, University of Patras, Greece; H. Ragnarsdottir, University of Rekjavik, Iceland; P. Tressoldi and C. Vio, University of Padova, Italy; A. de Groot, University of Amsterdam, and R. Licht, Free University, Netherlands; F.‐E. Tùnnessen, Stavanger University College, Norway; S. L. Castro, University of Porto, and L. Cary, University of Lisbon, Portugal; S. Defior, and F. Martos, University of Granada, Spain; and Å. Olofsson, University of Umeaå, Sweden.
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ISSN:0007-1269
2044-8295
DOI:10.1348/000712603321661859