UNRESOLVED MYSTERIES - HOW DO METALINGUISTIC AND NARRATIVE SKILLS CONNECT WITH EARLY READING

In both special education and speech-language pathology literature, it is commonly assumed that children's reading difficulties have their r oots in early oral language disabilities. Data to support this assumpt ion are most evident in studies that demonstrate a reciprocal relation ship between the metalinguistic skill of phonemic awareness and word d ecoding. The purpose of this review was to examine the contribution of other oral language abilities to early reading performance. Specifica lly, we examined studies that assessed metasemantics, metasyntax/metam orphology, and narrative discourse in relation to word decoding or rea ding comprehension with children in kindergarten through third grade. We found that although phonemic awareness retained its prominence as a predictor of early reading skills, metasyntactic ability often accoun ted for significant variance. There was also an indication that narrat ive discourse skill is related to reading performance. We hypothesize that narrative discourse and other metalinguistic skills may gain impo rtance developmentally once children acquire some initial skill in dec oding. An analysis of definitional, measurement, and theoretical issue s provides direction for further study.