PRESCHOOL LANGUAGE AND METALINGUISTIC SKILLS ARE LINKS TO READING SUCCESS

This article reports the longitudinal follow-up of 41 preschool childr en as they moved into reading. When the children were 3 years old, the y participated in a detailed assessment of their language, print, and metalinguistic skills. At the end of first grade, the children receive d two tests of phonological awareness and three reading measures: soun d-symbol knowledge, word identification, and passage comprehension. Ov erall language development at age 3 just as strongly, or even more str ongly, correlated with reading scores at age 7 as it had with metaling uistic and print awareness scores at age 3. In addition, the overall m etalinguistic skills and print awareness of 3 year olds made significa nt contributions to reading achievement beyond what was provided by ta cit language development. Specific metalinguistic domains were also go od predictors of reading, with phonological and structural awareness o ffering more than word awareness.