Predictive skills of success in the initial learning of reading and its relationships vith teaching methods

Abstract

The study of the factors that influence the acquisition of reading facilitates the early detection of reading learning difficulties. Phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, naming speed has been highlighted as predictive skills. All of them are acquired throughout school but they do not have the same degree of involvement in the different phases of reading learning. This seems to depend, in part, on the teaching method of the reading used. The objectives of this study were to identify and analyze the skills involved in the beginning of reading and writing in Early Childhood Education that predict the level of reading comprehension in Primary Education and know the differential weight that phonological awareness, naming speed and other skills involved in the reading process have during the first years of instruction depending on the method used. Therefore, a longitudinal study was carried out in which 130 students enrolled in educational centres located in the provinces of Castellón and Valencia. 52% of them were studying according to the syntheticphonological method and 48% were following the analytic method. Instruments applied was RAN (Rapid Automatized Naming Test) and BIL (Initial Reading Program), and ACL (Reading Comprehension Test). The structural equation model has shown that in both methods the naming speed at 4 years has a significant effect on the variables related to the beginning of the reading at 5 years and these variables influence the reading comprehension of these children at 6 years. This indicates that naming speed constitutes the foundation of the phonological coding process on which the reader process is based.