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Metalinguistic ability and early reading achievement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Judith A. Bowey*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Rinu K. Patel
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
*
Dr. Judith A. Bowey, Department of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia 4067, Australia

Abstract

This study explored the conceptual status of metalinguistic ability by determining whether or not metalinguistic ability can account for variation in early reading achievement independently of more general language abilities. First-grade children were given a test battery assessing phonemic awareness, syntactic awareness, receptive vocabulary, syntactic proficiency, word decoding ability, and reading comprehension ability. Strong zero-order correlations were observed among all experimental measures. However, multiple regression analyses revealed that metalinguistic ability did not contribute to the prediction of early reading achievement when general language ability effects were statistically controlled.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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