Prosody awareness (the rhythmic patterning of speech) accounts for unique variance in reading development. However, studies have thus far focused on early-readers and utilised literacy measures which fail to distinguish between monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. The current study investigated the factors that are specifically associated with multisyllabic word reading in a sample of fifty children aged between 7-and 8-years. Prosodic awareness was the strongest predictor of multisyllabic word reading accuracy, after controlling for phoneme awareness, morphological awareness, vocabulary, and short-term memory. Children also made surprisingly few phonemic errors while, in contrast, errors of stress assignment were commonplace. Prosodic awareness was also the strongest predictor of stress placement errors, although this finding was not significant. Prosodic skills may play an increasingly important role in literacy performance as children encounter more complex reading materials. Once phoneme-level skills are mastered, prosodic awareness is arguably the strongest predictor of single word reading.

Background: The healthcare industry is currently experiencing a severe shortage of nurses and other allied healthcare professionals. To compound this crisis, the current workforce does not mirror the growing linguistic and cultural diversity of the population needing health care. This article describes a community partnership approach to creating educational and career opportunities in nursing and other health sciences for young, multicultural, bilingual teenagers. Method: Several community organizations joined together to design and implement an 8week summer program entitled "Start Out," which served to integrate life planning, mentorship, nursing assistant training, and college application assistance while providing summer salary stipends and work scholarship opportunities. Twenty-seven students participated in the program. Results: Twenty-four bilingual, economically disadvantaged teenagers 16 to 19 years old, from the greater Seattle metropolitan area, completed the first session of this innovative program and passed the certified nursing assistant examination. Conclusion: Culturally focused assistance programs may provide an avenue to meet the current nursing shortage and provide healthcare workers who can be sensitive to the cultural and linguistic needs of the growing ethnic population.