Reading Developmental Trends in Early Years: The Influence of Word Identification Skills and Target Langauge Oral Ability to Comprehension

Abstract

Language, reading, and reading-related tasks were administered to 148 children from lower primary (Standard 1, 2, and 3) in Kenyan schools. The aim was to investigate the literacy developmental trends across the years and establish which of the two variables, word identification skills or target language oral proficiency influenced reading comprehension performance. The results indicated that word identification skills independently influenced reading comprehension performance in both standard 2 and standard 3 classes, but target language oral skills did not. Further, the analysis of invented spelling task performance revealed evidence of transfer of alphabetic coding skills of first language to English orthography. The spelling errors reflected letter-sound patterns not found in English orthography. Analysis of the miscues in the spelling task revealed that children rely on first language phonological processes to spell target language unfamiliar words as long the languages have a common alphabetic system.