Preschool language and metalinguistic skills are links to reading success

ABSTRACT This article reports the longitudinal follow-up of 41 preschool children as they moved into reading. When the children were 3 years old, they participated in a detailed assessment of their language, print, and metalinguistic skills. At the end of first grade, the children received two tests of phonological awareness and three reading measures: sound–symbol knowledge, word identification, and passage comprehension. Overall language development at age 3 just as strongly, or even more strongly, correlated with reading scores at age 7 as it had with metalinguistic and print awareness scores at age 3. In addition, the overall metalinguistic skills and print awareness of 3 year olds made significant contributions to reading achievement beyond what was provided by tacit language development. Specific metalinguistic domains were also good predictors of reading, with phonological and structural awareness offering more than word awareness.