This study modeled vocabulary trajectories in 91 English language learners (ELLs) with Punjabi, Tamil, or Portuguese home languages, and 50 English monolinguals (EL1) from Grades 1 to 6. The concurrent and longitudinal relationships between phonological awareness and phonological short-term memory and vocabulary were examined. ELLs underperformed…

The generality of the orthographic consistency effect in speech recognition tasks previously reported for Portuguese beginning readers was assessed in French-speaking children, as the French orthographic code presents a higher degree of inconsistency than the Portuguese one. Although the findings obtained with the French second graders replicated…

Two studies examined children's use of letter-name spelling strategies when target phoneme sequences match letter names with different degrees of precision. We examined Portuguese-speaking preschoolers' use of "h" (which is named /a'ga/ but which never represents those sounds) when spelling words beginning with /ga/ or variants of /ga/. We also…

To examine the factors that affect the learning of letter names, an important foundation for literacy, we asked 318 US and 369 Brazilian preschoolers to identify each uppercase letter. Similarity of letter shape was the major determinant of confusion errors in both countries, and children were especially likely to interchange letters that were…

Examines the role of the relative transparency of Portuguese and Spanish orthographies in schoolchildren's word recognition procedures. Both Portuguese and Spanish may be considered as transparent orthographies. Results are discussed in terms of the role played by the differing orthographic transparency of Spanish and Portuguese in young readers'…

Results of two experiments investigating phonological skills of illiterate, unschooled adults and formerly illiterate, unschooled adults from shantytowns in Portugal suggest that learning to read, though not strictly necessary, plays a decisive role in the development of the ability of many individuals to focus on phonological length of…