The present contribution aims at presenting an assessment tool (i.e., the TALK-assessment) built to evaluate the language development and school readiness of Italian preschoolers before they enter primary school, and its predictive validity for the children's reading and writing skills at the end of the first year of primary school. The early…

Although several measures are available for monitoring kindergarten reading progress, little research has directly compared them to determine which are superior in predicting year-end reading skills relative to other measures, and how validity may change across the school year as reading skills develop. A sample of 426 kindergarten students who…

Recoverability refers to the ease of recovering the underlying form--stored mental representations--given a surface form--actual, variable output signals s (e.g., [Daet^, Daet[superscript h] ] ? /Daet/ "that"). Recovery can be achieved from phonetic cues explicitly present in the acoustic signal or through prediction from the context.…

A few studies have indicated that dynamic measures of phonological awareness may contribute uniquely to the prediction of early reading development. However, standard control measures have been few and limited by floor effects, thus limiting their predictive value. The purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive value of a dynamic…

Background: The Performance Indicators in Primary Schools On Entry Baseline assessment for pupils starting school includes an item which aims to assess how well a pupil writes his or her own name. There is some debate regarding the utility of this measure, on the grounds that name length may constitute bias. Purpose, method and design: The…

This study examined whether web-based phonological awareness (PA) assessment in early childhood, specifically the year preceding formal schooling, could help educators reliably predict children's risk for reading difficulties in the first year of school. Ninety Australian children participated in several web-based PA tasks with a high priority…

Background: It is well established that phonological awareness, print knowledge and rapid naming predict later reading difficulties. However, additional auditory, visual and motor difficulties have also been observed in dyslexic children. It is examined to what extent these difficulties can be used to predict later literacy difficulties. Method:…

This study explores the constructs that underpin three different measures of vocabulary knowledge and investigates the degree to which these three measures correlate with, and are able to predict, measures of second language (L2) listening and reading. Word frequency structured vocabulary tests tapping "receptive/orthographic (RecOrth)…

This study examined the predictive validity of formative assessments embedded in a Tier 2 intervention curriculum for kindergarten students identified as at risk for reading difficulty. We examined when (i.e., months during the school year) measures could predict reading outcomes gathered at the end of kindergarten and whether the predictive…

This research aimed to explore the relation between syntactic awareness and writing composition in 129 Hong Kong Chinese children. These children were from a ten-year longitudinal project. At each year, a number of measures were administered. The 129 children's data of nonverbal reasoning at age 4, phonological awareness, morphological awareness,…

There is empirical evidence to suggest that oral language and vocabulary on entering kindergarten are the best predictors of later reading success. Identifying skills that are predictive of later achievement using psychometrically sound measurement methods is a necessary component of early intervention efforts. Currently, there are limited methods…

Cognitive and linguistic components related to spelling and writing in English as a second language (ESL) and native-English speaking (EL1) third graders were examined. ESL and EL1 children performed similarly on rapid naming, phonological awareness (PA), verbal short-term and working memory, reading fluency, single-word spelling, text spelling,…

The simple view of reading proposes that reading comprehension is the product of word reading and language comprehension. In this study, we used the simple view framework to examine the early prediction of reading comprehension abilities. Using multiple measures for all constructs, we assessed word reading precursors (i.e., letter knowledge,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of a dynamic assessment (DA) of decoding in predicting responsiveness to Tier 2 small-group tutoring in a response-to-intervention model. First grade students (n = 134) who did not show adequate progress in Tier 1 based on 6 weeks of progress monitoring received Tier 2 small-group tutoring in…

Assessment is at the center of a decision-making model within a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework. Assessments that can be used for universal screening and progress monitoring in early childhood RTI models are needed that are both psychometrically sound and appropriate to meet developmental needs of young children. The Preschool Early…