Word reading, letter knowledge and memory skills in Danish children (6-year-olds)

In Denmark there is an ongoing trend towards a more ambitious literacy instruction in the first school year (Kindergarten). This calls for a clarification of present-day reading levels, and for a profile of the students who become readers while attending the semi-formal literacy program. The present study examined the extent to which a group of 209 Danish students had acquired word reading skills after 7 months of schooling, and whether reading levels in this group could be predicted from new measures of extended letter-sound knowledge and measures of memory skills. Results showed that 28% had acquired basic word reading skills. Further, measures of extended letter-sound knowledge explained significant variance above the measure of the fluency with which letters were named. Moreover, short term memory capacity was a stronger predictor of word reading compared to working memory and explained modest variance in reading after controlling for letter knowledge.