A Longitudinal Analysis of the

Connection Between Oral Language

and Early Reading
FROMA P. ROTH
DEBORAH L. SPEECE
DAVID H. COOPER
University of Maryland

may exhibit different patterns of linkage to reading across

ABSTRACT To clarify the relationship between oral lan-
guage and early reading development, the authors adminis-
tered to 39 children a broad range of oral language measures
in 3 areas (metalinguistics, structural language, and narrative
discourse); measures of background variables (IQ, socioeco-
nomic status, ethnicity, gender, family literacy); and measures
of reading ability (word recognition, pseudoword reading, pas-
sage comprehension) in kindergarten and in 1st and 2nd
grades. The authors used regression analyses to identify parsi-
monious models that explained variance in early reading. The
main finding of the study was that semantic abilities (i.e., oral
definitions and word retrieval), not phonological awareness,
predicted 2nd-grade reading comprehension. As expected,
phonological awareness skill in kindergarten predicted single-
word reading at 1st and 2nd grades. The finding that semantic
skills predicted passage comprehension suggests that the
importance of different oral language skills to early reading
varies as a function of language domain, reading skill, and
measurement point.
Key words: early reading, oral language, oral language
reading relationship
I n this article, we present findings from the first 3 years of
a longitudinal study designed to clarify the relationship
between oral language and early reading acquisition in nor-
mally developing children. Despite abundant evidence that
skill in phonological awareness is important for learning to
read, the precise nature of the oral languagereading con-
nection remains underspecified. Several factors contribute to
this circumstance. In the past, researchers typically focused
on only one or two aspects of language, rather than consid-
ering the multidimensional nature of the linguistic system
(Ricard & Snow, 1990). In the same vein, Roth, Speece,
Cooper, and De La Paz (1996) showed that performance
comparisons between normal and impaired reading groups
often have been made without independent measures of
reading ability. Thus, it is not known whether the identified
language differences were related to reading performance.
Finally, the likelihood that different oral language skills
259
the early school years has not been explored systematically.
Clarification of the oral languagereading connection will
advance theoretical constructs of the relationship between
these two knowledge domains. Such clarification is critical
because of the important implications for early identifica-
tion and effective instruction of children who may be at risk
for reading problems.
Beyond the role of phonemic awareness, the relationship
between oral language and reading currently can be charac-
terized only in general terms. For example, it is widely
acknowledged that reading is a language-based skill
(Menyuk et al., 1991; Shankweiler, Crane, Brady, & Macar-
ruso, 1992) and that an oral language deficit in the
preschool years constitutes a risk factor for successful liter-
acy acquisition (Aram & Nation, 1980; Catts, 1993; Wilson
& Risucci, 1988). Moreover, oral language has been shown
to have varying degrees of importance to reading, depend-
ing on which variables have been controlled (Roth et al.,
1996; Scarborough, 1990). Catts, Fey, Zhang, and Tomblin
(1999), for example, found that oral language accounted for
13.8% of unique variance in second-grade reading compre-
hension and 19.7% in word recognition. When IQ was con-
trolled, however, the amount of unique variance attributed
to oral language on these two reading measures was
reduced to 3.6% and 1.2%, respectively.
To advance our knowledge, the next step is to identify the
specific contributions of different language skills and back-
ground factors to early reading acquisition. This requires
the adoption of a broad oral language framework and the
use of an analysis strategy that provides a stringent test of
the relative influence of different variables. Several
approaches are available, including factor analysis for data
reduction followed by regression modeling. The strategy
that we selected for the present study was parsimonious
Address correspondence to Froma P. Roth, Department of Hear-
ing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park,
MD 20742. (E-mail: froth@hesp.umd.edu)
260 The Journal of Educational Research

regression modeling, because it permitted an examination
of the roles that different oral language domains may play
in relation to reading development. As depicted in Figure 1,
our approach to parsimony involved two stages. In Stage 1,
we first sought to identify variables within each domain
(i.e., structural language, narrative discourse, metalinguis-
tics, and background factors) that were significant predic-
tors of early reading. These variables were then carried for-
ward to Stage 2, in which all significant domain-specific
predictors were tested together to determine which vari-
ables were most important to early reading. A parsimonious
strategy applied to a broad view of oral language will
inform our understanding of which language skills (in addi-
tion to phonological awareness), or combinations thereof,
are the strongest precursors of reading acquisition and
which may have less direct or no demonstrable influence.
A clear understanding of the oral languagereading con-
nection also necessitates consideration of the relative impor-
tance of the variety of background variables that children
bring to the literacy learning environment. These variables
include a childs level of intellectual functioning (IQ), ethnic-
ity, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and the home/family
literacy environment. Unfortunately, inclusion of background
variables in previous studies has been inconsistent (Roth et
al., 1996). The potential importance of these variables is
underscored by Bryant, MacLean, and Bradleys (1990) lon-
gitudinal study of linguistic and metalinguistic predictors of
early literacy. These variables accounted for significant and
unique variance in reading and spelling scores when IQ and
social background had not been entered into the regressions.
But then with IQ and social background variables (SES and
level of parent education) scores entered, in addition to oral
language variables, the results changed in two significant
ways. First, the linguistic variables were no longer significant
predictors of reading and spelling performance of their 6-
year-old participants; second, the metalinguistic variable
(syntactic awareness) also was no longer a significant predic-
tor. These findings show that the examination of background
factors is essential to an accurate account of how the domains
of oral and written language relate to one another; failure to
control for these variables can lead to spurious results.
Oral Language Framework
In addition to phonological awareness, there is theoreti-
cal or empirical support that three domains of oral language
are related to the development of reading ability: structural
language (semantics, morphology, and syntax), metaseman-
tics, and narrative discourse.
Structural language. Researchers have proposed that
semantic and syntactic knowledge are integrally related to
reading, in that both subsystems serve as primary cues for
constructing meaning from written text (Liberman, 1983;
Vellutino, Scanlon, Small, & Tanzman, 1991). These oral
language skills presumably enable a child to derive mean-
ing from printed words and to use sentence structure infor-

Figure 1. Conceptual Model of Background Factors, Oral Language Domains, and Early Reading

Background Structural Metalinguistics Narrative Discourse

Race Gender SES Language Phonological Familiar Story Production
Family Literacy Semantics Awareness Story Comprehension
Performance IQ Morphology Syntax Metasemantics

STAGE ONE:
Domain-Specific Regression Analyses
to Identify Significant Predictors of Reading

STAGE TWO:
Multi-Domain Regression Analyses to Identify
Parsimonious Models

Early Reading
Print Awareness
Decoding
Comprehension
May/June 2002 [Vol. 95(No. 5)]
mation to predict the grammatical order and form of words.
Children with reading difficulties frequently perform poor-
ly on tasks that measure aspects of structural language, such
as understanding morphological rules, comprehending and
producing complex sentence forms, retrieving words from
their mental lexicons, and understanding and using abstract
vocabulary words (Denckla & Rudel, 1976; German, 1984;
Vogel, 1974, 1977; Wiig, LaPointe, & Semel, 1977). How-
ever, data are uneven regarding the relationship between
reading acquisition and structural language.
Supportive evidence was provided by Torgesen and
Davis (1996) and Magnusson and Naucler (1990). Torgesen
and Davis showed that semantics plays an indirect role in
reading acquisition. They identified individual child charac-
teristics that predicted growth in phonological skills of
kindergarten children following training. Vocabulary
knowledge at pretest predicted growth on both segmenta-
tion and blending skills, but was most strongly related to
segmentation ability. Magnusson and Naucler longitudinal-
ly examined the linguistic and metalinguistic prerequisites
to reading and spelling of 37 pairs of language-impaired
(LI) and normally achieving (NA) children matched for sex,
age, and nonverbal cognitive level prior to, and at the end
of, first grade. In all cases, both the LI and NA good spellers
and readers scored higher on the metaphonological and syn-
tactic comprehension and production tasks compared with
the poor LI and NA spellers and readers, indicating that
both linguistic (syntactic) and metalinguistic abilities may
be important for the acquisition of literacy skills.
In their study of 9-year-old students in three ability
groups (those with reading disabilities, those with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder without an accompanying
reading disability, and typical readers), Lombardino, Ric-
cio, Hynd, and Pinheiro (1997) showed that, as a combined
sample, the expressive language composite score and
phonemic awareness accounted for 59% of unique variance
in word attack, with phonemic awareness alone accounting
for 49% of the word attack variance. Passage comprehen-
sion was best predicted by phonemic awareness, the expres-
sive language composite score, and the receptive language
composite score, contributing 57% of its variance. Expres-
sive language alone accounted for 49% of the unique vari-
ance in reading comprehension. Recently, Catts and col-
leagues (1999) followed a group of good and poor readers
from kindergarten to second grade and found that oral lan-
guage (a composite score derived from receptive and
expressive language measures) accounted for small but sig-
nificant unique variance in predicting second-grade reading
comprehension and word recognition controlling for IQ.
The literature also contains counter- or equivocal evi-
dence for the relationship between structural language vari-
ables and reading with both normally developing and dis-
abled samples. Mann (1984) reported that a measure of
syntactic comprehension administered in kindergarten mar-
ginally differentiated good and poor readers in first grade
but did not distinguish poor from average readers. Both
261
Shankweiler et al. (1995) and Gottardo, Stanovich, and
Siegel (1996) reported that syntactic performance was not
connected to reading in middle elementary school-aged
children. Shankweiler et al. (1995) found that morphologi-
cal, rather than syntactic, knowledge served to differentiate
good and poor readers between 7 and 9 years of age. Simi-
larly, Gottardo et al. found that syntactic processing did not
predict word recognition, pseudoword reading, and reading
comprehension in third-grade children once working mem-
ory and phonological sensitivity were controlled.
Wagner, Torgesen, Laughon, Simmons, and Rashotte
(1993) and Wagner and colleagues (1997) followed a group
of normally developing children between kindergarten and
fourth grade and found that expressive vocabulary (Stan-
ford-Binet Vocabulary subtest) did not add any unique vari-
ance to word-level reading beyond the contribution of
phonological awareness. Vellutino and his colleagues (Vel-
lutino & Scanlon, 1987; Vellutino et al., 1991) examined the
contribution of semantic (WISC-R Vocabulary and Similar-
ities subtests) and syntactic variables (Wug Test and gram-
matical judgment task) in predicting reading comprehen-
sion in younger (second and third grades) and older (sixth
and seventh grades) good and poor readers. Of the language
areas measured, the vocabulary tasks were the best predic-
tors of reading comprehension; the grammatical tasks
accounted for no unique variance.
Vellutino and colleagues (1991) reported mixed results
for group differences on the semantic and syntactic mea-
sures at each grade level. Neither vocabulary nor grammat-
ical measures distinguished the second- and third-grade
good and poor readers, but both language areas differentiat-
ed groups at sixth and seventh grades. Recently, Vellutino et
al. (1996) reported no group differences on semantic mea-
sures in kindergarten and first-grade normal and poor read-
ers, whereas group differences were found on some of the
syntactic measures. These findings were interpreted as con-
firming that phonologically based skills are most important
in the early stage of reading but that syntactic and semantic
abilities may be influential when the reading task becomes
more a meaning-based than a decoding activity.
In summary, the relationship between structural language
knowledge and reading acquisition remains equivocal
because the data supporting this connection are mixed.
Metasemantics. Given the strong positive correlation
between phonological awareness and reading, other met-
alinguistic skills such as metasemantic awareness are prob-
ably also related to reading. Metasemantics is the ability to
manipulate the meanings of words, phrases, and sentences
and includes the ability to understand and generate nonlit-
eral language forms such as idioms (e.g., He hit the ceiling);
metaphors (e.g., Butterflies are rainbows); similes (e.g., The
clouds are like ice cream); and proverbs (e.g., Dont count
your chickens before theyre hatched). Metasemantics is a
likely candidate for analysis of successful reading acquisi-
tion for several reasons. First, basic vocabulary knowledge
has been shown to be related to reading (Torgesen & Davis,
262
1996; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Vellutino et al., 1991),
and children with language and reading disabilities demon-
strate reduced receptive and expressive vocabulary funds
(Leonard, 1989).
Second, metasemantics is a higher order semantic skill
that is based on the organization of word knowledge into
semantic networks. Thus, it is not surprising that children
with language and learning disorders across the elementary
school years demonstrate particular difficulty with tasks
that require metasemantic processing (Lutzer, 1988; Nip-
pold & Fey, 1993; Seidenberg & Bernstein, 1986). The dif-
ficulties that these children exhibit on metasemantic tasks
may be an extension of their reduced vocabularies. Gibbs
(1991), for example, showed that knowledge of literal word
meaning helped facilitate childrens interpretation of figura-
tive meaning. Finally, Torgesen (1995) showed that vocab-
ulary knowledge plays a larger role than phonological
awareness in childrens reading performance as they ad-
vance through the primary grades. Therefore, a childs level
of metasemantic proficiency may be a sensitive predictor of
developing reading skill; however, data directly addressing
this hypothesis have yet to be reported in the literature.
Narrative discourse. There is a widely held belief that
narrative discourse serves as a major transition between oral
language and literacy (Bashir & Scavuzzo, 1992; Westby,
1984, 1991). Developmentally, children are thought to
progress from conversational discourse, an interactive use
of language, to narrative discourse, a literate language form.
Moreover, oral narration and written text share many com-
mon properties. Both are monologue forms of language.
Also, like written text, the syntactic structure of narratives
is both more concise and complex and involves the use of
unfamiliar and abstract vocabulary. Finally, both narration
and text are considered decontextualized language forms
because they are generated after, or independently of, an
experience and are therefore distanced from reality
(Dickinson & Snow, 1987; Westby, 1991).
Children purportedly bring a basic knowledge of narra-
tive structure to the reading acquisition task and apply this
knowledge in their efforts to learn how to decipher written
text. Thus, we reasoned that deficits in oral narration may
have a substantial impact on childrens reading achievement
when narrative structure has not been sufficiently developed
or cannot be effectively accessed.
The potential role of narrative discourse skill in reading
acquisition is supported by studies demonstrating that chil-
dren with language and reading disabilities perform signifi-
cantly more poorly on tasks that measure several different
narrative processes, including story memory (Gillam & John-
ston, 1992; Graybeal, 1981), story comprehension (Merritt &
Liles, 1987; Oakhill, 1984), and story production (Roth &
Spekman, 1986; Roth, Spekman, & Fye, 1995). Researchers
also have demonstrated that skill in narrative discourse may
be a predictor of reading achievement and later academic
success (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987; Feagans & Appel-
baum, 1986; Paul & Smith, 1993; Stephens, 1988).
The Journal of Educational Research
Despite prevailing sentiment, few researchers have con-
ducted studies that directly test the connection between nar-
rative skill and reading. Most previous investigations are
cross-sectional and are characterized by a group-difference
design, in which children with and without disabilities are
compared on some dimension of oral language without an
independent measure of reading. As a result, the connection
between narration and reading has been inferred, not
demonstrated. The exception is the work of Feagans and
Appelbaum (1986) and Feagans and Short (1984), which
provides direct evidence that oral narration abilities con-
tribute to reading achievement and offers convincing impe-
tus for further pursuing the strength of the connection.
Developmental Patterns of Oral Language and Reading
Oral language and reading are developmental processes
that undergo both quantitative and qualitative changes over
time. In their attempts to specify the relationship between
oral language and reading, researchers must acknowledge
both the dynamic nature of the language acquisition process
and the breadth of linguistic skills that children acquire.
This knowledge leads us to suspect that the link between
oral language skills and reading is not uniform over time but
changes during the developmental period of early reading.
Although phonological awareness plays the crucial role in
word decoding, other higher order oral language skills may
become more influential as reading acquisition proceeds.
The results of Vellutino and Scanlon (1987); Vellutino et al.
(1991); and Vellutino et al. (1996) provide support for a
developmental progression and underscore the importance
of developmental studies. Snyder and Downeys (1991)
work also is consistent with a developmental proposal.
Those authors found that narrative discourse accounted for
unique variance in reading in an older group of participants
(1114 years of age), and, to a lesser extent, in a younger
group (811 years of age). A similar developmental pattern
is anticipated in the area of metasemantics. Metasemantic
abilities are relatively late-developing oral language forms,
emerging throughout the elementary school years. As
increased facility is gained with these forms, children will
likely access this knowledge to help in the reading compre-
hension process, and vice versa.
The Present Study
To elucidate the oral languagereading connection, we
followed a group of normally developing kindergarten chil-
dren for 3 years, obtaining measures of structural language,
metalinguistics, narrative discourse, and background vari-
ables in kindergarten. We collected reading measures in
kindergarten and in first and second grades. The purpose of
this study was twofold: (a) to determine the predictive rela-
tionships of a broad spectrum of oral language skills mea-
sured in kindergarten with the reading ability of children in
first and second grades, taking into consideration a variety
May/June 2002 [Vol. 95(No. 5)] 263

of background factors and (b) to determine whether differ- Materials and Procedures
ent aspects of oral language are important to reading skill at
different points in development. The materials consisted of three types of measures: oral
language, background, and reading variables. The measures
Method included both norm-referenced and experimental tasks
known to be reliable and valid (see Table 2). The kinder-
Participants garten battery is presented in the Oral language section that
follows.
The children who participated in this study attended a Oral language. We measured three domains of oral lan-
public elementary school in the mid-Atlantic states. The guage. Structural language was assessed with measures of
initial sample for the kindergarten analysis consisted of 88 semantics and syntax. The semantic measures were the
children from a population of 109. Reasons for attrition Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R; Dunn
included parents and childrens refusal to participate and & Dunn, 1981)receptive vocabulary; Oral Vocabulary
limited English proficiency. According to school records, subtest of the Test of Language Development-Primary:2
the primary language of 22 (25%) of the children was a (TOLD-P:2; Newcomer & Hammill, 1988)word defini-
language other than English. The sample selected for this tions; and the Boston Naming Test (Boston; Goodglass &
study comprised the 66 children who were native English Kaplan, 1983)word retrieval. The syntactic and morpho-
speakers. logic measures were the Test of Auditory Comprehension of
As shown in Table 1, the study sample was diverse eco- Language-Revised (TACL-R; Carrow-Woolfolk, 1985)
nomically (32% received free/reduced-price lunches) and receptive morphology and syntax; and the Formulated Sen-
racially (45% African American, 1% American Indian, 48% tences subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fun-
White, and 5% Asian American). The mean age of the chil- damentals-Revised (CELF-R; Semel, Wiig, & Secord,
dren at the time of testing was 5 years, 6 months (range: 5 1987)expressive morphology and syntax.
years, 2 months to 6 years, 3 months). There were 38 boys Metalinguistic skills were measured by phonological
(58%) and 28 girls (42%) in the sample. awareness and metasemantic tasks. Phonological awareness
Of this sample, 48 children were located for follow-up was assessed by tasks of blending and elision (Torgesen,
testing in first grade and 39 in second grade. Chi-square n.d.). Both tasks have adequate internal consistency and
analyses were conducted for the nominal variables and t predictive validity with reading measures (Wagner et al.,
tests for continuous variables. No significant differences 1993; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). For the phono-
were found between the original kindergarten sample and logical blending task, children were asked to listen careful-
the sample remaining after second-grade attrition with ly as the examiner separately pronounced each sound of a
respect to gender, SES, race, intelligence, or the score on a word (e.g., /c/ /a/ /n/). They were then instructed to put the
measure of print awareness, the Test of Early Reading sounds together to say the whole word. There were 5 prac-
Achievement-2 (TERA-2; Reid, Hresko, & Hammill, tice items and 29 test items that ranged in difficulty from
1989). (All ps > .10.) one-syllable, two-phoneme words to four-syllable, eight-
phoneme words. The phonological elision tasks (also
referred to as sound deletion) required the children to say a
Table 1.Participant Characteristics word and then to say what the word would be if a specified
phoneme were deleted. For example, after repeating the
Grade word bat, the children were asked what word would be
K 1 2 left if the word was said without the /b/. There were 4 prac-
Variable n % n % n % tice items and 25 test items consisting of two- to six-
phoneme, one- to two-syllable words. The raw scores for
Gender each task were summed to provide a single measure of
Female 28 42 19 40 15 38
Male 38 58 29 60 24 62 phonological awareness. The use of a combined phonolog-
Free/reduced-price ical awareness score was based on recent findings by
lunches Schatschneider, Francis, Foorman, Fletcher, and Mehta
No 44 67 31 65 26 67
Yes 21 32 16 33 12 31 (1999) that blending and elision tasks in kindergarten are
Ethnicity measures of the same skill. Metasemantic skill was assessed
African American 30 45 23 48 18 46 through the Ambiguous Sentences and Figurative Language
American Indian 1 2 1 2 0 0
Asian American 3 5 2 4 2 5 subtests of the Test of Language Competence-Expanded
White 32 48 22 46 19 49 (TLC-E; Wiig & Secord, 1988)comprehension and pro-
n 66 48 39 duction of lexical ambiguity and idioms.
Narrative discourse was measured through an experimen-
Note. K = kindergarten. tal task of familiar story production (Roth & Spekman,
1986) and an adaptation of the Del Rio English Story Com-
264 The Journal of Educational Research

Table 2.Oral Language, Background, and Reading Measures in Kindergarten

Domain Test/variable name

Structural language
Semantics Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised
Test of Language Development-Primary:2/oral vocabulary
Boston Naming Test
Syntax Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language-Revised
Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised/formulated sentences
Metalinguistics
Phonological awareness Torgesen's Tasks/elision
Torgesen's Tasks/blending
Metasemantics Test of Language Competence-Expanded/ambiguous sentences
Test of Language Competence-Expanded/figurative language
Narrative discourse
Familiar story production Propositions
Episodes
Story comprehension Del Rio English Story Comprehension Test
Reading
Print awareness Test of Early Reading Ability-2
Decoding Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised/Letter-Word
Identification
Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised/Word Attack
Comprehension Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised/Passage
Comprehension
Background
Race Parent report
Socioeconomic status Free/reduced-price lunches
Family literacy Modified Morrison Parent questionnaire
Performance IQ Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices

Note. Reading comprehension measure added and structural language measures deleted in Grades 1 and 2.

prehension Test (San Felipe-Del Rio Consolidation Indepen-
dent School District, 1975)literal and inferential story
comprehension. The story production task required the chil-
dren to tell one of their favorite stories (e.g., Goldilocks and
the Three Bears). All stories were audiotaped, transcribed,
and segmented into propositions (Fillmore, 1968). The over-
all strategy for analyzing stories followed a story grammar
approach. Propositions, which approximate a main clause,
were used as a measure of story length and as the basic unit
of meaning within a story. The variables of interest were the
number of propositions and the number of episodes within a
story. For the story comprehension task, each child listened
to three stories read by the examiner. Immediately following
the completion of each story, the child was asked two literal
and two inferential questions about its content, from which
a single score was calculated. The order of story presentation
was held constant across children; the order of question
types (literal vs. inferential) was randomized.
Interrater reliability was calculated on 15% of the proto-
cols each year for proposition segmentation (minimum of
92% agreement) and episode segmentation (minimum of
85% agreement). Previous work provided evidence of con-
current validity in that the measures discriminated between
children (and adults) with and without learning disabilities
(Roth & Spekman, 1986, 1994).
Background measures. The background variables con-
sisted of (a) race; (b) gender; (c) SES, as measured by
free/reduced-price lunches; (d) nonverbal intelligence (IQ),
assessed by the Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven,
1965); and (e) family literacy, as measured by responses to
a modified form of a parent questionnaire developed by
Morrison and his colleagues (Morrison, McMahon-Griffith,
Williamson, & Hardway, 1993). This 21-item questionnaire
asked parents to report on environmental and experiential
aspects of literacy in the home environment from which a
single score was derived (maximum score = 36).
Reading measures. The kindergarten reading measures
included the TERA-2 (print awareness) and the Letter
Word Identification (LWID; identification of single letters
and words)and Word Attack (WA; the pronunciation of
pseudowords) subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-
educational Battery-Revised (WJ-R; Woodcock & Johnson,
1989). In first and second grades, the reading measures
included the LWID and WA subtests of the WJ-R, as well as
the addition of the Passage Comprehension (PC) subtest.
The test battery was reduced in first and second grades and
included the metalinguistic, narrative, and reading measures.
In kindergarten, the children were tested in two 1-hr sessions;
in first and second grade, a single 1-hr session was conduct-
ed. Testing occurred between February and April each year.
Data Analysis
The analysis plan relied on multiple regression in which
the primary aim was to identify parsimonious models con-
taining oral language and background variables to explain
May/June 2002 [Vol. 95(No. 5)] 265

significant variance in early reading (LWID, WA, PC). The
search for parsimony necessitates the use of a stringent,
model-testing analysis strategy because the goal is to iden-
tify, from an array of variables, only the most influential
and theoretically relevant contributors to the explanation of
reading variance. A two-staged analysis strategy was used
(see Figure 1). In Stage 1, a preliminary set of analyses was
conducted to identify measures in the domains of oral lan-
guage (structural language, metalinguistics, and narrative
discourse) and background variables that explained unique
variance in reading. Variables were said to explain unique
variance in reading if, when entered last in the hierarchical
series, the variables regression parameters were statistical-
ly significant (p < .05). For each domain-specific model
tested, the autoregressor for the dependent measure (i.e.,
WA, LWID, PC) was entered prior to the analysis of the lan-
guage and background variables. The autoregressor was
entered first into each regression model to control for a
childs initial skill for each of the dependent measures. The
significant variables from each domain-specific analysis
were carried forward to the Stage 2 analysis to ascertain the
parsimonious model for the prediction of LWID, WA, and
PC. At this stage, candidate variables from multiple do-
mains were tested simultaneously to establish their relative
influence on the reading measures. Two sets of predictive
models were tested for each reading skill (kindergarten to
first grade; kindergarten to second grade). As with the
domain-specific analyses, variables were retained if they
accounted for unique variance.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics for all oral lan-
guage and reading measures. Table 4 reports the correla-
tional data for all continuously measured variables during
the kindergarten year, and Table 5 gives the correlations
longitudinally for measures taken from kindergarten with
reading measures taken from first and second grades.
Predicting First-Grade Reading From Kindergarten
In this section, we report the results of regressive analy-
ses that explored the prediction of first-grade reading from
variables assessed in kindergarten. The unique and overall
R2 values, standardized beta weights, and t ratios for each
variable in the parsimonious regression models are con-
tained in Table 6. The test statistics for the parsimonious
models are presented in text.
Pseudoword reading. There were no significant kinder-
garten predictors of first-grade pseudoword reading scores
for the domains of narrative discourse beyond the influence
of the autoregressorpseudoword reading score in kinder-
garten. Among the background variables, IQ (unique R2 =

Table 3.Descriptive Statistics for All Measures

Grade
K 1 2
Variable name (test) M SD M SD M SD

Receptive vocabulary (PPVT-R) 104 16

Oral vocabulary (TOLD-P:2) 10 2
Word retrieval (Boston Naming Test) 26 8
Receptive morphology and syntax (TACL-R) 101 14
Expressive morphology and syntax (CELF-R) 8 3
Blending (Torgesen's Tasks) 9 6 14 6 18 5
Elision (Torgesen's Tasks) 6 4 11 6 16 5
Ambiguous sentences (TLC-E) 8 3 10 4 11 3
Figurative language (TLC-E) 10 3 10 3 12 3
Propositions (Familiar story production) 22 21 27 19 43 46
Episodes (Familiar story production) 3 2 4 2 4 3
Story comprehension (Del Rio) 7 3
Print awareness (TERA-2) 109 13
Word reading (WJ-R/Letter-Word Identification) 105 17 110 18 116 19
Pseudoword reading (WJ-R/Word Attack) 106 17 108 24 109 18
Reading comprehension (WJ-R/Passage Comprehension) 109 20 115 16
Family literacy (questionnaire) 29 5
Nonverbal intelligence (Raven) 20 5
n 66 48 39

Note. K = kindergarten. PPVT = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised; TOLD = Test of Language Development:Oral Vocabu-
lary; TACL-R = Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language-Revised; CELF-R = Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-
Revised; TLC-E = Test of Language Competence-Expanded; Del Rio = Del Rio English Story Comprehension Test; TERA-2 = Test
of Early Reading Ability (2nd ed.); WJ-R = Woodcock-Johnson Revised; Raven = Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices.
266 The Journal of Educational Research

Table 4.Correlations in Kindergarten

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

1. Receptive vocabulary (PPVT-R)

2. Oral vocabulary (TOLD-P:2) .31
3. Word retrieval (Boston Naming Test) .74 .38
4. Receptive morphology and syntax
(TACL-R) .54 .42 .58
5. Expressive morphology and syntax
(CELF-R) .56 .33 .77 .58
6. Blending (Torgesen's Tasks) .27 .22 .22 .46 .36
7. Elision (Torgesen's Tasks) .29 .23 .54 .53 .66 .51
8. Ambiguous sentences (TLC-E) .64 .27 .68 .54 .54 .27 .36
9. Figurative language (TLC-E) .55 .11 .56 .45 .34 .14 .20 .47
10. Propositions (Familiar story production) .12 .18 .12 .01 .16 .08 .14 .05 .06
11. Episodes (Familiar story production) .13 .32 .03 .04 .09 .08 .15 .06 .07 .87
12. Story comprehension (Del Rio) .39 .30 .48 .40 .29 .15 .27 .33 .42 .01 .07
13. Print awareness (TERA-2) .36 .26 .53 .56 .63 .44 .67 .42 .43 .00 .00 .40
14. Word reading (WJ-R/Letter-Word
Identification) .17 .24 .41 .38 .57 .49 .72 .18 .19 .20 .16 .18 .77
15. Pseudoword reading (WJ-R/Word Attack) .13 .18 .31 .27 .53 .50 .70 .05 .07 .22 .24 .06 .60 .86
16. Family literacy (questionnaire) .33 .44 .47 .45 .35 .15 .28 .27 .29 .23 .25 .25 .21 .29 .14
17. Nonverbal intelligence (Raven) .47 .23 .54 .51 .54 .26 .27 .37 .39 .09 .03 .11 .33 .27 .13 .26

Note. PPVT = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised; TOLD = Test of Language Development: Oral Vocabulary; TACL-R = Test of Auditory Comprehension of Lan-
guage-Revised; CELF-R = Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised; TLC-E = Test of Language Competence-Expanded; Del Rio = Del Rio English Story
Comprehension Test; TERA-2 = Test of Early Reading Ability (2nd ed.); WJ-R = Woodcock-Johnson Revised; Raven = Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices.

.07) and family literacy (unique R2 = .07) were significant
predictors, along with the autoregressor. Within the domain
of metalinguistics, phonological awareness (unique R2 = .04)
and ambiguous sentences (unique R2 = .03) were significant,
together with the autoregressor, accounting for 73% of the
variance. Within structural language, comprehension of syn-
tax (TACL-R) was significant, along with the autoregressor,
accounting for 69% of the variance in pseudoword reading.
The final model tested included the autoregressor, phono-
logical awareness, ambiguous sentences, and comprehen-
sion of syntax. The parsimonious model included the autore-
gressor, F(1, 37) = 27.1, p < .0001, phonological awareness,
F(1, 37) = 6.7, p < .05, IQ, F(1, 37) = 7.4, p < .05, and fam-
ily literacy, F(1, 37) = 5.8, p < .05, with the overall R2 = .80
(see Table 7).
Word reading. The autoregressor was a significant pre-
dictor of every model predicting word reading. The signifi-
cant variables and unique variances (R2) for the domain-
specific analyses of word reading were as follows:
background (IQ, R2 = .05) and family literacy (R2 = .06);
metalinguistics (phonological awareness, R2 = .04 and
ambiguous sentences, R2 = .05); and structural language
(receptive syntax, R2 = .09). There were no significant pre-
dictors from the domain of narrative discourse. The final
model included the significant domain variables and the
autoregressor (word reading) measured in kindergarten.
The parsimonious model included the autoregressor, F(1,
47) = 22.4, p < .0001; phonological awareness, F(1, 47) =
6.6, p < .05; and ambiguous sentences, F(1, 47) = 8.3, p <
.01. The overall R2 was .75.
Reading comprehension. We used the print awareness
measure (TERA-2) as the autoregressor for first-grade com-
prehension because we did not administer the WJ-R Pas-
sage Comprehension subtest in kindergarten. The kinder-
garten print awareness scores correlated .74 with first-grade
reading comprehension, making it a reasonable surrogate.
As in the other analyses, the autoregressor in kindergarten
was a significant predictor of every model predicting first-
grade reading comprehension. The domain-specific analy-
ses identified as significant predictors, narrative discourse
(episodes, R2 = .06) and metalinguistics (phonological
awareness, R2 = .08) beyond the autoregressive effect of
print awareness. Beyond the autoregressor, the only signifi-
cant variable from the background domain was family liter-
acy (R2 = .08). For structural language, significant predic-
tors were oral receptive (R2 = .05), expressive vocabulary
(R2 = .02), and word retrieval (R2 = .08). The final model
tested the effects of these variables and the autoregressor
(print awareness). The parsimonious model retained print
awareness, F(1, 42) = 37.5, p < .0001; oral vocabulary, F(1,
42) = 4.2, p < .05; narrative episodes, F(1, 42) = 16.4, p <
.001; and family literacy, F(1, 42) = 9.3, p < .01, with a total
R2 = .74 (see Table 6).
Predicting Second-Grade Reading From Kindergarten
In this section, we report the results of regression analy-
ses that explored the prediction of second-grade reading
from variables assessed in kindergarten The unique and
overall R values, standardized beta weights, and t ratios for
May/June 2002 [Vol. 95(No. 5)] 267

Table 5.Correlations for Oral Language, Background, and Reading Variables: Kindergarten to First
and Second Grades

First grade Second grade

Kindergarten variable WR PR RC WR PR RC

Receptive vocabulary .43 .38 .38 .47 .45 .51

Oral vocabulary .56 .48 .53 .65 .58 .70
Word retrieval .68 .62 .68 .72 .64 .76
Receptive morphology and syntax .68 .58 .59 .70 .68 .72
Expressive morphology and syntax .66 .58 .66 .58 .55 .58
Phonemic awareness (elision + blending) .77 .80 .71 .78 .78 .66
Ambiguous sentences .58 .48 .51 .65 .60 .60
Figurative language .40 .29 .47 .44 .41 .51
Propositions .16 .17 .22 .07 .02 .06
Episodes .16 .18 .24 .06 .00 .08
Story comprehension .34 .24 .38 .42 .31 .56
Print awareness .76 .66 .74 .73 .70 .70
Word reading .79 .75 .78 .65 .62 .58
Pseudoword reading .66 .76 .64 .53 .56 .39
Nonverbal intelligence .47 .44 .48 .42 .38 .38
Family literacy .50 .40 .50 .52 .44 .58

Note. WR = word reading; PR = pseudoword reading; RC = reading comprehension.

Table 6.Parsimonious Models: Kindergarten to First Grade

R2 Unique
Criterion (overall) Predictor Std. t ratio R2

Pseudoword reading .80 Word Attack in kindergarten .54 5.20*** .15

Phonological awareness .29 2.59* .04
IQ .22 2.73* .04
Family literacy .19 2.42* .06
Word reading .75 Word reading in kindergarten .49 4.73*** .13
Phonological awareness .29 2.58* .04
Ambiguous sentences .25 2.87** .05
Reading comprehension .74 Print awareness .56 6.10*** .25
Oral vocabulary .20 2.05* .03
Narrative episodes .34 4.00*** .11
Family literacy .30 3.00*** .06

Note. Std. = standard. Overall R 2 was adjusted for number of variables in the model. Unique R 2 is the variance accounted for
by the predictor variable when entered last.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

each variable in the parsimonious regression models are
contained in Table 7. The test statistics for the parsimonious
models are presented in the text.
Pseudoword reading. There were no significant kinder-
garten predictors of second-grade pseudoword reading
scores for the domains of narrative discourse and back-
ground variables beyond the influence of the autoregressor
(pseudoword reading score in kindergarten). Within the
domain of metalinguistics, phonological awareness alone
(i.e., the autoregressor was nonsignificant) was significant,
accounting for 61% of the variance. Within structural lan-
guage, comprehension of syntax was significant, account-
ing for 23% of the variance in pseudoword reading beyond
the effect of the autoregressor. The final model tested
included the autoregressor, phonological awareness, and
comprehension of syntax. The parsimonious model includ-
ed only phonological awareness, F(1, 37) = 59.67, p <
.0001, R2 = .61.
Word reading. The significant variables and unique vari-
ances (R2) for the domain-specific analyses of word reading
were as follows: background (race, R2 = .14 beyond the
effect of the autoregressor); metalinguistics (phonological
awareness, R2 = .60 with nonsignificant autoregressor
effect); and word retrieval (R2 = .16 beyond the effect of the
autoregressor). There were no significant predictors from
the domain of narrative discourse. The final model included
the significant domain variables and the autoregressor
(word reading) measured in kindergarten. The parsimonious
model retained only phonological awareness, F(1, 37) =
59.35, p < .0001, R2 = .61.
268
Table 7.Parsimonious Models: Kindergarten to Second Grade
R2
Criterion (overall)
Pseudoword reading .61
Word reading .60
Reading comprehension .71
Note. Std. = standard. Overall R 2 was adjusted for number of variables in the model. Unique R 2 is the variance accounted for
by the predictor variable when entered last.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Reading comprehension. Print awareness (TERA-2) was
used as the autoregressor for second-grade reading compre-
hension because we did not administer the reading compre-
hension subtest in kindergarten. The correlation between
the kindergarten TERA-2 scores and second-grade reading
comprehension was .72, making it a reasonable surrogate.
Phonological awareness significantly predicted reading
comprehension (R2 = .04) independent of the autoregressor.
Story comprehension was a significant narrative predictor
of reading comprehension (R2 = .05) also independent of
the autoregressor. The only significant predictor for the
background domain independent of the autoregressor was
race (R2 = .06). Oral vocabulary (R2 = .09) and word
retrieval (R2 = .06) were significant. The final model includ-
ed these variables and the autoregressor. The domain-spe-
cific significant variables for metalinguistics were kinder-
garten phonemic awareness, ambiguous sentences, and
figurative language (R2 = .39, .69, and .75, respectively).
The parsimonious models retained print awareness, oral
vocabulary, and word retrieval, but not race, F(3, 35) =
31.55, p < .0001, R2 = .71 (see Table 7).
Discussion
This longitudinal study was undertaken to clarify the
developmental relationship between oral language and
beginning reading. We measured a broad range of receptive
and expressive skills in a group of normally developing
kindergarten children to understand the predictive relation-
ship between oral language skills measured in kindergarten
and reading performance in first and second grades. As
expected, phonological awareness skill measured in kinder-
garten predicted word and pseudoword reading in first and
second grades. What is more interesting is what phonologi-
cal awareness does not predict: reading comprehension in
first and second grades. The results of multidomain predic-
tive models indicate that semantic abilities, in conjunction
with the autoregressor, were most predictive of first- and
second-grade reading comprehension; phonological aware-
ness contributed no unique variance. Thus, oral language
ability contributes to early reading skill in ways other than
through the influence of phonological awareness. The pro-
The Journal of Educational Research
Unique
Predictor Std. t ratio R2
Phonological awareness .78 7.72*** .61
Phonological awareness .78 7.70*** .60
Print awareness .28 2.36* .04
Oral vocabulary .36 3.39** .09
Word retrieval .36 2.78** .06
portions of unique variance are small, but they are the con-
sequence of a stringent data analysis plan. Even so, a post
hoc analysis showed substantial shared variance between
oral language variables other than phonological awareness.
Specifically, oral vocabulary and word retrieval together
accounted for 23% of the variance in second-grade reading
comprehension beyond the influence of kindergarten print
awareness skill. The following discussion addresses the
results for each of the three oral language domains exam-
ined in this study as well as developmental and method-
ological issues.
Structural Language
A major finding of this study was that semantic knowl-
edge, as measured by word definitions and word retrieval,
in combination with kindergarten print awareness, was a
more potent predictor of reading comprehension in first and
second grades than was phonological awareness. Although
phonological awareness was highly predictive of word and
pseudoword reading ability in second grade, it did not pre-
dict reading comprehension. Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte,
Burgess, and Hecht (1997) reported a modest but significant
proportion of unique variance associated with phonological
awareness in the prediction of reading comprehension.
Their analysis, however, was based on increases in reading
comprehension between the second and fourth grades. The
present findings indicate that different aspects of oral lan-
guage are important for different reading tasks during the
development of early reading skill.
The two semantic skills that were important for reading
comprehension were oral definitions and word retrieval.
According to Snow (1991), Dickinson and Snow (1987),
and Snow, Tabors, Nicholson, and Kurland (1995), the abil-
ity to define a word is a decontextualized language skill in
that it necessitates distancing oneself from language and
talking about the world beyond the here and now. Thus,
word definitions can be considered a higher level semantic
skill than concrete (i.e., labeling) vocabulary knowledge
because one must be able to reflect on the lexicon and state
explicitly what is known implicitly (Watson, 1985). Snow
and colleagues found evidence that decontextualized lan-
May/June 2002 [Vol. 95(No. 5)]
guage skills are strongly correlated with childrens subse-
quent reading and spelling achievement (Snow, Cancino,
Gonzalez, & Shriberg, 1989). More recently, Snow and col-
leagues (1995) showed that oral definitions measured in
kindergarten and first grade were the strongest oral lan-
guage predictors of all three forms of literacy tested (word
decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling) within and
across grades. Other language skills measured were vocab-
ulary, narrative discourse, knowledge of superordinates, and
listening comprehension. Our finding that oral definitions
was a significant predictor of reading comprehension pro-
vides support for Snows hypothesis that decontextualized
language is important to reading comprehension ability as
children move into middle elementary school grades and
skilled reading begins to emerge.
Word retrieval measured in kindergarten was the other
aspect of semantics that combined with oral definitions to
predict reading comprehension in second grade. In the pres-
ent study, we measured word retrieval using a confrontation
naming (CN) task in which the children were required to
name individually presented pictures of familiar objects in an
untimed format. Our results are consistent with previous
reports regarding the relationship between word finding and
reading ability that also used a CN task (Catts, 1993; Troia,
Roth, & Yeni-Komshian, 1996; Wolf, 1991). It is important to
note that, in this study, word retrieval was conceptualized as
a measure of semantic knowledge, that of lexical naming
accuracy. However, word retrieval also involves a phonolog-
ical processing component. The ability to successfully access
words from ones mental lexicon relies, in part, on the effi-
ciency with which information is phonologically coded in
memory (Baddeley, 1984). So, in the case of word retrieval as
measured in this study, it is probably most accurate to con-
clude that its influence on reading comprehension represents
a confluence of semantic and phonological knowledge.
Although our findings indicate that semantic language
skills have a direct link with early reading acquisition, the
precise nature of the relationship is still unresolved in that
the structural language variables were measured only in
kindergarten. It will be important to investigate the pattern
of influence of semantic and syntactic skills on reading in
the primary grades as children begin to receive formal read-
ing instruction and gain proficiency in decoding.
Metalinguistics
The findings are consistent with previous work in that
phonological awareness measured in kindergarten predicted
first- and second-grade word identification and pseudoword
reading. Because the autoregressors were not significant at
second grade, our results also showed that phonological
awareness was a better predictor of second-grade perfor-
mance than was word decoding or pseudoword reading
measured in kindergarten. This latter finding is similar to
that of Wagner and colleagues (1994) who reported that
kindergarten phonological awareness exerted a significant
269
influence on second-grade word-level reading, whereas the
autoregressor did not.
The data also support our hypothesis that metalinguistic
skills in addition to phonoloigcal awareness were signifi-
cant correlates of beginning reading. Metasemantic skill
measured via comprehension and production of lexically
ambiguous sentences contributed unique variance to first-
grade word reading equal to that contributed by phonologi-
cal awareness. The inference is that the ability to manipu-
late the meaning component of language is one of the
significant indicators of single-word reading in first grade.
Narrative Discourse
On the basis of the extant literature, we anticipated that
narrative discourse would increasingly account for variance
in reading comprehension between kindergarten and second
grade as children master single-word reading and begin to
read connected text for meaning. However, we found that
narrative skill measured in kindergarten accounted for
unique variance in reading comprehension in first grade but
not second grade. Further examination of the kinder-
gartenfirst grade relationship revealed that the bivariate
correlation was negative (r = .24). Our results may indicate
that conventional thinking regarding the presumed role of
narrative discourse in literacy acquisition is inaccurate
(Bashir & Scavuzzo, 1992; Klecan-Aker & Kelty, 1990;
Westby, 1984, 1991). It is possible that task-related variables
such as the types of elicitation tasks and coding procedures
used affected the outcome. However, the narrative measure
was selected on the basis of its sensitivity to narrative per-
formance differences between school-aged students with
and without learning disabilities (Roth & Spekman, 1986).
It may be that reading at the end of second grade is still
primarily a decoding task, and narrative skill may become
more important when children become more skilled readers.
This explanation is supported by Snyder and Downey (1991)
who found that narrative discourse skill accounted for a sig-
nificant proportion of variance in reading comprehension in
normally developing 8-to-11-year-old children, and
explained an even higher proportion of unique reading com-
prehension variance in their older group of normal achievers
who ranged between 11 and 14 years of age. Still, the likeli-
hood of a strong connection between oral narration and read-
ing is diminished by the finding that lexical-level skills were
significant predictors of text-level reading, whereas oral nar-
ration showed no relationship to text-level reading.
Developmental Issues
Scarborough (1998) noted that the predictors of reading
will likely change depending on the time periods during
which the independent and dependent measures are collect-
ed. Our results bear this out. We found that a semantic skill
measured in kindergarten accounted for unique variance in
first-grade, but not second-grade word reading. Another
270
kindergarten semantic skill (word retrieval) accounted for
unique variance in second-grade, but not first-grade reading
comprehension. The role of the background variables and
the autoregressors also varied in the prediction of first- and
second-grade reading. In each first-grade parsimonious
model, the autoregressors accounted for the most unique
variance in reading skill. In addition, the influence of the
background variables was evident at first grade but not at sec-
ond grade. Family literacy was a significant predictor for
both pseudoword reading and reading comprehension, and
IQ also significantly predicted pseudoword reading. Howev-
er, these results did not hold for second grade, wherein nei-
ther the autoregressors nor background variables accounted
for unique variance. We speculate that the background vari-
ables served as a springboard for acquiring first-grade read-
ing skills but then were mediated by the effects of instruction,
the further development of oral language, and increased skill
in reading. Further elaboration of these relationships and
their implications for instruction are warranted.
Methodological Issues
This study provides longitudinal evidence that oral lan-
guage variables other than phonological awareness are pre-
dictive of beginning reading for both word-level reading
and text comprehension. When considered in the context of
the existing literature, our findings both mirror and chal-
lenge previous work and assumptions. Most discrepant
from previous assertions is the absence of data to support
the presumed influence of narrative discourse on reading
comprehension.
The pattern of results may reflect the use of a stringent
analysis strategy, which may be due, in part, to the frame-
work of oral language adopted in this study. The strategy
first identified significant variables within each domain
(i.e., structural language, metalinguistics, and narrative dis-
course) and then placed that set of significant predictors in
a final regression model to seek the parsimonious solution.
The aim in the search for parsimony is to find a simple solu-
tion that does not oversimplify a complex process. This
strategy provides more specificity to an understanding of
the relationship between oral language and reading. Further,
the autoregressors for each dependent variable were entered
prior to the oral language variables. Previous studies typi-
cally measured oral language skills without the benefit of a
multiple-domain approach and without assessing the
autoregressive effects of earlier reading skills on later read-
ing skills. Nevertheless, our within-domain analyses mirror
some of the findings of these earlier studies. For example,
in the structural language domain, comprehension of syntax
(TACL-R) accounted for unique variance in second-grade
word reading (Vellutino et al., 1991). Also, word retrieval
explained unique variance in second-grade word reading
(cf. Wolf, 1991). It is possible that the exclusion of the
autoregressor would have identified more oral language
variables (e.g., narrative discourse) and/or increased the
The Journal of Educational Research
variance attributed to the language variables. However, the
unique influence of syntax and word retrieval is diminished
in the presence of (a) phonological awareness in the predic-
tion of word-level reading skills and (b) semantics and
metasemantics in the prediction of reading comprehension.
The discrepancies also may be due, in part, to the frame-
work of oral language adopted in this study. Our approach
represents a departure from methods in which one or two
measures were used to represent language skill. Ricard and
Snow (1990) cautioned against using a single measure to
assess oral language skill, suggesting that different tasks
reflect different levels of proficiency. The framework adopt-
ed in this study regards language as a complex system of
skills that interact and overlap with one another but assumes
that different tasks measure different aspects of language.
Accordingly, we examined a broad range of language vari-
ables within different components of the linguistic system.
In addition, there are different perspectives regarding which
variables require inclusion in an examination of the oral lan-
guagereading connection. Catts et al. (1999), for instance,
argued that IQ, particularly full-scale IQ, should not be con-
trolled because it is a general variable whose connection
with reading is not specific or clear. The differential selec-
tion of variables to be controlled across studies has con-
tributed to the diverse results obtained (Roth et al., 1996;
Roth, Cooper, & Speece, 1999). On the basis of the present
findings, semantic and metasemantic variables, in addition
to phonological awareness, appear to be the best candidates
to elaborate the oral languageearly reading connection.
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