The Skills Related to the Early Reading Acquisition in Spain and Peru
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RESEARCH ARTICLE The skills related to the early reading acquisition in Spain and Peru Pilar SelleÂs1*, Vicenta A vila2, TomaÂs MartõÂnez2, Liz Ysla3 1 Department of Occupation Science, Speech Therapy and Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidad CatoÂlica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain, 2 Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universitat de Valencia, Valencia, Spain, 3 Private Teachers College with Official certification "Quality in Educational Networksº. Lima, Peru * [email protected] Abstract a1111111111 a1111111111 This paper deals with the skills related to the early reading acquisition in two countries that a1111111111 share language. Traditionally on reading readiness research there is a great interest to find a1111111111 a1111111111 out what factors affect early reading ability, but differ from other academic skills that affect general school learnings. Furthermore, it is also known how the influence of pre-reading var- iables in two countries with the same language, affect the development of the reading. On the other hand, several studies have examined what skills are related to reading readiness (phonological awareness, alphabetic awareness, naming speed, linguistic skills, metalin- OPEN ACCESS guistic knowledge and basic cognitive processes), but there are no studies showing whether  Citation: SelleÂs P, Avila V, MartõÂnez T, Ysla L countries can also influence the development of these skills.Our main objective in this study (2018) The skills related to the early reading acquisition in Spain and Peru. PLoS ONE 13(3): was to establish whether there were differences in the degree of acquisition of these skills e0193450. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. between Spanish (119 children) and Peruvian (128 children), five years old children as- pone.0193450 sessed in their own countries and after controlling Economic, Social and Cultural Status Editor: Etsuro Ito, Waseda University, JAPAN (ESCS). The results show that there are significant differences in the degree of acquisition Received: July 7, 2017 of these skills between these two samples. It's especially relevant, in these results, that the main predictor in a regression study was the country of origin, explaining a higher percent- Accepted: February 12, 2018 age of variance than other variables such as age differences, in months, or gender. These Published: March 5, 2018 findings corroborate the results obtained in other studies with migrant population. Copyright: © 2018 SelleÂs et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and Introduction reproduction in any medium, provided the original A large body of literature shows that literacy development models are quite similar, and they author and source are credited. are influenced by social, cognitive, and linguistic variables that underlie differences in students' Data Availability Statement: ªAll "The skills related pre-reading skills [1], [2]. to the early reading acquisition in Spain and Peru" files are available from the 15-12-2017 databaseDANS, Data Archiving and Networked Early predictors of reading Services, (accession number(10.17026/dans-z76- Social, cognitive, and linguistic variables can contribute to explaining students' differences in spnm). early literacy. In addition, these factors strengthen and interact with each other in a multiplica- Funding: The authors received no specific funding tive effect [3]. for this work. Among the social variables, we have to highlight the role of socioeconomic status [4], [5], Competing interests: The authors have declared [6], [7], [8]. The most used index in education is the index of economic, social and cultural that no competing interests exist. status (ESCS), based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193450 March 5, 2018 1 / 15 Early predictors of reading in Spain and Peru indicator combines information on education and parents' occupation with household posses- sions. The index is derived from three variables: the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status (ISEI); the highest level of education of the student's parents; the PISA index of family wealth; the PISA index of home educational resources; and the PISA index of possessions related to ªclassicalº culture in the family home, include an item regarding the number of books a family has in the household. This has been shown in PISA studies as a pre- dictor parameter of academic success [9]. It is commonly accepted that social and economic status play an important role in the acquisition and subsequent reading performance of students. In general, children from low- income families are more likely to have poor reading achievement [10]. The family income level, as well as the parent's of education and occupation level, have a direct impact on the aca- demic progress of their children [11], [12] just as unemployment or unstable occupation of parents can have a negative impact on the development of cognitive skills related to reading and literacy development [13], [14]. The family has been shown to influence the experiences that the home offers children, being these differences fundamental to the command of linguistic skills associated with emer- gent literacy. There really is an interaction between linguistic elements and shared reading experiences. The effect of the family on reading goes beyond these shared experiences, since the linguistic code used by the family is a determining factor in the acquisition of reading itself, the children's home plays a key role in mastering the language skills associated with reading initiation and development [15], [16], [17], [18] On the other hand, the shared reading of a book contributes to the development of recep- tive language, which in turn is strongly linked to reading performance [18]. Likewise, a good pre-reading experience will be enriched by the child's contact with elements related to written material [19]. Along these lines, studies have shown higher levels of reading competence in students whose parents have better attitudes toward reading and claim to spend more hours per week engaged on this activity [20]. In addition, some linguistic [21], [22] and metalinguistic [23], [24], [25] variables also facili- tate emergent literacy. Two of the linguistic skills are oral language components that are mainly related to read- ing acquisition: vocabulary, comprehensive and expressive [26], [27], and morphosyntactic development [28], [29]. These aspects of oral language are essential in reading acquisition, and they maintain their influence on reading comprehension during elementary education [22], [30]. Among the metalinguistic skills, phonological awareness can be highlighted as one of the most widely studied factor [31], [32], [23], [33], [34] as it is considered the main predictor of reading performance. Its acquisition helps to learn the alphabetic code, and this learning in turn significantly increases the acquisition of phonological awareness [35]. Its study is of great interest due to the reflexive posture of children towards oral language and the awareness of the units that conform written language [36]. Another relevant metalinguistic factor would be print knowledge: awareness of the reading objective [37], and the written word has meaning [38]. The child must be aware that writing is a representation which enables to perpetuate and transmit oral language [39]. The hypothesis that knowledge about written language is related to success in reading acquisition has received considerable support [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [24], [45], [46]. It is relevant to point out that phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness have significantly predicted reading success, even in non-alphabetic languages such as Chinese [47]. However, when comparing the predictors in transparent and opaque languages, studies PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193450 March 5, 2018 2 / 15 Early predictors of reading in Spain and Peru have shown that in opaque languages, instruction time is necessary before phonological aware- ness and vocabulary begin to show their influence on reading acquisition [48]. In the case of alphabet knowledge [49], [50], [51], it facilitates literacy through the early acquisition of the correspondence between written letters and sounds [52]. Finally, within this group of predictors of reading performance, certain cognitive variables can be mentioned [53], such as attention [54], [55], perception [56], [57], and memory [58], [54], which act as mediators in learning to read [59]. Evaluation of early predictors of reading in the Spanish language Regarding the evaluation of these skills in Spanish-speaking children, various attempts have been made to measure them, both as individual and group assessment [60], [61], [62], [63], [64], [65], [66], [67]. Of the pre-reading tests published in Spanish, only three of them focus on evaluating these precursors: the Test for the early detection of reading and writing learning dif- ficulties [60], the Pre-reading Skills Test [67], and the BIL (3±6), BaterõÂa de Inicio a la Lectura (Emergent Reading Battery) [66], for children from 3 to 6 years old. The latter includes the greatest number of skills and can be applied during the entire preschool period. Comparative studies on early predictors of reading An important issue is whether the precursors of reading are the same