Individual Differences in Early Reading Acquisition:
Considering the Role of Metalinguistic Factors
Keywords:
Reading, Phonological awareness, Syntactic awarenessAbstract
There is plenty of evidence that phonological and syntactic awareness make specific contributions to the development of decoding and reading comprehension. The contribution of these metalinguistic factors to reading development
was investigated in a group of 50 Brazilian children who were taught to read through a syllabic method. The children were
individually tested in four sessions during a year period. The first and the last sessions oceurred before and after reading
acquisition, when the mean ages were 5 years and 8 months, and 6 years and 8 months, respectively. Contrary to previous
results with English speaking children, the Brazilian children did not benefit from these early metalinguistic skills in learning
to decode. The only connection that was replicated involved the relationship between syntactic awareness and reading tasks
which directly required the use of syntactic - semantic informations. Therefore, the results suggest that explanatory models of
individual differences in early reading skills are sensitive to differences in languages and in teaching methods.
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