Literacy is a crucial determinant of success, both professionally and personally. Oral language skills are closely related to literacy development in children. When a child has weak oral language skills, they will have difficulty achieving reading and writing competencies within the expected time frame. In this blog, we present results from a longitudinal and cross-sectional study of the relationship between oral language skills in pre-literate children and one aspect of their literacy skills in early elementary school—specifically, spelling. The study was conducted with French-speaking children and French-language learners from Quebec, a population that has been understudied in this area. We developed a predictive tool that will allow teachers and other professionals to assess oral language skills in young children and to predict those children at risk for literacy difficulties. Specifically, we screened children's speech perception, speech production, phonological awareness, and morphology production abilities at entry to first grade and predicted spelling skills at the end of second grade. The screening tool that we developed proved to have a sensitivity of 71% and a specificity of 93% as a screen for poor spelling abilities.
Written Language Skills in Quebec School Children
With respect to literacy, French-speaking Canadian children tend to underperform compared to their English-speaking counterparts across Canada, as revealed by the Programme international de recherche en lecture scolaire (PIRLS). PIRLS results from 2011 show that Canada as a whole and Quebec as a province score significantly higher than the world average. However, Quebec students from French-language school boards underperform compared to the Canadian average and the average of students in English-language schools in Quebec. The state of literacy in Quebec has been a major concern for some years now, since a government report revealed significant difficulties in children's writing abilities in primary and secondary school.
Oral Language Foundations of Literacy
Literacy includes a host of interconnected skills involving print: letter and letter-sound knowledge, decoding and sight word reading, spelling, grammatically correct and coherent writing of sentences and passages, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and ultimately the ability to gain new knowledge and solve problems using print materials. These written language skills are learned through direct teaching and practice, beginning in preschool but with particularly explicit attention devoted to the teaching of reading and writing during the early school years. However, the foundation for literacy is formed during the preschool period with the acquisition of oral language skills, beginning with language-specific shaping of perceptual knowledge during the first year of life. Every aspect of literacy has been shown to be closely correlated with oral language skills, including decoding, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Furthermore, children who have speech and language impairments are at risk for delayed acquisition of literacy.
Prediction of Spelling Abilities
Given the heightened and continuing concern about the written language skills of French-speaking children in Quebec, a targeted funding program was implemented to encourage research in this area. Consequently, we embarked on a project to develop a screening tool that could be used to identify children at school entry who would potentially be at risk for slower acquisition of writing, or more specifically in this context, spelling at the end of second grade. For predictors, we chose four aspects of oral language abilities that are known to be correlated with spelling specifically and literacy more generally. These predictors are discussed in turn below: speech perception, speech production, phonological awareness, and morphology production.
Development and Performance of the PHOPHLO
We developed a predictive tool called PHOPHLO that assesses oral language skills in young children and predicts those at risk for literacy difficulties. The screening tool includes tests for speech perception, speech production, phonological awareness, and morphology production abilities at entry to first grade. We found that the PHOPHLO had a sensitivity of 71% and a specificity of 93% as a screen for poor spelling abilities at the end of second grade.
Conclusion
We have developed a digital tool that targets children's oral language abilities in four areas of language function, specifically speech perception, speech production, phonological awareness, and morphology production. Our study is unique in the inclusion of an authentic validation sample, including monolingual speakers of French, simultaneous bilingual speakers of French, and children who were first exposed to French upon preschool entry. In a preliminary investigation, we have shown that, when administered early in first grade, the screen identified children who were likely to fail a spelling test at the end of second grade with a sensitivity of 71% and specificity of 93%. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings and to explore the effectiveness of PHOPHLO as part of a more comprehensive screening protocol.
To read the original research paper, please follow this link: Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology
