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Language is Everything for Literacy

In this webinar, Prof Maggie Snowling delves into research highlighting that oral language is not just important in reading comprehension but also pivotal in the whole process of learning to read.

Oral language is the foundation upon which our ability to read and comprehend text is built. In this presentation, Prof Maggie Snowling, delves into the research that shows how oral language is not just important in reading comprehension but is also pivotal in the whole process of learning to read. She discusses what this means for children with dyslexia, and that identifying and intervening in children’s oral language at school entry has a crucial role to play not just in their reading development but their literacy overall.

The presentation begins by breaking down what’s known as the Simple View of Reading, which proposes that to understand what you’re reading, you need two things: decoding and language comprehension. Decoding—translating written letters and words into speech— while crucial, won’t get you very far without a solid grasp of language. You can know how to pronounce every word, but if you don’t understand the meaning, the whole point of reading is lost!

Prof. Snowling then takes this further by discussing a model which has been developed out of her research. This model demonstrates that language underpins both reading comprehension and the entire process of learning to read.

It is widely understood there are three main skills which underpin the process of learning to read: phoneme awareness, letter sound knowledge and rapid naming. From her research, Maggie has shown that not only is oral language a foundation for reading comprehension (as shown by the Simple View of Reading) but that it also underpins the development of these foundational skills in learning to read – or decoding.

This model comes out of a longitudinal study that followed children with a familial risk of dyslexia, children with poor oral language skills at preschool and a comparison group. This study showed that, in the comparison group, 7% had reading difficulties at age 8. That’s about what you’d expect in the general population. In contrast, of those with a family risk of dyslexia, 26% had reading difficulties by the same age. Most interestingly, of those children with early language difficulties, 66% would fill diagnostic criteria for dyslexia by age 8.

What this model shows is that, contrary to what we thought 40 years ago, there are two risks for dyslexia. First, the conventionally understood risk which is a difficulty in acquiring phoneme awareness, letter sound knowledge, and other phonological skills. Then a second risk: having poor language skills at school entry.

This presentation reminds us that language is the heartbeat of literacy, so it’s vital that we treat it with the same importance as phonics in early education. We have a tight window of time in which to prepare children’s language skills for learning to read and spell. We should prioritise identifying and intervening early for children with weak oral language – not wait for poor reading to emerge.