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Despite a long-standing awareness of academic language as a pedagogically relevant research area, the construct of academic-language proficiency, understood as a more comprehensive set of skills than just academic vocabulary, has remained vaguely specified. In this study, we explore a more inclusive operationalization of an academic-language proficiency construct, core academic-language skills ( CALS). CALS refers to a constellation of high-utility language skills hypothesized to support reading comprehension across school content areas. Using the Core Academic Language Skills Instrument ( CALS-I), a theoretically grounded and psychometrically robust innovative tool, we first examined the variability in students' CALS by grade, English-proficiency designation, and socioeconomic status ( SES). Then, we examined the contribution of CALS to reading comprehension using academic vocabulary knowledge, word reading fluency, and sociodemographic factors as covariates. A linguistically and socioeconomically diverse cross-sectional sample of 218 students (grades 4-6) participated in four assessments: the CALS-I, a standardized reading comprehension assessment (Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test), an academic vocabulary test (Vocabulary Association Test), and a word reading fluency test (Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency). General linear model analysis of variance revealed that CALS differed significantly by grade, English-proficiency designation, and SES, with students in higher grades, English-proficient students, and those from higher SES backgrounds displaying higher scores, on average. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses identified CALS as an independent predictor of reading comprehension, even after controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge, word reading fluency, and sociodemographic factors. By specifying a set of language skills associated with reading comprehension, this study advances our understanding of school-relevant language skills, making them more visible for researchers and educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature has demonstrated that prosodic sensitivity is related to early literacy development; however, the precise nature of this relationship remains unclear. It has been speculated in recent theoretical models that the observed relationship between prosodic sensitivity and early literacy might be partially mediated by children's vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness, although such models have yet to be confirmed using advanced statistical techniques. The study reported here uses covariance structure modeling to provide the first direct test of the model proposed by Wood, Wade-Woolley, and Holliman. We also test a modified version of this model that was designed to overcome some of the limitations in the original. Seventy-five 5-7-year-old English-speaking children completed a new measure of prosodic sensitivity and were also assessed for their vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, word reading, and spelling. The results showed that Wood et al.'s model did not provide an adequate fit to our sample data; however, the new model, which permitted causal connections between the so-called mediator variables, provided an excellent fit. We argue that prosodic sensitivity should be afforded greater importance in models of literacy development, and offer a new theoretical model of the prosody-literacy relationship for future attempts at replication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate verbal and nonverbal cognitive deficits in Italian students with developmental dyslexia. The performances of 32 dyslexic students, 64 age-matched typically reading controls, and 64 reading age-matched controls were compared on tests of lexical knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory, visual search, verbal-visual recall, and visuospatial attention. Considering the phonological domain, dyslexic students were significantly impaired in all the tasks. A significant deficit was also observed in visuospatial attention and verbal-visual recall tasks. Additionally, the pattern of cognitive deficits exhibited by the students with dyslexia was analyzed. Results showed that the largest group of students with dyslexia (40.6%) exhibited multiple deficits, including both the phonological and the nonverbal domains. These findings are in accordance with the hypothesis that developmental dyslexia is a multifactorial deficit; theoretical and practical issues are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two studies, we investigated how skilled readers use contextual and morphemic information in the process of incidental vocabulary acquisition during reading. In Experiment 1, we monitored skilled readers' eye movements while they silently read sentence pairs containing novel and known English compound words that were either semantically transparent (e.g., milkshake, drinkblend) or opaque (e.g., cocktail, deskdoor) in informative and neutral sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, we included a postreading vocabulary test following self-paced reading, which allowed for an examination of word learning success. We found that readers showed processing time advantages for novel transparent compounds in informative contexts, when contextual and morphemic information converged on a meaning. Conversely, these readers showed processing time disadvantages for novel opaque compounds in informative contexts when contextual and morphemic information conflicted as to the interpretation of the novel compound. Postreading vocabulary test performance revealed that readers retained new word meanings after a single exposure, and retention rates were significantly improved as a result of combining contextual and morphemic cues. Further, readers spent more time reading sentences containing novel words for which they subsequently correctly identified the meaning of the novel word. The data suggest that skilled readers automatically decompose novel compound words, that readers' ability to derive word meanings for novel English compounds is aided by pooling contextual and morphemic sources of information, and that readers' monitoring of their comprehension when reading texts containing novel words leads to further gains in vocabulary knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]