Differences in Phonological Recoding in German- and English-Speaking Children.

Orthographic consistency in different languages is likely to have an effect on phonological recoding skills, which are basic to the acquisition of reading. To explore this issue, we investigated word and nonword reading in German- and English-speaking 7- to 12-year-old children. Comparability of the stimuli across the 2 languages was strictly controlled: The German and English words used were common to both languages. Nonwords were derived by exchanging consonantal onsets between short words and by recombining syllables in long words. An identical set of CVCVCV nonwords was also presented to both language groups. At ages 7, 8, and 9, English-speaking children made a higher proportion of errors than their German-speaking peers when reading nonwords and words of low frequency. This was the case even when word-recognition ability was equated between the 2 language groups. By age 12, both groups had equally fast nonword-recognition latencies, but English-speaking readers were still less accurate when recoding...

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