Abstract
To become skillful readers, children have to acquire the ability to translate printed words letter by letter into phonemic representations (phonological recoding) and the ability to recognize the written word forms holistically (orthographical decoding). Whereas phonological recoding is the key for learning to read and useful for recognizing unknown or low-frequent words, orthographical decoding is often more efficient and takes less time, thus facilitating reading processes on the sentence and text level. Several studies with English-speaking children provided evidence for the relevance of the two routes but the question whether and to what extent both word recognition skills contribute to reading comprehension in young German readers requires further clarification. Based on data from a cross-sectional study with German primary school children we investigated whether and to what extent both types of word recognition skills are associated with sentence (N = 666) and text comprehension skills (N = 149) and how these relationships develop from Grade 2 to 4. The results indicate that both phonological recoding skills and orthographical decoding skills are important for reading comprehension skills. Their relative weight does not change across grade levels.
Zusammenfassung
Erfolgreiches Leseverstehen setzt einerseits die Fähigkeit voraus, geschriebene Wörter Buchstabe für Buchstabe in eine phonetische Repräsentation zu überführen (phonologisches Rekodieren), andererseits die Fähigkeit, geschriebene Wörter anhand ihrer Wortform zu erkennen (orthografisches Dekodieren). Phonologisches Rekodieren spielt eine besondere Rolle beim Lesenlernen und dient darüber hinaus vor allem dem Erkennen neuer und seltener Wörter. Orthografisches Dekodieren hingegen ist potenziell effizienter, wodurch Leseprozesse auf Satz- und Textebene erleichtert werden. Untersuchungen mit englischsprachigen Kindern belegen die Relevanz beider Wege der Worterkennung. Die Frage, ob und in welchem Umfang diese auch von jungen deutschen Lesern/-innen genutzt werden, muss dagegen noch geklärt werden. Anhand querschnittlicher Daten deutscher Zweit- bis Viertklässer wurde untersucht, ob und in welchem Ausmaß phonologisches Rekodieren und orthografisches Dekodieren mit dem Verstehen von Sätzen (N = 666) und Texten (N = 149) assoziiert sind und wie sich diese Zusammenhänge im Grundschulalter entwickeln. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sowohl phonologisches Rekodieren als auch orthografisches Dekodieren für das Leseverständnis wichtig sind, wobei sich ihr relatives Gewicht über die Klassenstufen hinweg nicht verändert.
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Acknowledgments
The research presented in this article was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF, grants 01 GJ 0985, 01 GJ 0986, 01 GJ 1206A, 01 GJ 1206B). We would like to thank David Nitz for programming assistance and the numerous student research assistants who were involved in collecting data for this project. Researchers who are interested in the material used in the visual and auditory grammaticality judgment tasks are invited to send an e-mail to the first or the second author.
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Knoepke, J., Richter, T., Isberner, MB. et al. Phonological recoding, orthographic decoding, and comprehension skills during reading acquisition. Z Erziehungswiss 17, 447–471 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-014-0560-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-014-0560-z
Keywords
- Reading comprehension
- Reading acquisition
- Reading development
- Phonological recoding
- Orthographical decoding