Phonological and Orthographic Processing Skills in Childre Learning to Read and Spell Persian and English Concurrently

Abstract

Abstract The study attempted to examine children's relative reliance on phonological and orthographic skills in early grades of reading and spelling Persian and English, within and across orthographies. Vowelized Persian represents a shallow orthography with very regular grapheme to phoneme correspondence rules, whereas English has an opaque orthography with inconsistent grapheme to phoneme (and vice versa) correspondence. Ninety Iranian students attending both Persian and English classes from second, third, and fourth grade levels were tested on reading and spelling in Persian as well as in English. The results revealed that the children had high phonological and orthographic skills in Persian as well as in English. However, in regression analysis, both phonological and orthographic processing skills emerged as predictors of reading and spelling for English, whereas only phonological skill emerged as predictor of word reading and spelling in Persian.