WARREN-LEUBECKER, AMYE, and CARTER, BETH WARREN. Reading and Growth in Metalinguistic Awareness: Relations to Socioeconomic Status and Reading Readiness Skills. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1988, 59, 728-742. 3 types of metalinguistic awareness (phonemic, word boundary, and word order in sentences) and their relation to socioeconomic status, vocabulary, reading readiness skills (letter knowledge, visual discrimination, sound-letter matching, and oral language comprehension), and reading achievement were longitudinally studied in a sample of 40 kindergartners (mean age 58) and 43 first graders (mean age 6-10). First graders' and higher SES children generally improved more between times of testing in phonemic and word-order awareness. All groups improved equally in vocabulary. The 3 metalinguistic tasks were highly interrelated, but when the effects of oral language comprehension or vocabulary were removed, the relations diminished significantly. A hierarchical model was initially supported, in which metalinguistic awareness skills (specifically phonemic segmentation) were superordinate and better predictors of reading, whereas all other factors were lower order, affecting reading only through their relation with metalinguistic skills.