Modeling the relationships between cognitive–linguistic skills and literacy skills: new insights from a transparent orthography

In this one-year longitudinal study, we examined the central component processes of reading fluency, spelling accuracy, reading comprehension, and narrative text writing skills of 103 Turkish Cypriot children. Two cohorts of children from second and fourth grades were followed into third and fifth grades, respectively. The testing battery included the measures of phonological awareness, rapid automitized naming (RAN), vocabulary, listening comprehension, and working memory. In line with previous research evidence from other transparent orthographies, such as German (Mann & Wimmer, 2002), we have also found that while phonological awareness was the strongest predictor of spelling, RAN was a powerful predictor of reading fluency. The overall pattern of relationships were broadly in line with the models of reading comprehension and writing in English and further highlighted the central role of oral language skills in children's comprehension and writing. The results have also underscored the complexity of the relationships between reading fluency and reading comprehension and likewise, between transcription skills and writing quality. Finally, it has become clear from the findings that there is a need for an integrated and comprehensive approach to the study of reading comprehension and writing. Taken together, the overall results suggested that alongside many similarities, there are distinct differences in the way in which different component processes are related to different literacy skill that can be further influenced by the nature of the input language and orthography.