The contributions of individual oral language skills to kindergarten students' reading comprehension

Background Research has demonstrated that distinct oral language skills contribute unique variance to text comprehension in students from second grade onward. This study examined these relationships for kindergarten students whose comprehension is often assumed to be determined by word decoding skills. Method Eighty‐eight kindergarten students completed measures assessing oral language skills, word reading and reading comprehension. The latter was measured by standardised tests and a teacher‐administered reading level inventory. Results Syntactic and morphological awareness were unique predictors of comprehension measured on standardised tests, controlling for word reading, English language learning status and listening comprehension. In contrast, syntactic awareness was the only unique oral language predictor of teacher‐assessed reading levels. Conclusions Individual oral language skills influence reading comprehension in students as young as those in kindergarten. In this novel investigation, we found differing patterns of predictors across two comprehension measures, highlighting the more constrained set of language skills tapped by teacher‐assessed reading levels.