Unresolved Mysteries

In both special education and speech-language pathology literature, it is commonly assumed that children's reading difficulties have their roots in early oral language disabilities. Data to support this assumption are most evident in studies that demonstrate a reciprocal relationship between the metalinguistic skill of phonemic awareness and word decoding. The purpose of this review was to examine the contribution of other oral language abilities to early reading performance. Specifically, we examined studies that assessed metasemantics, metasyntax/metamorphology, and narrative discourse in relation to word decoding or reading comprehension with children in kindergarten through third grade. We found that although phonemic awareness retained its prominence as a predictor of early reading skills, metasyntactic ability often accounted for significant variance. There was also an indication that narrative discourse skill is related to reading performance. We hypothesize that narrative discourse and other metalinguistic skills may gain importance developmentally once children acquire some initial skill in decoding An analysis of definitional, measurement, and theoretical issues provides direction for further study.