Predicting Greek Cypriot children's reading and spelling from morphological and dialect awareness
The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the contribution of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in a Greek bi-dialectal setting. The target group (N=404) consisted of children, aged 6 to 9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus, where a dialect is spoken in certain contexts but where Standard Modern Greek is also widely used. At present there are few studies with Greek Cypriot children on how phonological, morphological and dialect awareness relates to reading and spelling. Because there are no standardised measures of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness with Greek Cypriot children, measures of these factors were developed during the pilot study and their internal consistency was assessed. With the larger sample the measures were validated by examining their construct validity. The first wave of data collection showed that morphological and dialect awareness make unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The second wave of data collection showed that the measures of morphological and dialect awareness predicted performance in reading and spelling eight months later, even partialling
Pittas, Evdokia
Early and Child learning ; Literacy ; reading ; spelling ; language awareness ; morphological awareness ; dialect awareness ; Greek Cypriot ; standard modern Greek
Predicting Greek Cypriot children's reading and spelling from morphological and dialect awareness. The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the contribution of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in a Greek bi-dialectal setting. The target group (N=404) consisted of children, aged 6 to 9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus, where a dialect is spoken in certain contexts but where Standard Modern Greek is also widely used. At present there are few studies with Greek Cypriot children on how phonological, morphological and dialect awareness relates to reading and spelling. Because there are no standardised measures of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness with Greek Cypriot children, measures of these factors were developed during the pilot study and their internal consistency was assessed. With the larger sample the measures were validated by examining their construct validity. The first wave of data collection showed that morphological and dialect awareness make unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The second wave of data collection showed that the measures of morphological and dialect awareness predicted performance in reading and spelling eight months later, even partialling
predicting greek_cypriot child read spell morphological dialect awareness aim longitudinal_study examine phonological_morphological dialect awareness prediction read spell greek dialectal setting target group consist child_age start project learn literacy cyprus dialect_speak certain context standard modern_greek also widely_use present_study greek_cypriot child_phonological morphological dialect awareness relate read spell standardised measure phonological_morphological dialect awareness greek_cypriot child measure factor develop pilot_study internal consistency assess large_sample measure validate examine construct validity first_wave data_collection show morphological dialect awareness make unique prediction read spell greek second_wave data_collection show measure morphological dialect awareness predict performance reading spelling even