There is plenty of research on teaching reading skills as well as on the prerequisites of literacy, but not so much on children's opinions on learning to read. Few know what a child thinks itself of his/her learning to read and ability to learn to read. The aim of this article is to reveal the children's (n = 43) opinions on learning to read at…

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the effect of task-focused behaviour on reading fluency, spelling and comprehension; and (b) to examine the role of the different literacy skills in subsequent task-focused behaviour. Two hundred and seven Finnish-speaking children were followed from preschool until their fourth year at school…

This study had two aims: first, to investigate how emerging reading and spelling are interlinked when children move up from preschool to primary school and, second, to examine the antecedents of these skills. The study is part of the Jyvaskyla Entrance into Primary School Study in which 196 children 5 to 6 years of age were followed up every half…

The course of language acquisition from infancy to public primary school was followed in a sample of 56 Finnish children to examine precursors to reading at first grade. Structural equation modeling of continuity suggested effects from growth in early vocabulary to mastery of inflectional forms at preschool age. The early language directly…