A great deal of research
has demonstrated strong links
between early oral language skills
and subsequent literacy achievements.
These connections have been referred to
as the "speech-to-print" continuum of development,
acknowledging the foundational skills
of oral language to written language.
In turn, access to written print
facilitates ongoing growth in oral language competency.
Reading comprehension involves two primary processes,
decoding printed text
and understanding the language accessed
through the process of decoding.
In the early years of reading development,
children's ability to comprehend text
is largely constrained by their ability to decode text.
Once decoding becomes automatic,
which for most typically developing children
occurs at around eight years,
reading comprehension becomes more dependent
on skills in language comprehension.
Deficits in one or both of these areas
will result in different profiles
of reading disorder and different intervention strategies.
Within this conceptualisation of reading disorders,
the term dyslexia is used to describe those children
who have poor word level reading abilities
despite age-appropriate language comprehension skills.
Dyslexia is a word level reading disability
stemming from an impairment in phonological processing.
Weaknesses in the phonological system
manifests in poor phonological processing
specifically phoneme level sensitivity,
phonological memory, poor speech perception,
and poor letter sound decoding skills.
Children with age-appropriate word reading abilities
but poor oral language
are referred to as poor comprehenders.
Poor comprehenders have no problem
with phonological processing
and are able to read words accurately,
but they have deficits in semantics, syntax,
and higher-level language processing such as inferencing,
comprehension monitoring, and text structure knowledge.
Weaknesses in both word reading
and language comprehension,
are referred to as mixed reading difficulties.
In the early years of schooling,
we are not looking to diagnose reading disorder,
but we are looking to identify
those children at risk for difficulties learning to read.
Children who will become poor readers are recognisable
long before formal reading instruction begins.
They show lags in developing those skills
that are the precursors to decoding and or comprehension.
The emergent literacy skills of phonological awareness,
and concepts of print and the spoken language skills
of vocabulary and narrative.
Preventive models focus on
decreasing children's vulnerability
for reading difficulties.
We know for example,
that with the appropriate resources,
comprehension monitoring can be assessed in pre-readers.
For example, children between 30 and 48 months
show signs of monitoring and expressing surprise
when an actor or the order of events is changed
during the narration of a familiar storybook.
If a child does not demonstrate these responses,
this may be an indication that listening comprehension
may not be developing as expected.
Similarly, if a prep year child
is not acquiring phonological awareness
at the same pace as the rest of their cohort,
we might raise concerns about the child's development
of word recognition skills.
Because the development of emergent literacy
is dependent on many oral language skills,
children with language disorder are at risk
for developmental reading difficulties.
Numerous studies have shown
that many children with oral language deficits
have co-occurring reading difficulties.
These findings highlight the importance of schools
including schools of distance education
undertaking early identification processes
such as early start for code-based
and language learning needs in children
both on entry to prep and throughout the early years.
In addition to this,
the importance of supporting language
and reading acquisition in children
identified at risk is highlighted
because children with language disorder
are incredibly likely to exhibit a reading disorder
related to phonological
and or non-phonological language skills,
early identification and intervention
of language difficulties is vital
to preventing reading difficulties
in children with language disorder.
Identification and understanding of reader profiles
for children experiencing persistent difficulties
learning to read,
requires a process of differential diagnosis.
Thorough reading evaluation
for children experiencing reading difficulties
should include measures of reading comprehension,
text reading accuracy, reading real words in isolation,
reading nonsense words in isolation,
spoken vocabulary, and broader oral language skills.