This study examined relationships between oral language and literacy in a two-year, multivariate design. Through empirical cluster analysis of a sample of 88 kindergarten children, four oral language subtypes were identified based on measures of semantics, syntax, metalinguistics, and oral narration. Validation efforts included (a) concurrent and predictive analyses of subtype differences on reading, spelling, and listening comprehension measures based on a priori hypotheses and (b) a comparison of the teacher classification of the children with the empirical classification. The subtypes represented high average, low average, high narrative, and low overall patterns of oral language skill. The high average subtype received the most consistent evidence for validation. The pattern of validation results indicates that the relationship between oral language and literacy is not uniform and suggests a modification of the assumption that oral language skills have a direct role in reading acquisition.

This article examines the characteristics of surface dyslexia in a language (Italian) with high grapheme–phoneme correspondence. The reading performances of four boys are reported. The most pervasive reading symptom was severe slowness, which was associated in some, but not all, cases with reduced text comprehension. All four dyslexics performed at chance level on a task requiring comprehension of homophonous words (Study I). Vocal reaction times to single words were delayed with respect to the controls and showed a clear word length effect (Study II). However, vocal reaction times to pictorial stimuli were normal (Study III). Eye movement recordings taken during reading indicated an increased number and a reduced amplitude of rightward saccades and longer fixation durations (Study IV). A test of letter recognition in central and peripheral vision indicated that the reading deficit could not be explained in terms of an abnormal attentional “window,” as found in other cases of dyslexia (Study V). An analysis of the boys' cognitive skills (Study VI) indicated spared phonological awareness in three of four subjects; a severe deficit in rapid scanning of nonlinguistic stimuli was present in all of the subjects. Overall, these results indicate that parallel visual processing of words was impaired, and that the boys analyzed words sequentially, presumably through an orthographic–phonological conversion. This condition may be interpreted as surface dyslexia, even though the prominent characteristics of this syndrome are somewhat different in Italian than in other languages. In languages with “loose” relationships between graphemes and phonemes (e.g., English), when the phonological analysis of words is insufficient, a variety of errors is produced. In languages with considerably more regular grapheme–phoneme correspondence (e.g., Italian), the number of errors may be small since phonological reading is generally correct, and the most conspicuous symptom is slowness in reading.

Foreign language anxiety is a complex phenomenon that has been found to be a predictor of foreign language achievement. This study of 210 university students examined factors that predict1 foreign language anxiety. A setwise multiple regression analysis revealed that seven variables (i.e., age, academic achievement, prior history of visiting foreign countries, prior high school experience with foreign languages, expected overall average for current language course, perceived scholastic competence, and perceived self-worth) contributed significantly to the prediction of foreign language anxiety. An analysis of variance, which included trend analysis, revealed that freshmen and sophomores reported the lowest levels of foreign language anxiety, and that anxiety levels increased linearly as a function of year of study. The educational implications of these findings for understanding foreign language anxiety and for increasing foreign language learning are discussed, as are suggestions for future research.

The present study investigated the role of phonological and orthographic processing skills in adult second language reading. The subjects were 60 ESL graduate students; all were native speakers of Farsi. Three types of ESL reading measures were used as criterion variables: reading comprehension, silent reading rate, and the ability to recognize individual words. Data were analyzed using correlational and hierarchical multiple regression. Efficiency in phonological and orthographic processing contributed significantly to individual differences on the reading measures. In particular, efficiency in orthographic processing contributed to the reading measures independently of syntactic and semantic measures. The study suggests that it is useful to consider individual differences in ESL reading with respect to individual differences in lower level processes – particularly the efficiency with which readers process phonological and orthographic information.

The word substitution errors from a corpus of 2,400 French slips of the tongue were grouped into several categories: contaminational, semantic, formal, and mixed cases; substitutions of syntagmatic codependents also occurred. Semantic and formal substitutions involved a resemblance between target and error. In addition, all substitutions exhibited a strong degree of word class and gender identity. The various types of resemblance were analyzed with reference to three-layer models of lexicalization. They did not make a lemma layer necessary, but stronger evidence came from another error category – semantic blends.

The issue of how tones are represented and processed when speaking Mandarin Chinese was examined via naturalistic slips of the tongue. The slips were collected from tape-recorded radio call-in programs over a period of one year. One research assistant listened to the programs twice, and another listened to them a third time independently. All the errors judged to be slips by the assistants were reviewed by the author. A total of 987 slips were confirmed and classified according to the system of Garnham, Shillcock, Brown, Mill, and Cutler (1982). With respect to the sound movement errors, it was found that, although errors of segmental phonemes were fairly common, errors of tones were rare. Moreover, the error pattern of the tones was different from that of the segmental phonemes. The relative immunity of tone to production errors is similar to the problem of stress in English. It is suggested that lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese are represented and processed differently than segmental sounds but similarly to lexical stress in English. These characteristics of the Mandarin tones relative to the segmental sounds are described in a model of phonological encoding for a single word, adapted from Levelt (1989).

The aim of the present research was to determine the role of reading-related experience and processing speed on the time it took for children to name familiar stimuli. A total of 168 children, aged 7 to 13, were administered measures of global processing speed, title and author recognition, naming time, and reading ability. Naming times were predicted by age-related change in processing time but not by reading experience (as assessed by author and title recognition). The results are discussed in terms of the factors responsible for the relation between naming speed and reading.