| The purpose of this study was to compare measures of two analytic language skills of normal readers and delayed readers enrolled in the first grade. These language skills relate to both perception of meaning and decoding of sound patterns in language. The language analysis involved in phonemic segmentation, the decoding skill, is divorced from the inherent meaning of the verbal message. It is referred to as a metalinguistic language analysis skill. The other analytic language skill which is considered, defined by the researcher as functional language analysis, is postulated, according to a psycholinguistic framework detailed in this study, to be an underpinning of the analysis of phonemic segments. Functional language analysis involves the apperception of units of meaning from phrases.;Major findings were threefold. Skill at functional language analysis and metalinguistic language analysis varied significantly across reading levels of subjects studied. However, neither analytic language skills nor general cognitive measures were found to be useful in discriminating reading style as reported in teacher nominations. A causal model was developed which suggested that when intellectual ability is controlled, measures of general language development are predictive of later skill at functional language analysis. In turn, functional language analysis was found to be predictive of metalinguistic language skill, and metalinguistic language analysis skill predictive of reading achievement among first grade subjects.;The relationship between the current study and previous research on the role of specific language skills in the development of beginning reading was considered, and suggestions were made for future research.;The potential of both functional and metalinguistic language analysis skill as predictors of reading level, reading achievement, and reading style was investigated. In order to achieve this purpose, first grade students in a North Carolina public school district were screened with measures of functional and metalinguistic language analysis. Teachers were asked to nominate students according to both reading level and reading style. Measures of IQ, general language ability, visual motor ability, and reading achievement which were collected from school records permitted analysis of the relationship of these factors and analytic language skills. |
