LSHSS Research Article The Relation of Linguistic Awareness and Vocabulary to Word Reading and Spelling for First-Grade Students Participating in Response to Intervention Young-Suk Kim,a Kenn Apel,b and Stephanie Al Otaibac Purpose: The relations of phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness and vocabulary to word reading and spelling were examined for 304 first-grade children who were receiving differentiated instruction in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model of instruction. Method: First-grade children were assessed on their phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; word reading; and spelling. Year-end word reading and spelling were outcome variables, and phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; and RtI status (Tiers 1, 2, & 3) were predictor variables. Results: The 3 linguistic awareness skills were unique predictors of word reading, and phonological and orthographic awareness were unique predictors of spelling. The contributions that these linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary made to word reading and spelling did not differ by children’s RtI tier status. Conclusion: These results, in conjunction with previous studies, suggest that even beginning readers and spellers draw on multiple linguistic awareness skills for their word reading and spelling regardless of their level of literacy abilities. Educational implications are discussed. C Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994; Wolter, Wood, & D’zatko, 2009). Importantly, however, many investigations of the influence of children’s linguistic awareness skills on their development of literacy abilities have focused on one of these linguistic awareness skills. Thus, although these studies have informed the literacy acquisition field regarding the individual influences that each skill makes to literacy development, we still have a limited understanding about the unique contributions that these skills make when they are considered in tandem, particularly for beginning readers and spellers. Such insight could guide early literacy interventions and inform Response to Intervention (RtI) implementation (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 2004). RtI is a new approach that is widely used to provide differentiated instruction and early intervention to children in the United States (e.g., Gersten et al., 2009; Zirkel & Thomas, 2010). However, to date, the field lacks guidance about how various linguistic awareness skills might differentially influence word reading and spelling outcomes as a function of both children’s language and literacy skills and reading instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of first-grade children’s linguistic awareness skills (i.e., phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness) and vocabulary on their lexical-level literacy abilities hildren’s ability to think about and manipulate various aspects of language, or their linguistic awareness skills, contributes to their reading and writing development (e.g., Apel & Masterson, 2001; Bear & Templeton, 1998; Ehri & McCormick, 1998; Moats, 2000; Schlagal, 2001; Siegler, 1996). Researchers have documented that children’s awareness of sounds (phonological awareness), letter(s) patterns (orthographic awareness), word meaning (vocabulary), and relations among words based on meaning (morphological awareness) influences their acquisition of word reading and spelling abilities (e.g., Bird, Bishop, & Freeman, 1995; Burgess & Lonigan, 1998; Castles & Coltheart, 2004; Deacon, Kirby, & Casselman-Bell, 2009; a Florida State University and Florida Center for Reading Research, Tallahassee b University of South Carolina, Columbia c Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX Correspondence to Young-Suk Kim: ykim@fcrr.org Editor: Marilyn Nippold Associate Editor: Victoria Joffe Received February 8, 2012 Revision received November 19, 2012 Accepted May 8, 2013 DOI: 10.1044/0161-1461(2013/12-0013) Key Words: metalinguistic awareness, vocabulary, word reading, spelling, RtI Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools • Vol. 44 • 337–347 • October 2013 • A American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 337 (i.e., word reading and spelling) and to examine whether any influence from these linguistic skills on literacy abilities varied by children’s RtI status. According to the connectionist (or triangle) model of reading, word reading in English depends on three critical component processes: phonology, orthography, and semantics (Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996; Seidenberg, 2005). This influential model also has been applied to spelling acquisition (Treiman, 1993). The role of phonology (or phonological awareness) in word reading and spelling has been widely recognized (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000) as word reading requires converting letters to sounds and spelling requires representing sounds using letters. Although necessary, phonological awareness is not sufficient for word reading and spelling; orthographic awareness also is necessary because both word reading and spelling involve knowing and representing letters and letter patterns. In addition, knowledge of word meanings (vocabulary) is hypothesized to interact with phonology and orthography and contribute to word reading (Duff & Hulme, 2012; Nation & Snowling, 2004; Oullette, 2006; Ricketts, Nation, & Bishop, 2007). Due to inconsistent grapheme–phoneme correspondences in English, children’s semantic knowledge might help them read words over and above their phonological and orthographic awareness, particularly irregular words in English (Ricketts et al., 2007). It should be noted that although the connectionist model of word reading includes semantics (vocabulary), vocabulary has been primarily examined for its contribution to reading comprehension (e.g., NICHD, 2000); only recently has the direct influence of vocabulary on word reading been examined (Nation & Snowling, 2004; Oullette, 2006; Ricketts et al., 2007). On the other hand, vocabulary has received little attention for its potential relation to spelling (Oullette & Sénéchal, 2008). Findings from the few existing studies examining the relation of vocabulary to spelling have shown weak to moderate relations (Caravolas, Kessler, Hulme, & Snowling, 2005; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). In contrast, many studies have examined the role of morphological awareness in word reading (e.g., Carlisle, 1995; Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993; Casalis & Louis-Alexandre, 2000; Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000; Roman, Kirby, Parrila, Wade-Woolley, & Deacon, 2009) and spelling (e.g., Bourassa, Treiman, & Kessler, 2006; Deacon & Bryant, 2005; Kim, 2010; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006). In the present study, we investigated the unique contributions of vocabulary and morphological awareness to word reading and spelling in addition to phonological and orthographic awareness. In recent years, a few research teams have investigated the simultaneous effects of the three linguistic awareness skills on children’s reading and spelling abilities. However, the results have not been clear developmentally across grades or by outcomes (word reading or spelling). Despite the recognized role of phonological awareness in word reading and spelling (NICHD, 2000; National Research Council, 1998; Torgesen et al., 1994), its unique and independent contribution to either reading or spelling, over and above morphological and orthographic awareness, is not robust. For example, phonological awareness was found to be uniquely related to word reading for first graders (Ortiz et al., 2012) and struggling second graders (Nagy, Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003) and to nonword reading for struggling second graders (Nagy et al., 2003) and more advanced readers (i.e., fourth, sixth, and eighth grade; Roman et al., 2009). In contrast, phonological awareness was not found to be uniquely related to word reading for students in the primary grades (Apel, Wilson-Fowler, Brimo, & Perrin, 2012) and in middle school (Roman et al., 2009) or to spelling for students in the primary grades (Apel et al., 2012; Walker & Hauerwas, 2006). Similarly, findings about the unique role of morphological awareness to word reading and spelling over and above phonological and orthographic awareness have been somewhat mixed. Morphological awareness in kindergarten was uniquely related to reading (word reading and reading comprehension combined) for first-grade students (Ortiz et al., 2012), to word reading for second- and third-grade students (Apel et al., 2012), and to spelling for second- (Apel et al., 2012) and third-grade students (Apel et al., 2012; Walker & Hauerwas, 2006). In contrast, morphological awareness was not found to be uniquely related to word reading for struggling second- and fourth-grade students (Nagy et al., 2003) or for typically developing fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade students (Roman et al., 2009); nor was morphological awareness found to be uniquely related to spelling for first- and second-grade students (Walker & Hauerwas, 2006) or for struggling second- and fourth-grade students (Nagy et al., 2003). However, orthographic awareness does appear to be somewhat more consistently related to word reading and spelling, as it has been found to be uniquely related to spelling for primary-grade students (Apel et al., 2012; Walker & Hauerwas, 2006) and to word reading for typically developing (Apel et al., 2012) and struggling primary-grade students (Nagy et al., 2003) and for typically developing fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade students (Roman et al., 2009). To our knowledge, no study has examined a unique role of vocabulary to word reading and spelling in English after accounting for the three linguistic awareness skills. These mixed findings of the unique roles of phonology, orthography, and morphology might be attributed to multiple factors in previous studies, including differences in participants’ grades and ages and differences in the study methods (e.g., how linguistic awareness, word reading, and spelling were measured). Furthermore, these studies tended to have small sample sizes (Ns ≤ 50 per grade; exceptions were samples in Ortiz et al., [2012] and in Nagy et al. [2003]), which might have influenced their statistical significance. Thus, additional information is needed regarding the unique influence of phonology, orthography, morphology, and vocabulary on the early stages of literacy development. Findings from such studies will inform developmental theory. For example, in the past, many researchers advocated for a stage theory of literacy development, such that different linguistic awareness skills are acquired in a step-wise fashion 338 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools • Vol. 44 • 337–347 • October 2013 over time, and that different linguistic awareness skills influence literacy abilities during different phases (e.g., Bear & Templeton, 1998; Ehri & McCormick, 1998; Moats, 2000). However, the findings reviewed above suggest that even beginning readers and spellers are acquiring the three linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary, and that these skills might be impacting literacy acquisition simultaneously, although the exact nature and patterns of acquisition are still unclear. Knowledge of developmental relations of phonology, orthography, morphology, and vocabulary and how they may influence students’ response to beginning reading has important educational and practical implications for implementation of RtI. The RtI model is used in all 50 states as an early intervention approach (Jenkins, Hudson, & Johnson, 2007; Speece, Case, & Molloy, 2003). In RtI, students are typically screened to determine which students have weak literacy skills so that supplementary literacy intervention can be provided to them. Although RtI models differ in terms of how weak skills are defined, how much intervention students receive, and how responsiveness is defined, most involve multiple tiers of increasing intervention intensity. The foundation for these models is Tier 1, or evidence-based classroom instruction and screening. Typically, Tier 2 is provided in addition to Tier 1 to students with weak skills; if the students do not respond positively, they receive more intensive help at Tier 3. These extra tiers involve increasingly smaller group sizes, more instructional time, more expert teaching, and often, different intervention materials (see Al Otaiba et al., 2011). Even at an early phase of literacy acquisition, children vary widely in their phonology, orthography, morphology, and vocabulary knowledge as well as their word reading and spelling (Apel & Apel, 2011; Cassar & Treiman, 1997; Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008). Thus, if the nature of relations differs for children with varying linguistic awareness skills, then supplemental intervention at Tiers 2 and 3 could be differentiated as a function of the children’s skill level not only for reading, but also for language. If the nature of the relations is similar, then what may need to be varied is the pacing or intensity of instruction rather than content. In our current investigation, students were screened for a risk in literacy acquisition and were assigned a risk level at the start of first grade, followed by random assignment within classrooms to two types of intervention (see Method for details). To date, there has been no investigation about whether phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness and vocabulary are differentially related to literacy abilities in children at different tiers of intervention (RtI). Determining whether the impact of these linguistic awareness skills differs by students who vary in literacy ability and receive differential instruction based on an RtI model should provide additional information on which to situate developmental theory and inform practice. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine the unique contributions of linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary to word reading and spelling in first-grade children participating in a yearlong evaluation of a three-tier RtI implementation. The existing literature suggests no clear patterns for the effects of linguistic awareness skills on reading and spelling across a developmental spectrum, but instead suggests that multiple linguistic awareness skills might be at play (e.g., Apel et al., 2012; Roman et al., 2009; Walker & Hauerwas, 2006). For instance, it has been shown that even novice spellers use orthographic and morphological knowledge in their spelling (Cassar & Treiman, 2009; Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008). Thus, we hypothesized that there might be no to minimal differences among students in the three RtI tiers regarding the contributions of the three linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary to literacy abilities. In other words, although children’s performance level on these linguistic awareness and vocabulary skills might be different, the extent to which component skills contribute to word reading and spelling might not differ for children in different tiers of intervention. Method Participants and Schools A total of 304 first-grade students (157 girls; Mage = 6.92 years, SD = .38) participated in the study. These 304 students were from 28 classrooms in five schools serving students from a variety of socioeconomic status (SES) levels, but predominantly lower SES, within a school district in a southeastern US state. The number of participants per class who completed the study varied from 5 to 17, with a mean of 10.86 (SD = 3.30). All of the schools and teachers used the Open Court Reading program (Bereiter et al., 2002) for È90 min per day as their Tier 1 core reading program. All of the schools were in their second year of RtI implementation. Approximately 61% of the children were African American, 27% were Caucasian, 9% were multiracial, and 3% were listed as other. By design, the majority of the children (72%) qualified for free and reduced lunch status. These students were participating in a larger study investigating the efficacy of an RtI framework (Al Otaiba et al., 2011). In this larger study, all 304 students were screened at the beginning of the school year (within 6 weeks after school started) on several literacy measures, including a measure of teacher judgment of severity of reading difficulties. These initial screenings were used to develop school norms, and results discerned who had the weakest initial reading skills from their school peers. To be eligible for supplemental tiers of intervention, students were required to score <40th percentile for their school on at least three of four screening measures of real and pseudoword reading, letter-sound knowledge, and letter identification or for their teachers to judge them to have severe reading difficulties. Further, students were excluded from intervention if they read above a standard score of 95 on both the Letter Word Identification and Passage Comprehension subtests of the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement, Third Edition (WJ–III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001). Thus, the sample for the present study included all students whose screening results indicated that they had low risk for struggle with literacy acquisition and were initially eligible for Tier 1 Kim et al.: Linguistic Awareness and Reading 339 only (n = 167; Mage = 6.66, SD = .49), those eligible to receive Tier 2 intervention (n = 119; Mage = 6.73, SD = .58), and those eligible to receive Tier 3 intervention (n = 18; Mage = 6.56, SD = .49). A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and chi-square tests revealed no significant differences across the three tiers in terms of student age, gender, or free and reduced price lunch participation. Based on this initial sorting to tier eligibility, students were then randomly assigned to one of two researcheradministered RtI models. In the typical RtI model, after eligibility screening, children received Tier 1 at the beginning of the year and were eligible for Tier 2 if they had not responded to Tier 1 by the second screening 8 weeks later. By contrast, in the dynamic RtI model, children who were eligible were assigned immediately to Tier 2 or 3. Preliminary findings indicated no significant differences in the present sample of students’ literacy abilities between these two conditions in the middle of the school year (Al Otaiba et al., 2011). In the present investigation, we used data from the middle and end of the school year. To summarize, students were receiving intervention at one of three tiers: Tier 1 (90 min per day of classroom literacy instruction), Tier 2 (two 30-min supplementary sessions per week in groups of 5–7), or Tier 3 (four 45-min supplementary sessions per week in groups of 3). Children’s mean performances in the screening measures at the beginning and middle of the year are presented in the Appendix. In the present study, the children’s linguistic awareness and vocabulary skills (predictor variables) were assessed in the middle of the school year, and their word reading and spelling abilities (literacy outcomes) were assessed at the end of the school year. Measures The three linguistic awareness skills, vocabulary, and children’s tier status (i.e., Tiers 1, 2, and 3) served as the primary predictor variables. The students’ word reading and spelling abilities served as the outcome measures. Phonological awareness. The students were administered two subtests from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999): the Blending subtest (20 items) and the Elision subtest (20 items). Each item was scored as correct or incorrect. The total number of correct items represented the total raw score. Internal consistency estimates were .89 and .92 for the Blending and Elision subtests, respectively, for 6-year-olds. Test–retest reliability estimates were .88 for the Blending and Elision subtests for 5- to 7-year-olds. Orthographic awareness. An experimenter-designed task (1 practice item and 50 test items) was used to assess the students’ awareness of orthographic patterns and rules. Each item contained two pseudowords, one of which violated English orthography. The English orthographic violations included the following patterns in English: consonant vowel doubling (e.g., akke - noop), vowel/consonant representations of the vocalized /l/ and /r/ phonemes (e.g., tibl – tible, kr - ker), positional constrains on the use of letters for the /k/ phoneme (e.g., chacke – chake), phonological context rules for the use of digraphs for the /ch/ phoneme (e.g., litch – lich), orthotactic rules for marking the rk versus rc blends (e.g., sorksorc), rules for representing the /a/ and /k/ phonemes (e.g., chank – changk), and contextual rules for representing the vocalized /l/ phoneme after consonant doubles (e.g., fottle – fottel). After the examiner modeled the task using the practice item, the students were requested to look at each word pair and to circle the word that “most looked like a real word.” Each item was scored as correct or incorrect, and the total number of correct items represented the total raw score. Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) for this task was .90. Morphological awareness. The morphological awareness measure also was an experimenter-designed task (1 practice item and 40 test items). For each item, the students heard a word (e.g., happy) followed by a sentence with a missing word (e.g., “When the student did not get an A, he was very _______.”) and were instructed to complete the sentence with a related word. The items to be completed represented inflected words (e.g., socks, cries), derivational words with prefixes (e.g., unusual, disappear), and derivational words with suffixes (e.g., driver, helpful). The first half of the inflected and derived words were phonologically and orthographically transparent with their base form (e.g., happy – unhappy). The latter half of the inflected and derived words involved a phonological and/or orthographic change from their base form (e.g., cry – cries). Each item was scored as correct or incorrect, and the total number of correct items represented the total raw score. Internal consistency for this task was .92. Vocabulary. The students’ expressive vocabulary was assessed using an expressive vocabulary measure, the Picture Vocabulary subtest of the WJ–III, which required the students to name pictured objects. Each item was scored as correct or incorrect, and the total number of correct items represented the total raw score. Woodcock et al. (2001) reported a Cronbach’s alpha of .70 for 6-year-olds. Word reading. The students’ word reading ability was assessed using the Letter Word Identification subtest of the WJ–III, which required students to identify letters and then to read words. Each item was scored as correct or incorrect, and the total number of correct items represented the total raw score. Woodcock et al. (2001) reported a Cronbach’s alpha of .92 for 6-year-olds. Spelling. The students’ spelling ability was assessed using the Spelling subtest of the WJ–III. This subtest is a dictation task in which students are asked to spell words of increasing difficulty. The research assistant read each word, read the sentence with the word, and then repeated the spelling word (e.g., “Dog. I took my dog to the park. Dog”). Each item was scored as correct or incorrect, and the total number of correct items represented the total raw score. Woodcock et al. (2001) reported a Cronbach’s alpha of .92 for 6-year-olds. Procedure All predictor measures (i.e., morphologic awareness, phonological awareness, and vocabulary) were individually administered across three sessions within a span of 6 weeks in the middle of the school year (Èfifth and sixth months). 340 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools • Vol. 44 • 337–347 • October 2013 The only exception was the group-administered (typically 3–5 children) orthographic awareness task, which was administered after all individualized tests were completed (e.g., Èseventh month). Outcome measures were administered at the end of the school year (ninth month). All measures were administered by undergraduate and graduate assistants who had been trained by the authors. Due to the complexity of the RtI project, all staff members were aware of assignment to condition. Under more ideal circumstances, assessors would be blind to condition. Because of this potential problem, we explained to assessors that experimenter bias could undermine an otherwise very carefully planned study (e.g., Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1984). The tasks were administered in the students’ schools. Results Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Table 1 shows the mean, standard deviation, and range of scores for each of the predictor and outcome measures by the students’ tier. Where available, both raw and standard scores are reported. Notably, by the end of the year, the students’ word reading and spelling standard scores were in the average range compared to the norm samples. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to compare the mean performance of the students who were initially eligible for Tier 1 only, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Significant differences were found, F(2, 294) > 15.06; ps < .001. Post hoc tests (i.e., Bonferroni) showed that the Tier 1 students outperformed the Tier 2 and 3 students on all of the measures ( ps < .001), but the Tier 2 students did not differ from the Tier 3 students on any measure after the Bonferroni correction (statistical significance at p < .004 = .05/12). Table 2. Pearson bivariate correlations (two tailed) among the measures. Variable 1. Spelling 2. Word reading 3. Morphological awareness 4. PA Elision subtest 5. PA Blending subtest 6. Vocabulary 7. Orthographic awareness 1 2 3 — .87 .53 — .59 — .62 .42 .41 .63 .62 .45 .47 .58 .57 .53 .68 .40 4 5 6 — .44 .47 .42 — .36 .32 — .27 Note. All coefficients are statistically significant at .001 level. Finally, as shown in Table 2, all of the measures were statistically significantly related ( ps < .001). The linguistic awareness and vocabulary measures were all moderately related to end-of-year word reading and spelling (.41 ≤ rs ≤ .63). In addition, these same four measures were somewhat weakly (r = .27 between orthographic awareness and vocabulary) to moderately (r = .68 between morphological awareness and vocabulary) related with each other. It should be noted that the children’s performance on the Blending and Elision subtests was examined separately, although both subtests captured phonological awareness, given suggestions from previous studies that various phonological awareness tasks are differentially related to literacy abilities (e.g., Katzir et al., 2006). Contributions of Linguistic Awareness and Vocabulary Skills to Word Reading and Spelling To address our research question, multilevel models were fitted, using SAS 9.2 Proc Mixed procedures, for the Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the measures included in the study (phonological awareness [PA], orthographic awareness, morphological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, and spelling) for the entire sample and for the students by Response to Intervention tier. Entire sample (N = 304) Measure PA Elision subtest – RS PA Elision subtest – SSa PA Blending subtest – RS PA Blending subtest – SSa Orthographic awareness – RS Morphological awareness – RS Vocabulary – RS Vocabulary – SS Word reading – RS Word reading – SS Spelling – RS Spelling – SS Tier 1 (n = 167) Tier 2 (n = 119) M SD Range M SD Range 8.38 9.02 14.72 13.50 37.14 16.73 19.05 98.27 37.38 109.30 12.66 24.14 105.32 15.60 4.27 4.40 3.25 2.68 8.51 7.48 3.14 11.06 7.71 0–20 0–19 1–20 5–19 16–53 0–36 10–28 60–127 16–62 64–141 10.16 10.08 15.58 14.20 41.01 19.83 20.13 102.31 41.82 116.06 4.15 4.63 2.84 2.41 7.43 6.89 2.87 9.62 5.80 8.98 4–20 0–19 8–20 9–19 16–53 5–36 12–28 75–127 30–62 90–141 5.50 9–39 61–145 27.24 4.29 113.86 11.84 18–39 80–145 M SD 6.55 3.28 7.94 3.74 13.86 3.38 12.72 2.66 32.62 7.30 13.38 6.39 18.01 2.95 94.13 10.79 32.37 6.17 101.37 11.91 20.69 4.41 95.51 13.60 Tier 3 (n = 18) Range M SD Range 0–16 0–15 4–19 6–18 18–51 0–28 10–25 60–116 16–43 64–123 3.94 6.17 12.44 12.11 31.11 10.33 16.00 88.39 29.78 99.78 2.64 3.20 4.89 3.38 7.23 5.95 2.35 9.31 5.85 9.70 0–9 0–11 1–19 5–17 21–50 3–22 11–19 67–100 18–40 78–113 9–29 61–124 18.28 91.28 3.14 9.18 14–25 71–106 Note. RS = raw score; SS = standard score; Vocabulary = Picture Vocabulary subtest of the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement, Third Edition (WJ–III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001); Word Reading = WJ–III Letter Word Identification subtest; Spelling = WJ–III Spelling subtest. a Standard scores for these measures are in the scale of M = 10 and SD = 3, whereas standard scores for the other measures are in the scale of M = 100 and SD = 15. Kim et al.: Linguistic Awareness and Reading 341 word reading and spelling outcomes to account for nesting of children within classrooms. The unconditional models showed that intraclass correlations were .08 and .14 in the word reading and spelling outcomes, respectively. In other words, 8% and 14% of the total variance in the word reading and spelling tasks were attributable to variation among classrooms. The students’ tier status was included as a dummy variable, with Tier 1 as the referent group. The final model results are shown in Table 3. When the outcome was word reading, the students’ performance on phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and morphological awareness (both elision and blending) was uniquely and positively related ( ps = < .02), whereas their performance on vocabulary was not ( p = .18). When the outcome was spelling, the students’ performance on phonological awareness as measured by the Elision subtest ( p < .001) and orthographic awareness ( p < .001) was uniquely and positively related after accounting for all of the other variables in the model. The students’ performance on phonological awareness as measured by the Blending subtest, morphological awareness, and vocabulary was not uniquely related to spelling after accounting for all of the other variables in the model. The main effects of tiers were statistically significant such that Tier 2 and 3 students had lower mean performances than Tier 1 students by 4.57 and 4.82 words in the word reading task and by 2.93 and 3.74 words in the spelling task after accounting for all other predictors in the model (see the main effects of Tier 2 and Tier 3 variables in the model). In other words, by the end of the year following participation in RtI, after accounting for all of the other predictors in the model, students eligible for Tier 1 after the second screening (middle of the school year) outperformed classmates receiving Tiers 2 and 3 in both word reading and spelling. Interaction terms between the linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary, and tier status, were systematically included in the models to examine whether the effects of the linguistic awareness skills varied as a function of the children’s tier status. For both outcomes, no interaction terms were Table 3. Fixed effects and variance components from multilevel models for the word reading and spelling outcomes. Word reading Measure β SE Fixed effects Intercept 19.38 2.72 Morphological .14 .06 awareness PA Elision subtest .41 .09 PA Blending subtest .23 .10 Vocabulary .17 .12 Orthographic .21 .04 awareness Tier 2 –4.57 .78 Tier 3 –4.82 1.36 Variance components Level 1 – individuals 20.51 Level 2 – classrooms 2.00 p Spelling β SE p <.001 11.38 1.93 <.001 .01 .04 .04 .26 <.001 .02 .18 <.001 .35 .14 .04 .21 .06 <.001 .07 .06 .09 .61 .03 <.001 <.001 –2.93 <.001 –3.74 .52 <.001 .95 <.001 11.07 .35 statistically significant ( ps > .05) and thus were not included in the final model, indicating that there were no differences in the contributions that three linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary made as a function of students’ tier status. Discussion The purpose of this study was to determine the unique contributions of phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness skills and vocabulary knowledge to the word reading and spelling abilities of first-grade children. The children were part of an RtI model of instruction and were receiving either Tier 1, 2, or 3 intervention. We found that the three linguistic awareness skills (phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness) were unique predictors of word reading, and phonological and orthographic awareness were unique predictors of spelling. The unique contributions that these linguistic awareness skills made to word reading and spelling were similar regardless of the student’s initial RtI tier status. Contributions of Linguistic Awareness Skills and Vocabulary to Word Reading and Spelling The phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness skills of the first-grade students in our investigation were all uniquely related to their word reading abilities, whereas vocabulary was not after accounting for the three linguistic awareness skills. These findings differed somewhat from those of Ortiz et al. (2012), the only other research team to examine the influence of these three linguistic awareness skills on the word reading skills of first-grade children. In their investigation, Ortiz et al. used kindergarten linguistic awareness ability to predict first-grade reading (combined word reading and reading comprehension). They found that children’s phonological and morphological awareness skills predicted their reading abilities, whereas orthographic awareness skills did not. The differences between the findings of the two studies (i.e., unique contribution of orthographic awareness) may be explained in several ways. First, Ortiz et al. (2012) measured students’ linguistic awareness skills in kindergarten rather than first grade. Thus, it may be that differences resulted from the age of testing: Kindergarten children may have different profiles and abilities than first-grade children. In addition, the reading outcome in Ortiz et al. was a combined measure of word reading and reading comprehension, and word reading ability in kindergarten was included as a control variable. Finally, we used a different measure of orthographic awareness than did Ortiz et al.; we used a task that required the students to consider allowable orthographic patterns, whereas Ortiz et al. used a task that required the students to name letters, which is typically considered as alphabet letter knowledge. Although both tasks may tap into orthographic knowledge (Apel, 2011), they require different levels of linguistic awareness. It may be that the orthographic task used in our investigation required a higher level of linguistic awareness and thus better represented the orthographic 342 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools • Vol. 44 • 337–347 • October 2013 awareness demands associated with recognizing words when reading. In the future, investigators may wish to examine whether the type of orthographic awareness task affects the impact the skill has on word reading. When spelling was the outcome variable, a slightly different result was obtained. Phonological awareness and orthographic awareness uniquely influenced the students’ spelling ability whereas morphological awareness and vocabulary did not. These results are divergent from Walker and Hauerwas (2006), who examined the influence of firstgrade students’ three linguistic awareness skills on spelling and found that orthographic awareness alone predicted spelling. However, there are two caveats to the findings of Walker and Hauerwas. First, their outcome variable was the spelling of inflected verbs, which is a much more narrow outcome variable than was used in the present study. Second, Walker and Hauerwas combined the results of their firstgrade students with those of their second-grade students. Thus, any developmental differences due to age or grade could not be determined. It may be that phonological awareness ability could have impacted spelling skills had it been examined for the first-grade students alone. However, Nagy et al. (2003) also found that orthographic awareness alone accounted for variance on spelling in a group of secondgrade students who were at risk for literacy development— presumably a group of students with skills similar to younger (e.g., first-grade or lower) students. Although these researchers (Nagy et al., 2003; Walker & Hauerwas, 2006) did not find that phonological awareness skills, when examined in tandem with other linguistic awareness skills, influenced spelling ability in students in the early stages of spelling development, our findings suggest that phonological awareness skills do impact spelling ability after accounting for other linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary. Given the theoretical importance of phonological awareness, and converging findings supporting the importance of phonological awareness in word reading and spelling (Lonigan, Schatschneider, & Westberg, 2009; NICHD, 2000; National Research Council, 1998), additional research is required to better understand the unique role of phonological awareness skill, in combination with other linguistic awareness skills, for literacy development. In our study, morphological awareness did not uniquely contribute to spelling—a finding contrary to those of other investigations with second- through fourth-grade students (e.g., Apel et al., 2012; Nagy et al., 2003; Walker & Hauerwas, 2006). This finding may be due to several reasons. First, it is possible that first-grade students who, on average, are still in the beginning stage of spelling might depend on phonological and orthographic awareness to a larger extent than morphological awareness. Although children are likely to draw on multiple linguistic awareness skills for spelling, the weight of contributions of multiple linguistic skills to spelling might differ across developmental span in literacy acquisition. Second, discrepant results might be attributed to different types of tasks used across studies. Walker and Hauerwas (2006), for example, required their participants to spell inflected words. Thus, it seems logical that a relation would exist given that their morphological awareness was a cloze task that focused on inflectional morphology. Apel et al. (2012) required their participants to spell between 30 and 50 words from the Test of Written Spelling—Fourth Edition (TWS–4; Larsen, Hammill, & Moats, 1999), which is a list that contains both inflected and derived words. In the present study, the children also were required to spell words from a norm-referenced measure that contained inflected and derived words (i.e., WJ–III). However, unlike in Apel et al., testing in our study was terminated when children reached the ceiling as defined by the test manual. It may be that our participants spelled less multimorphemic words, which may have limited the influence of morphological awareness on spelling. The relation between spelling and morphological awareness, then, may depend on the degree to which students are required to spell inflected and derived words. In the future, investigators should examine how different measures of morphological awareness and spelling influence the unique role of morphological awareness in spelling. In our study, vocabulary also was not uniquely related to word reading or spelling over and above phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness. Although previous studies suggested a unique role of vocabulary to word reading (Oullette, 2006) and irregular word reading (Ricketts et al., 2007), these studies did not include any of the three linguistic awareness skills included in the present study. An exception from another orthography, however, is relevant: One study with young Korean-speaking children (Kim, 2010) also found that vocabulary was not uniquely related to word reading or spelling after accounting for phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming. However, these findings are not directly comparable due to differences in orthographic depth (Share, 2008) between English and Korean. The Korean language has a relatively transparent orthography where phoneme–grapheme correspondences are largely consistent and truly irregular words do not exist (Kim, 2011). Therefore, sublexical strategies (phonology, orthography, and morphology) might largely explain variation in word reading (Katz & Frost, 1992) and spelling without additional facilitation of semantic information. According to the present study, vocabulary does not appear to be uniquely related to word reading and spelling for English-speaking first graders after accounting for linguistic awareness skills. However, it is not clear whether this is true for children who are more advanced in their literacy skills (e.g., grade two and three) or whether results differ as a function of type of words (irregular words vs. regular words). Future efforts are needed to replicate and expand our understanding of the relation of vocabulary to lexical-level literacy skills. We did not find any statistically significant differences among the three RtI tier groups in the effects of the three linguistic awareness skills on year-end reading or spelling once students were given intervention. Taken together with findings from previous studies with struggling readers in second and fourth grade (Nagy et al., 2003) and typically developing readers (e.g., Apel et al., 2012; Ortiz et al., 2012; Kim et al.: Linguistic Awareness and Reading 343 Walker & Hauerwas, 2006), it appears that linguistic awareness at the middle of the school year did not differentially contribute to the reading and spelling outcomes of children based on their initial eligibility to different tiers. However, caution needs to be exercised with this interpretation for two reasons. First, the sample size for Tier 3 was small, which might have influenced the results. Second, the participating children tended to have relatively high performance in their word reading and spelling as measured by the WJ–III compared to the norm sample (mean standard scores = 99.78 and 91.28 in word reading and spelling for those in Tiers 2 and 3, respectively). However, interesting to note are the large differences in standard scores between the WJ–III measures and scores on the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999) Sight Word Efficiency subtest (one of the initial screeners). According to the latter, children in Tiers 2 and 3 were poor readers at the beginning of the year, with mean standard scores <80. Future studies are needed to investigate these discrepancies in standard scores. It should be noted that although the nature of relations between linguistic awareness skills and lexical-level literacy abilities (word reading and spelling) did not differ as a function of children’s tier grouping, there remained performance differences between children in Tier 1 versus those in Tier 2 and Tier 3 in the word reading and spelling tasks even after accounting for all of the predictors in the model. That is, after accounting for individual differences in phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary, the children in Tiers 2 and 3 had lower average scores in word reading and spelling than the children in Tier 1. These results suggest a need to explore additional factors influencing these children’s performance on word reading and spelling. Given the classroom-level variation in the outcomes (8% and 14%, respectively, for word reading and spelling), classroom-level predictors such as instructional quality and the extent of differentiated instruction could be explored as potential explanatory factors. Furthermore, additional child-level factors such as executive functions (e.g., working memory, self-regulation) might be potential predictors to examine in future studies. Our finding that students’ phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness skills related to their word reading and spelling abilities supports more current theories of literacy development that characterize literacy development as relying on multiple linguistic awareness skills simultaneously across development (e.g., Apel & Masterson, 2001; Bourassa & Treiman, 2009; Rittle-Johnson & Siegler, 1999; Siegler, 1996). Unlike stage theories (e.g., Bear & Templeton, 1998; Ehri & McCormick, 1998; Moats, 2000), these repertoire or overlapping waves theories suggest that children have access to and use their phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness skills when they are engaged in word reading and spelling, with the use of those linguistic awareness skills varying based on the requirements of the literacy task. The present findings support this notion: The students’ linguistic awareness skills uniquely influenced their word reading abilities, and their phonological and orthographic awareness skills contributed to their spelling abilities. These findings suggest that the children had access to all three linguistic awareness skills and used them differently depending on the literacy task. Limitations There are several limitations to our findings that should be addressed. First, our results are based on correlational data and thus causal inferences cannot be made. Although theoretical accounts of word reading and spelling specify causal roles of the linguistic awareness skills, bidirectional relation has been suggested as well (e.g., spelling influencing phonological awareness; Hecht & Close, 2002). In addition, the results in the present study show a snapshot across an important but brief developmental spectrum. Thus, longitudinal studies are needed to investigate the relations of the linguistic awareness skills to word reading and spelling. Second, our findings are based on the specific linguistic awareness and literacy measures that were used in the present study. Thus, it is possible that different outcomes would have resulted had other measures been used. In the future, investigators should determine the role that specific tasks play in studies of the impact of linguistic awareness skills on reading and spelling ability. Third, there was a brief lag between administration of the orthographic awareness task and the phonological and morphological awareness tasks due to practical reasons of administering a large battery of assessments. Although we obtained similar results as other researchers for the impact of orthographic awareness on reading and spelling (e.g., Apel et al., 2012; Walker & Hauerwas, 2006), it would have been optimal to have administered the orthographic awareness measure at the same time as the other two linguistic awareness measures. Fourth, the number of students in each tier differed. In particular, the number of children in Tier 3 was small (n = 18 compared to n = 167 and n = 119 for students in Tiers 1 and 2, respectively). Although this imbalance reflects a natural phenomenon in the schools, and reliable achievement differences were observed in the models (Table 3), we acknowledge that, statistically, it would be informative to have similar sample sizes in each group. For instance, lack of statistically significant differences in mean performances between Tier 2 and Tier 3 students and interaction effects might be attributed to the small sample size for the Tier 3 group. Fifth, causal experiments could inform intervention efforts by manipulating training in the three skills of phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness to examine child by treatment interactions with larger samples of students with language and reading impairments. Finally, by design, the majority of our participants were African American and came from low-income homes. It is unclear whether similar results would be obtained from different populations. However, given that children from low-income homes are considered to be at risk for literacy difficulties (e.g., National Research Council, 1998), this population was important to study for practical purposes. Studies have shown that poverty 344 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools • Vol. 44 • 337–347 • October 2013 and its common correlates (e.g., lower parental education) strongly influence children’s developmental trajectories in oral language and emergent literacy skills as well as conventional literacy skills (Arnold & Doctoroff, 2003; Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Kaplan & Walpole, 2005). For instance, children from low-income backgrounds often demonstrate lower phonological awareness than children from middleincome homes (Lonigan, Burgess, Anthony, & Barker, 1998) as well as smaller expressive and receptive vocabulary (Arriaga, Fenson, Cronan, & Pethick, 1998). Future Educational Implications Although the findings of the present study are correlational and have limited causal implications, we cautiously suggest the following educational implications. First, as mentioned earlier, our results suggest that first-grade students with varied literacy abilities, show a similar pattern of relations between linguistic awareness skills and lexicallevel literacy abilities. As such, educators and other specialists (e.g., speech-language pathologists) may apply similar assessment and instructional practices to all students who are in the process of acquiring their literacy skills. Specifically, it appears that educational professionals might benefit from assessing students’ abilities in all three linguistic awareness skill areas to determine the need for instruction or remediation (e.g., Apel, Masterson, & Brimo, 2011). Using this prescriptive assessment approach, educational or clinical goals can be tailored for students’ specific needs. Likewise, the present findings suggest a multilinguistic approach to literacy instruction that emphasizes the different linguistic awareness skills as foundational skills for reading and spelling (Apel et al., 2012). In conclusion, our results suggest that first-grade children who were enrolled in three different tiers of an RtI model used their phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness skills when reading and spelling words. That is, it appears that literacy development is best characterized as a conjoined acquisition process (Berninger, Abbott, Nagy, & Carlisle, 2010) in which children use a repertoire of linguistic awareness skills to read and write (Apel & Masterson, 2001). These findings add to the literature base because, to date, no research has studied the impact of these three linguistic awareness skills on reading and spelling ability in a cohort of first-grade students who receive differential instruction based on an RtI framework. 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Appendix Mean Standard Score and Standard Deviation of Students in Tiers 1, 2, and 3 on the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement, Third Edition (WJ–III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) Letter-Word Identification Subtest and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE: Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999) Sight Word Efficiency Subtest at the Beginning and Middle of the School Year Beginning of the year Middle of the year Measure RtI tier Score SD Score SD WJ–III Letter Word Identification Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3 Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3 110.62 93.10 88.39 94.36 77.33 70.61 10.73 10.17 8.29 11.39 9.16 7.42 114.86 99.48 99.17 102.25 84.08 83.50 9.97 11.00 7.25 13.22 12.63 9.59 TOWRE Sight Word Efficiency Note. Spelling was not used as a screening measure at the beginning and middle of the school year and thus is not reported here. 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