Cunningham, A. 1 , Witton, C. 2 , Talcott, J. . 2 , Burgess, A. 2 & Shapiro, L. 2
1 Coventry University
2 Aston University
We examined the reading skill-profiles of UK primary school children receiving intensive synthetic phonics with an emphasis on decoding nonwords. Pupils from 16 schools (717 children) were assessed at school entry and at the end of the first and second year of school (between ages 4 and 7) using a bespoke set of tasks that isolated key components of reading-related skills, plus standardised assessments of exception, regular and nonword reading. At the end of the second year of school, we used standardised test norms to identify children scoring -0.75 SD below the mean. Children were classified as having a phonological deficit (PD - a deficit in nonwords only), lexical deficit (LD - a deficit in exception words only), or mixed deficit (MD - a deficit in nonwords and exception words). A PD-only profile was rare (2%) compared with an LD-only (9%) or MD profile (9%). The incidence of PDs may have been reduced by an instructional emphasis on nonword decoding. The children with LD or MD showed difficulties across a range of reading-related tests, while the PD group showed specific difficulties in nonword reading. A planned follow-up at age 9 will establish the stability of these profiles with age.