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Linking spoken and written word knowledge

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 1, page 374 (2022)Cite this article

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Learning to read is a complex process. Early progress in learning to read alphabetic scripts (such as English) depends upon the ability to apply knowledge of letter sounds. Children learn the sounds typically made by the letters of their script and use this knowledge to decode new words they encounter. However, alphabetic decoding isn’t the whole story.

When children begin formal schooling they know the pronunciations and meanings of many spoken words. As children begin to learn to read, they attach their new knowledge about written words onto their existing oral vocabulary knowledge. With this observation as a backdrop, studies of individual differences suggest a link between spoken and written language: children with larger oral vocabularies tend to be better at reading.

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  1. School of Psychological Sciences and Macquarie University Centre for Reading, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Signy Wegener

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  1. Signy Wegener
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Correspondence to Signy Wegener.

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Wegener, S. Linking spoken and written word knowledge. Nat Rev Psychol 1, 374 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00076-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00076-6

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