Psychológia a patopsychológia dieťaťa, 55, 2021, č. 1, s. 3–25

STRONG PRECURSORS OF EARLY LITERACY IN SLOVAK LANGUAGE

The paper presents the first comprehensive results on the strength of early literacy precursors in the Slovak language. Longitudinal study of 211 children, which lasted from the end of kindergarten until the end of the second year of elementary school, examined the strength of phonological, cognitive-linguistic and literacy skills (phonemic awareness, rapid automatized naming and letter knowledge) as precursors of word-level reading and writing. The results of the research confirmed that the key precursor of reading words in the preschool age and of writing words until the end of the 1st year of elementary school is the knowledge of letters. From the beginning of the 1st year of elementary school, rapid automatized naming takes over the leading role for reading words, and from the end of the 1st year of elementary school phonemic awareness for writing words. Phonemic awareness was found to be a significant parallel and longitudinal precursor throughout the research duration, with stronger predictive relationships existing with writing as with reading words.