Relación de las habilidades metalingüísticas con la adquisición y consolidación de la lectura Relationship between metalinguistic skills and reading acquisition and consolidation

The target of this work was to study the acquisition of metalinguistic skills as children progress through the school and determine the importance of each metalinguistic ability in performance decoding and reading comprehension process. We were particularly interested in the contribution made by each differential skill to the processes of reading decoding and reading comprehension at each stage of schooling in Spanishspeaking children. Participants were first, second and third graders from private and public schools in Argentina, with an age range of 6 to 8. A total of 306 children (170 girls and 136 boys) participated in the first metalinguistic reading skills assessment. The metalinguistic abilities assessed were phonological awareness, lexical awareness and syntactic awareness. The reading processes evaluated were reading decoding and reading comprehension. Results showed a progressive acquisition of these skills, as well as the importance of phonological awareness in early reading decoding. Lexical and syntactic awareness were also important in consolidating reading.