ABSTRACT
The first half of this chapter reviews the main findings from a research programme that my colleagues and I completed in 2004, in which we examined the acquisition of reading skills in children living in Wales (Hanley, Masterson, Spencer, & Evans, 2004; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004). In this investigation, the ease of learning to read the notoriously opaque English orthography was compared with learning to read Welsh (a highly transparent alphabetic orthography). Wales offers a unique opportunity to compare the effects of a transparent and opaque orthography on reading development because children in Wales are taught to read in either Welsh-or English-speaking primary schools. Consequently, it is possible to compare the acquisition of a shallow and deep orthography in children of a similar age in the same country and education system. There are therefore a number of methodological advantages associated with studies of learning to read in Wales compared with other investigations of the effects of orthographic transparency on learning to read. As will become evident, the results from our research clearly demonstrate that the single-word reading and phonological awareness skills of the children who were learning to read the transparent Welsh orthography developed much more quickly than did those of children who were learning to read English.
