ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys research on reading acquisition in different orthographies. Direct comparisons of reading acquisition in English and other orthographies show that the acquisition of the basic strategy of phonological decoding takes considerably longer in English than in many other orthographies. The main reason for this difference is the particularly low consistency of grapheme—phoneme correspondences in English. Other factors such as the method of reading instruction, age of school entry, or cultural differences play only a minor role. The higher grapheme—phoneme correspondence consistency of German probably also explains why the power of phonological awareness to predict later reading skills is lower in German than is reported for English and why the problems of dyslexic children are less marked in consistent than in inconsistent orthographies. Despite orthographic differences, reading is probably based on the same neurological mechanisms in all alphabetic orthographies.
