Language general and specific factors in letter acquisition

The present study investigated the extent to which child level factors (i.e., phonological awareness) and letter level factors (i.e., letter name structures, letter frequency, visual similarity, and letter order) contributed to letter name and sound acquisition, using data from Korean-speaking children (N = 169) and cross-classified multilevel model. The results showed that (1) a relatively large amount of variance is attributable to letter differences; (2) letter feature variables, letter name structure variable in particular, explained a large amount of variance attributable to differences among letters for letter-name knowledge; (3) phonological awareness was consistently related to letter-name and -sound knowledge; (4) letter-name knowledge was somewhat inconsistent in its relation to letter-sound knowledge; and (5) letter feature variables were not consistently related to letter-name or -sound knowledge. The results are discussed in light of language or script general versus specific factors and instructional environment in letter name and sound acquisition.