Decoding Strategies in Spanish First-Grade Students at Risk of Reading Difficulties

In this study, we examine the effect of an intervention on decoding strategies of monolingual Spanish-speaking, first-grade students in Spain. Participants were first-grade Spanish-speaking monolingual students assigned to one of three conditions based on their reading risk in Spain. The first group comprised normally developing readers; the second group comprised students at risk for a reading disability who received an empirically derived intervention; the third group comprised students at risk for a reading disability who received business as usual instruction. Findings suggest that students at risk for a reading disability who received the intervention scored significantly higher than students at risk who did not receive the intervention at the end of first grade. Moreover, students at risk who received the intervention moved from a sound-by-sound decoding strategy to being able to blend sounds to read a pseudoword as effectively as normally developing students. Implications for practice and future research on Spanish decoding and word automaticity are discussed.