Literacy skills are important for children’s development. The present study explored the effectiveness of a parent coaching approach on the reading and spelling skills and compared cognitive-linguistic skills performances between Chinese children with and without dyslexia. Participants were 33 children with dyslexia and 77 children without dyslexia, as well as their parent, in Hong Kong. Children were divided into three groups: dyslexia with training, non-dyslexia with training, and non-dyslexia without training. Parents in both training groups were instructed to facilitate children’s literacy skills. A series of cognitive-linguistic skills were tested on children at pretest. Children received measures of character reading, word reading, and word spelling before and after the parent coaching. Results showed that, compared to children without dyslexia, children with dyslexia performed significantly more poorly on all cognitive-linguistic skills. Analyses of the training effect demonstrated that the dyslexia with training group significantly improved their performances on word reading and word spelling following the intervention. In addition, those without dyslexia who experienced training performed significantly better on character reading and word spelling at posttest than pretest. These results suggest that parent coaching can be one potentially effective method of promoting literacy skills among children both with and without dyslexia. Copyright ©2024 Springer.

Copying characters presented previously (delayed copying) is an important skill in Chinese literacy acquisition. The relations of delayed copying and a set of literacy-related skills (including vocabulary knowledge, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic awareness), visual-orthographic judgment, motor coordination, pure copying of foreign scripts, and delayed copying to Chinese spelling were examined among 294 typically developing Hong Kong kindergarteners. With all other variables statistically controlled, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic awareness, motor coordination, and delayed copying all uniquely explained Chinese spelling. To further investigate how delayed copying interacts with other skills, path analyses were conducted. The final model showed that vocabulary knowledge, visual-orthographic judgment, and pure copying had indirect effects on spelling through delayed copying. These findings partly support spelling models developed in alphabetic writing systems, but also reflect the uniqueness of Chinese. In addition, results suggest that delayed copying is a unique window into how children learn to write words in Chinese. The potentially critical role of delayed copying in Chinese spelling makes it a potentially good clinical indicator of early spelling proficiency and spelling difficulties. Copyright © 2022 SAGE Publications.