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

This article examines the impact of the Program for the Prevention of Specific Learning Difficulties (PREDEA) intervention on decoding strategies among monolingual Spanish-speaking first-grade students in Spain identified as at risk for reading difficulties. The study compared three groups: typical readers, at-risk students receiving the PREDEA intervention, and at-risk students receiving standard school instruction. Results indicate that while both at-risk groups showed similar growth in decoding pseudowords sound by sound, only the PREDEA group demonstrated significant improvement in blending sounds to read pseudowords as whole units, ultimately closing the gap with typical readers by the end of first grade. The findings highlight the importance of systematic, explicit instruction in grapheme-phoneme conversion for accelerating reading acquisition phases in transparent orthographies like Spanish and suggest that the quality of instruction influences the development of automatic word reading skills. Limitations include the non-randomized design and assessments conducted by intervention teachers rather than independent evaluators.