In the beginning was the rhyme? A reflection on Hulme, Hatcher, Nation, Brown, Adams, and Stuart (2002).

Phonological sensitivity at different grain sizes is a good predictor of reading acquisition in all languages. However, prior to any explicit tuition in alphabetic knowledge, phonological sensitivity develops at the larger grain sizes-syllables, onsets, and rimes-in all languages so far studied. There are also developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations and reading strategies across orthographies. Phoneme-level skills develop fastest in children acquiring orthographically consistent languages with a simple syllabic (CV) structure, such as Finnish and Italian. For English, however, both "large" and "small" units are important for the successful acquisition of literacy. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).