Abstract The main purpose of this study was to examine whether the age at which children start to learn to read affects their later progress. The study was conducted in Zürich, Switzerland, and compared a first grade class in a local school with two first grade classes in a Montessori school. It was found that although the Montessori children had an advantage over the local children in alphabet knowledge at entry to Grade 1, this was not translated into a significant advantage at the end of Grade 1 in either phonemic awareness or reading ability. Further analysis revealed that pretest alphabet knowledge for the whole group was significantly related to progress. In addition, scatterplots showed that some children started school with high levels of alphabet knowledge but did not make progress, indicating that alphabet knowledge is necessary for literacy progress but not sufficient.

中文翻译：

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在幼儿园学习字母会让孩子们在第一年的学校里有一个良好的开端吗？瑞士公立学校和蒙台梭利学校两个一年级班级儿童阅读进度的比较

摘要 本研究的主要目的是考察儿童开始学习阅读的年龄是否会影响他们以后的进步。该研究在瑞士苏黎世进行，并将当地学校的一年级班级与蒙台梭利学校的两个一年级班级进行了比较。研究发现，虽然蒙台梭利儿童在进入一年级时在字母知识方面比当地儿童有优势，但这并没有转化为一年级末在音素意识或阅读能力方面的显着优势。进一步的分析表明，整个组的预测试字母知识与进步显着相关。此外，散点图显示，一些孩子开始上学时的字母知识水平很高，但没有取得进步，