What is in the naming? A 5-year longitudinal study of early rapid naming and phonological sensitivity in relation to subsequent reading skills in both native Chinese and English as a second language.

Among 262 Chinese children, syllable awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at age 5 years and invented spelling of Pinyin at age 6 years independently predicted subsequent Chinese character recognition and English word reading at ages 8 years and 10 years, even with initial Chinese character reading ability statistically controlled. In addition, reading fluency in Chinese was predicted by RAN but not by phonological sensitivity, whereas...