Reports on two longitudinal studies in which 3 subgroups of German-speaking children (phonological awareness deficit, naming-speed deficit, and double deficit) were assessed for reading and spelling performance three years later. Unlike findings with English-speaking children, results reveal that phonological awareness deficits did not affect phonological coding in word recognition but did affect orthographic spelling and foreign-word reading. (Contains 53 references and 3 tables.) (Author/GCP)