Grapheme-Phoneme Association Skill in High And Low Academic Achievers

Abstract

Reading and writing are the most basic, most central and the most essential part of learning (Bryant & Bradley, 1983). The National Institute of Child Health & Human development (NICHD) considers reading failure to reflect a national public health problem (Lyon, 2013). Grapheme Phoneme Association (GPA) skill (phonics) is one of the early precursors of reading disability (Justice & Kaderavek, 2004) and is poorer in reading disabled children (Nicholson, 1992). The aim of the present study was to explore the capability of Grapheme Phoneme Association of High Academic Achievers (HAA) - children who scored more than 75 percentile marks and Low Academic Achievers (LAA) - children who scored below 35 percentile marks. The GPA checklist was made which consisted of 21 known phonemes and graphemes divided into three sets (Set I, II and III), each set consisting of seven graphemes. Each grapheme was randomly associated with an arbitrary phoneme. A significant difference between the mean scores of HAA and LAA was found in the GPA task. The Grapheme- Phoneme association checklist can be used to identify reading disability as early as possible and will be helpful for early intervention in reading disability.