Phonological awareness and learning to read in Afrikaans

Abstract

In this study, the issue of whether phonological awareness is a precursor to learning to read in Afrikaans or a consequence of literacy was explored. It appears that, for children learning to read in Afrikaans, certain aspects of phonological awareness such as onset and rime detection and syllable manipulation are acquired before they are able to read, while other aspects, such as phoneme manipulation are related to the process of learning to read. The development of phonological awareness and its relationship to learning to read was also investigated. It was proposed that children who were learning to read and write in Afrikaans, which has a systematic phonological and orthographic structure, would show a different developmental pattern to children who were learning to read and write in English, which has an opaque orthography with many irregular letter-sound correspondences. The findings indicate that the order of phonological development is similar in both languages, although it is possible that there may be differences in the rate of acquisition of phonological awareness skills. The phonological awareness tests used in this study could be used to detect children who may be at risk for later reading difficulties.