Predictive Examination of Phonological Awareness Among Hebrew-Speaking Kindergarten Children.

Dorin Wasserstein,Orly Lipka

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01809

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of phonological awareness (PA) skills among Hebrew-speaking kindergarten children. Specifically, the study examines the effects of cognitive, early literacy, and language skills to PA among Hebrew-speaking children at the middle (Early K) and end (End K) of kindergarten, and the contribution of various literacy and cognitive skills measured from the early kindergarten stage to the subsequent development of PA. Participants were 41 native Hebrew-speaking children (28 boys), ages 5–6, who were recruited from two kindergarten classrooms. A battery of cognitive, early literacy, and language measures was administered and ten PA skills were examined extensively. The results demonstrated the rapid growth of PA skills from Early K to End K. The participants were significantly better at manipulations at the syllable level, as compared to phonemes or consonants. Furthermore, deletion of a final consonant was found to be easier for them than deletion of an initial consonant. This finding emphasizes the body-coda segmentation tendency, which characterizes the Hebrew language structure. Strong-moderate positive correlations were found between PA and both letter naming and executive functioning at Early K. A strong correlation between letter naming and PA was found at End K. Regression analyses demonstrated that letter naming and executive functioning at Early K were the most significant predictors of PA at Early K, and that letter naming was the most significant predictor at End K. These findings highlight both universal and language-specific features of phonological awareness.

Highlights

It is widely agreed upon that children usually master the initial phases of phonological awareness (PA) as preschoolers (Goswami and Bryant, 1990), beginning with syllable awareness around the age of three to four, and followed by onset-rime awareness, which normally appears around the ages of four to five
The first goal of the current study was to examine whether there was an increase in PA skills during kindergarten
The second objective was to determine which Hebrew language PA skills develop at the middle and end of kindergarten

Summary

Introduction

It is widely agreed upon that children usually master the initial phases of phonological awareness (PA) as preschoolers (Goswami and Bryant, 1990), beginning with syllable awareness around the age of three to four, and followed by onset-rime awareness, which normally appears around the ages of four to five. After children are taught to read and write, phoneme awareness, the Phonological Awareness in Hebrew most advanced form of PA, develops. Though this is the typical course of development, at least in English, it does not occur spontaneously. They become increasingly sensitive to smaller and smaller parts of words, and can manipulate them (Trehearne et al, 2003). This progression is widely viewed as cross-linguistic and universal (Anthony and Francis, 2005). Several studies found that 5to-6 year old preschool children who speak Turkish, French, or Italian tend to attain syllable awareness faster than children who speak French or English (Cossu et al, 1988; Demont and Gombert, 1996; Durgunoglu and Öney, 1999), suggesting that PA is affected by the saliency of spoken units in different languages (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005; Verhoeven and Perfetti, 2017)

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