Rhyme Awareness, Orthographic Analogy Use, Phonemic Awareness and Reading: An examination of relationships

Abstract

It is suggested that children learning to read require phonemic awareness before being able to make orthographic analogies during reading (Ehri & Robbins, 1992) and that phonemic awareness is a better discriminator of children who will benefit from orthographic analogies than rhyme awareness (Walton, 1995). It has also been found that orthographic analogy use does not make an independent contribution to early reading ability (Wood, 1999). The present study investigates which skills are best able to account for orthographic analogy use during early reading and tests the finding that there is no independent association between reading ability and orthographic analogy use. Results suggest that phonemic awareness and reading experience are best able to account for analogy use, and that orthographic analogy use does directly contribute to early reading ability. Rhyme awareness was also associated with orthographic analogy use, but this contribution was less than that of phonemic awareness, and was not significant after the contribution of phonemic awareness was taken into account.