Explicit Phonological Awareness Research Articles

Reading skills promotion: Results on the impact of a preschool intervention

There is a strong correlation between preschool education skills such as phonological awareness and language and success in reading and spelling acquisition. Even though, this is still not the focus of the early intervention. This study presents the preliminary results of the impact of an intervention program developed to promote reading foundation skills. The study was conducted with 627 children in the last year of preschool education (54.2% boys), ages between 4 years and 10 months and 6 years and 1 month. Participants were divided into intervention (n = 242) and comparative (n = 385) group. Language, implicit, and explicit phonological awareness, and rime implicit awareness were assessed. The intervention group reached statistically higher values in all dimensions at the post-test, a higher magnitude effect and 80% of these children entered the first-grade overpassing cut-off criteria for reading acquisition difficulties. These results support the impact of the program.

Phonological Awareness in Arabic among Early Grade Teachers

Early-grade teachers’ ability to incorporate high-quality explicit phonological awareness (PA) instruction into the classroom helps children succeed in early reading endeavors and significantly reduces reading difficulties among children at risk for reading problems. Teachers’ deep knowledge of teaching PA is expected to affect their reading instructional practices inside the classrooms. This study aims to gain perspective on early grade teachers’ perceptions, knowledge, and practices related to teaching PA skills in the Arabic language. To this end, a modified survey instrument was completed by 109 Arabic language teachers at kindergarten and primary grade levels. Results reveal that although teachers recognize the significance of PA for reading development, many show poor knowledge of certain PA fundamentals and do not formally assess PA or provide adequate and explicit PA instruction in their classrooms. Furthermore, results show that teachers with more teaching experience provide their students with more chances to complete PA activities in the classroom. These findings suggest a need to provide Arabic language teachers with adequate knowledge and training as well as assessment and teaching materials to enable them to provide the required PA skills, as a crucial reading skill, in the classroom..

Relationship between early phonological processing and later phonological awareness: Evidence from nonword repetition.

This study investigated whether individual differences in vocabulary size, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition in 2½ to 3-year-old children predicted phonological awareness two years later. One hundred twenty-two children were tested twice. During the first testing period, we measured children's receptive vocabulary, speech perception, nonword repetition, and articulation. At the second testing period, we measured children's phonological awareness. The best predictors of phonological awareness at age 5 were receptive vocabulary and a measure of phonological processing derived from performance on the nonword repetition task. The results of this study suggest that nonword repetition accuracy can be used to index implicit phonological awareness at an age when children are too young to perform explicit phonological awareness tasks reliably.

Libros en Mano: Phonological Awareness Intervention in Children’s Native Languages

The growing diversity in schools in the United States resulting from the rising number of English learners (ELs) has put more pressure on both children and teachers. Teachers are faced with the challenge of meeting the educational needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners, including the unique needs of CLD children with academic delays or disabilities. As early as preschool, many ELs are performing academically lower than their monolingual peers in literacy, and the gap can be even greater for ELs identified as having a delay or disability. However, providing explicit phonological awareness interventions in the child’s native language may help improve English reading outcomes and mediate the negative effects on reading achievement attributed to limited English proficiency. This intervention study looked at how a phonologically based emergent literacy intervention provided in Spanish to four EL preschoolers affected their emergent literacy and phonological awareness outcomes in English and Spanish. All of the children increased their overall emergent literacy and phonological awareness skills in both English and Spanish. The findings indicated that all four children showed some increase in English phonological awareness skills in both syllable segmentation and letter sound knowledge, while sound isolation and sound segmentation demonstrated mixed results across participants.

Examining the effectiveness of a supplemental reading intervention on the early literacy skills of English language learners

ABSTRACTWhile the research on effective early reading interventions for English language learners is expanding, the majority of the research focuses on students whose native language is Spanish. This study investigated the effects of a supplemental reading program that builds phoneme awareness skills and emphasizes explicit instruction in the alphabetic code for five first grade ELLs whose native language was not Spanish. Each of the five participants spoke a different language, including Somali, French, Arabic, Burmese, and Chinese. A single-case design study was conducted to examine students’ response to the intervention, as measured by weekly progress monitoring probes in areas of phoneme segmentation, phonetically regular real word reading skills, and pseudoword reading skills. The study also investigated pretest and posttest measures of phoneme blending, phoneme segmenting, and real word reading. All students showed improvement on the phoneme segmentation and nonsense word reading probes, and four out of five improved on the phonetically regular word reading probes. Additionally, all students showed growth from pretest to posttest on phoneme segmentation and real word reading, and four of the five students improved their blending skills. The data from this study indicate that explicit and systematic phonological awareness and phonics-based instruction shown to be effective with native English speakers can be effective with non-Spanish-speaking ELLs.

Second Language Learners' Phonological Awareness and Perception of Foreign Accentedness and Comprehensibility by Native and Non-native English Speaking EFL Teachers

Phonological awareness has been defined as the speaker’s sensitivity to the phonological characteristics of a language. The present study is aimed at exploring the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ explicit phonological awareness, their foreign accentedness and speech comprehensibility as perceived by native and non-native English-speaking EFL teachers. To determine the relationships, the researchers used a set of tasks that measured 34 EFL learners’ phonological awareness in five domains of rhyming, alliteration or onset, segmenting, blending, and manipulation. They also asked the participants to read a short text which was recorded and later rated for accentedness and comprehensibility on a 9-point scale. Results indicated that there was a significant correlation between the learners’ phonological awareness and perception of foreign accentedness. The same was true about the correlation between phonological awareness and speech comprehensibility. Furthermore, a strong positive correlation was found between foreign accentedness and comprehensibility, suggesting that foreign accentedness could affect comprehensibility of L2 speech. The findings suggest that pedagogical strategies that highlight formal properties of language be employed in second language classrooms to reduce learners’ foreign accent and increase their speech comprehensibility.

Relevance of Phonological Awareness Intervention to a Jordanian EFL Classroom

Building on Tamimi and Rababah (2007), the present study is an investigation of the effectiveness of explicit phonological awareness intervention in contrast with formal classroom instruction on developing phonological awareness skills for Jordanian EFL second-graders in a governmental school. Based on some views (Adams, 1990; Yopp, 1992; Stanovich, 1994; and Chard and Dickson, 1999) a phonological training program was designed with focus on five phonological awareness skills, viz., segmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution and blending, and their respective sub-skills. On measures of Robertson and Salter's (1997) Phonological Awareness Test (PAT), the experimental group that had undergone 15 40-minute phonological awareness sessions outperformed in deletion, substitution and blending skills the control group which continued to receive formal classroom instruction based on Action Pack 2. The findings corroborate previous research conclusions favoring explicit phonological awareness interventions; thus giving less credit to formal classroom instruction. The study also calls for integrating phonological awareness interventions in Jordanian basic stages' curricula.

The Synergistic Effect of Teaching a Combined Explicit Movement and Phonological Awareness Program to Preschool Aged Students

While movement is critical to young children’s development, there is an ongoing debate about the time devoted to teaching movement in early childhood classrooms. Nevertheless, research has established a link between specific precursor motor skills and early literacy development. This study investigated the synergistic effect of practising specific movements through daily actions and songs alongside the explicit teaching of phonological awareness and phonics in 400 preschool children (aged between four and five). Results indicate that students who received the combined intervention of explicit phonological awareness and movement were the only group to perform significantly better than the control group on measures of phonological awareness, invented spelling and spelling. An interesting outcome was that the literacy/movement group and not the movement group made significantly larger gains for the movement measure. These findings suggest that teaching pre-primary aged children early literacy and movement in tandem is more beneficial than teaching either in isolation.

Phonological awareness intervention for verbal working memory skills in school-age children with specific language impairment and concomitant word reading difficulties

This exploratory investigation examined the effects of explicit phonological awareness intervention on each subcomponent of Baddeley’s verbal working memory model. Fifty school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and concurrent deficits in word reading were randomly assigned to either an experimental (n=25) or a control group (n = 25). Children in both groups received individual traditional language intervention for four, 1 hour sessions each week for 4 weeks (16 hrs). The experimental group received an additional 20 min of phonological awareness intervention each day (5.3 hrs). Participants in the experimental group significantly outperformed the children in the control group across all verbal working memory measures. The strongest effects were found for the digit recall and word list recall subtests, which were used to assess the verbal short-term memory component of the model (i.e., phonological loop). The next largest effect sizes were reported for the subtests of the verbal working memory functioning (i.e., phonological loop and central executive). The smallest change was found on the recalling sentences subtest, which was chosen to represent the episodic buffer component. These results suggest that school-age children with SLI and concomitant word-reading difficulties in second through third grade who receive explicit phonological awareness intervention can make significant gains on untrained verbal working memory skills in a relatively short period of time which underscores the importance of phonological awareness intervention beyond first grade.

Perception or production? Training effects on cross‐language phonological awareness tasks in Mandarin‐speaking children.

This study investigated training effects of perception‐based and production‐based English activities on the acquisition of phonological awareness of English sound structures by 58 Mandarin‐speaking kindergarten‐aged children in Taiwan. Children were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions or a control condition. Experimental groups participated in a learning session of four English words: band, nest, brick, and stool, with a perceptual or articulation focus on clusters, which do not exist in Mandarin. Outcome measures examined subjects’ ability to match words on the basis of shared onset or coda, and to elicit common units in both Mandarin and English before and after training. Significant gain in English onset common unit test scores was observed for the production training group, relative to the control group, especially in trials containing the trained clusters: br‐ and st‐. Perception group however did not show an improvement over time across all measures. Between‐group differences were not observed for English codas, Chinese onsets, or Chinese codas. Findings revealed that clearly articulating non‐native words with unfamiliar syllable structures could assist children to isolate onsets in explicit phonological awareness tasks, independent of exposure to alphabetic orthography, generally thought to be critical in explicit phonological awareness (e.g., Gombert, 1992).

Developmental dyslexia in an orthography of intermediate depth: the case of European Portuguese

Fifteen Portuguese children with dyslexia, aged 9–11 years, were compared with reading and chronological age controls with respect to five indicators related to the phonological deficit hypothesis: the effects of lexicality, regularity, and length, implicit and explicit phonological awareness, and rapid naming. The comparison between groups indicates that Portuguese children with dyslexia have a phonological impairment which is revealed by a developmental deficit in implicit phonological awareness and irregular word reading (where younger reading level controls performed better than dyslexics) and by a developmental delay in decoding ability and explicit phonological awareness (where dyslexics matched reading level controls). These results are discussed in relation to the idea that European Portuguese is written in an orthography of intermediate depth.

Effects of an Embedded Phonological Awareness Intervention During Repeated Book Reading on Preschool Children With Language Delays

Efficacy of an explicit phonological awareness intervention embedded within repeated shared book reading with preschool children from low-income backgrounds with language delays was investigated. A multiple-baseline design across behaviors assessed the effects of phonological awareness training on rhyme and letter-sound knowledge with 13 preschool children with language delays from high-poverty communities. Rhyme intervention improved children's rhyme production and rhyme identification. Initial sound intervention enhanced children's alliteration and initial sound fluency skills. These effects were replicated within and across all 13 participants. Classroom teachers perceived meaningful changes in rhyme and letter-sound production. Interventionists and teachers reported high satisfaction with the procedures. Embedding an explicit phonological awareness intervention into repeated storybook reading resulted in improved emergent literacy skills for children at high risk for reading disorders.

The Relationship Between Phonological Awareness and Word Reading

This study investigates the effect of phonological awareness instruction on the development of word-reading ability for EFL first-graders in a Jordanian state school. Based on Chard and Dickson’s (1999) phonological awareness hierarchy, a phonological awareness training program was developed by the researchers, and used in training the experimental group whose children after 10 training sessions significantly outperformed their peers in the control group on TampaReads’ (2003) word-reading measures. The study concludes that phonological awareness is relevant to the development of first-graders’ word-reading ability, and that explicit phonological awareness instruction is essential for this development. The study thus provides support to previous research, and implies that phonological awareness can be taught contrary to the notion of the pure whole language approach, and that explicit phonological awareness intervention can help overcome the Jordanian EFL children’s reading problems once it is systematically integrated into their school curricula.

Promoting Awareness of Sounds in Speech (PASS): The Effects of Intervention and Stimulus Characteristics on the Blending Performance of Preschool Children with Communication Impairments

The primary purpose of this study was to demonstrate the efficacy of the blending portion of the Promoting Awareness of Sounds in Speech (PASS) program, a comprehensive and explicit phonological awareness intervention curriculum designed for preschool children with speech and language impairments. A secondary purpose was to examine the effects of stimulus characteristics on responsiveness to the phonological awareness intervention via post-hoc analysis. A single-subject design was used to examine treatment effects among children with varying levels of communicative abilities. The PASS blending module was implemented with 11 children with speech and/or language impairments, following the establishment of a stable pretreatment baseline on a series of phonological awareness probes. After instruction, the children demonstrated substantial improvement in their blending ability, which appeared to be attributable to the intervention rather than environmental or maturational factors. These findings suggest that PASS blending training was an effective approach to phonological awareness instruction for the preschoolers with disabilities in our sample. Additionally, word frequency and neighborhood density were found to influence performance on some phonological awareness tasks. Specifically, children correctly blended high-frequency words more than low-frequency words, but they correctly blended words from lower-density neighborhoods more than words from higher-density neighborhoods. Findings are discussed with respect to predictions of the lexical restructuring hypothesis.

Changes in letter sound knowledge are associated with development of phonological awareness in pre‐school children

Letter sound knowledge, which, together with phonological awareness, is highly predictive of pre‐school children's reading acquisition, derives from children's knowledge of their associated letter names and the phonological patterns of those names. In this study of 66 monolingual pre‐school children we examined whether phonological patterns between letter names and their associated sounds might be differentially associated with aspects of phonological awareness. Results suggest that rudimentary levels of phonological awareness may facilitate the learning of letter sound associations. However, more explicit phonological awareness appears to be linked bi‐directionally with letter sound knowledge with diverse name‐sound associations, with letter sound associations that do not follow regular patterns (e.g. ‘juh’ for ‘j’ and ‘huh’ for ‘h’) most closely associated with performance in more complex phoneme awareness tasks.

Rhyming words and onset–rime constituents: An inquiry into structural breaking points and emergent boundaries in the syllable

Geudens and Sandra, in their 2003 study, investigated the special role of onsets and rimes in Dutch-speaking children’s explicit phonological awareness. In the current study, we tapped implicit phonological knowledge using forced-choice similarity judgment (Experiment 1) and recall of syllable lists (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, Dutch-speaking prereaders judged rime-sharing pseudowords (/fɑs/–/mɑs/) to sound more similar than pseudowords sharing an equally sized nonrime unit (/fɑs/–/fɑk/). However, in a syllable recall task (/tεf/, /r is/, /nɑl/), Dutch-speaking prereaders were as likely to produce recombination errors that broke up the rime (/tεs/) as to produce errors that retained the rime (/rεf/). Thus, a rime effect was obtained in a task that highlighted the phonological similarity between items sharing their rimes, but this effect disappeared in tasks without repetition of rime units. We conclude that children’s sensitivity to rimes depends on similarity relations and might not reflect a fixed perceived structure of spoken syllables.

Assessing Early Literacy Skills with the Mountain Shadows Phonemic Awareness Scale (MS-PAS)

Considerable evidence suggests that phonemic awareness is associated with the development of skilled reading. Consequently, it is recommended that beginning readers be assessed to ensure adequate development of phonemic awareness skills. When choosing an assessment method, reliability and validity, ease of administration and scoring, and cost-effectiveness should be considered. To meet these standards, a new phonemic awareness assessment measure, the Mountain Shadows Phonemic Awareness Scale (MS-PAS), was presented. This 20-item sound categorization task takes 20 minutes for an entire first-grade classroom. Reliability and validity data were good to excellent. It was recommended that the MS-PAS be used to identify students in need of explicit phonological awareness instruction or those who require more extensive individualized assessment.

Beyond implicit phonological knowledge: No support for an onset–rime structure in children’s explicit phonological awareness

The importance of the onset–rime structure in phonological awareness is widely accepted. We focused on Dutch-speaking children’s explicit awareness. Four experiments failed to support the relevance of the onset–rime distinction in this domain. First, prereaders and first-graders found it easier to segment two-phoneme syllables within the rime VC (e.g., / oː t/ ), than between onset and rime in the reversed CV (e.g., / toː/ ). Second, prereaders did not find it easier to substitute a phoneme in a CV than in a VC. Third, when first-graders were required to segment CVCs, CV strings were left intact more frequently than rimes. Thus, Dutch-speaking children did not treat onsets and rimes as cohesive units of the syllable in tasks tapping explicit awareness. Phonetic factors may play an important role in determining cohesion between phonemes.

Promoting awareness of sounds in speech: An initial report of an early intervention program for children with speech and language impairments

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the efficacy of the rhyming portion of the Promoting Awareness of Sounds in Speech (PASS) program, a comprehensive and explicit phonological awareness intervention curriculum that was designed specifically for preschool children with speech and language impairments. A single-subject research design was used to examine treatment effects among children with varying levels of communicative competence, to permit flexibility while piloting the intervention program, and to provide experimental control. The PASS rhyming module was implemented with eight children with speech and/or language impairments, following the establishment of a stable pretreatment baseline on a series of phonological awareness probes. After instruction, all of the children demonstrated substantial improvement in their rhyming ability, which generally appeared to be attributable to the intervention rather than environmental or maturational factors. These findings suggest that PASS rhyming training was an effective approach to phonological awareness instruction for the preschoolers with disabilities who comprised our sample. Thus, it appears that explicit instruction in phonological awareness skills is beneficial for children at a point earlier than is typically judged to be therapeutically appropriate.

Preschool phonological representations and development of reading skills

Individual differences in the quality of phonological representations of kindergarten children may be predictive of Grade 1 phonological awareness and reading development. Three longitudinal studies are presented that attempt to measure variance in the quality of the phonological structures within lexical items using three tasks: non-word repetition, cued word fluency, and a gated auditory word recognition task. Nonword repetition was a consistent predictor of later phonological awareness, even after current phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge were taken into account. The results of the three studies provide inconclusive support for the theory that individual differences in the quality of phonological representations play an important role in the development of explicit phonological awareness and reading acquisition. An important finding of the third study is that caution needs to be maintained in measuring skills in preschoolers as stability of results can be an issue when interpreting the relations between variables. However, the present studies do confirm that individual differences in vocabulary, nonword repetition, and phonological awareness are important factors in predicting the development of reading related skills.