Levels Of Phonological Awareness Research Articles

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND WORD LEARNING

This is a preliminary study to investigate the possible relationship between phonological awareness and word learning. The subjects of this study were 18 elementary students in the second grade. The subjects were first given three phonological awareness tests to measure their level of phonological awareness. Based on the results of the phonological awareness tests, the subjects were divided into the high and low phonological awareness groups. Afterwards, the subjects in both groups were taught 10 new words, followed by a vocabulary test to examine their ability in learning the new words. The results of the vocabulary test showed that the high phonological awareness group performed slightly better than the low phonological awareness group. This finding supports the assumption that L2 learners’ ability to learn L2 vocabularies is affected by their phonological awareness. Keyword: Phonological Awareness, Word Learning

The effects of phonological awareness of Zulu‐speaking children learning to spell in English: A study of cross‐language transfer

Emergent bilingual Zulu-English speaking children in South Africa have spoken but no written proficiency in Zulu (L1), yet are required to learn to spell English (L2) via English-only literacy instruction. Little research exists on emergent bilingual's phonological awareness (PA) and spelling development, with no L1 formal literacy instruction. Thus, whether PA in a L1 impacts on literacy acquisition in the L2 remains unclear. Performance on monolingual PA, monolingual and emergent bilingual spelling was compared. In addition, PA and spelling in emergent bilingual Zulu-English speakers was explored to ascertain cross-language transfer relationships. Thirty emergent bilingual Zulu-English and thirty monolingual English children in grade 2 participated. Emergent bilinguals were assessed on Zulu PA, Zulu and English spelling skills. Monolinguals were assessed on English PA and English spelling skills. Emergent bilinguals had more Zulu PA levels related to spelling English tasks than to spelling Zulu tasks, and both Zulu PA and Zulu spelling were positively related to English spelling tasks. Significant differences were found between L1 Zulu and English phoneme and rime PA levels, and L1 English and L2 English spelling tasks. Findings support the language-universal hypothesis that L1 PA is related to spelling across languages in emergent bilinguals. In emergent bilinguals, both Zulu spoken proficiency and English-only literacy instruction influences the underlying repertoire of PA skills used to spell within the L1 and the L2. Rime and phoneme PA and spelling skills in Zulu/English rely on language-specific orthographic knowledge.

Consciência fonológica e habilidades de escrita em crianças com síndrome de Down

Down syndrome, phonological awareness, writing and working memory. to evaluate the phonological awareness of Brazilian children with Down syndrome; to analyze the relationship between the writing hypothesis and the phonological awareness scores of the participants; to compare the performance of children with Down syndrome to that of children with typical development according to the Phonological Awareness: Tool for sequential evaluation (PHONATSE), using the writing hypothesis as a matching criteria; to verify the correlation between the phonological awareness measurements and the phonological working memory. a group of eleven children aged between 7 and 14 years (average: 9 y 10 m) was selected for the study. Phonological awareness was evaluated using the PHONATSE. The phonological working memory was evaluated through an instrument developed by the researcher. all subjects presented measurable levels of phonological awareness through the PHONATSE. The phonological awareness scores and the writing hypothesis presented a significant positive association. The performance of children with Down syndrome was significantly lower than children with typical development who presented the same writing hypothesis. Measurements of phonological awareness and phonological working memory presented significant positive correlations. the phonological awareness of Brazilian children with Down syndrome can be evaluated through the PHONATSE. Syllable awareness improves with literacy, whereas phonemic awareness seems to result from written language learning. The phonological working memory influences the performance of children with Down syndrome in phonological awareness tasks.

Phonological awareness in Hebrew (L1) and English (L2) in normal and disabled readers

The present study examined cross-linguistic relationships between phonological awareness in L1 (Hebrew) and L2 (English) among normal (N = 30) and reading disabled (N = 30) Hebrew native speaking college students. Further, it tested the effect of two factors: the lexical status of the stimulus word (real word vs. pseudoword) and the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme (whether it is within L1 or L2) on phonological awareness. Three parallel experimental phonological awareness tasks were developed in both languages: phoneme isolation, full segmentation, and phoneme deletion. As expected, the results revealed lower levels of phonological awareness in the L2 than in the L1, and in the reading disabled than in the normal reader group. The lexical status of the target word was a reliable factor predicting individual differences in phonological awareness in L2. It was also found that the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme was a reliable factor in predicting L2 phonological awareness performance in both reader groups. The results are discussed within the framework of phonological representation and language-specific linguistic constraints on phonological awareness.

The contributions of phonological awareness and letter-name knowledge to letter-sound acquisition—a cross-classified multilevel model approach.

In the present study, we investigated critical factors in letter-sound acquisition (i.e., letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness) with data from 653 English-speaking kindergartners in the beginning of the year. We examined (a) the contribution of phonological awareness to facilitating letter-sound acquisition from letter names and (b) the probabilities of letter-sound acquisition as a function of letter characteristics (i.e., consonant-vowel letters, vowe-consonant letters, letters with no sound cues, and vowel letters). The results show that letter-name knowledge had a large impact on letter-sound acquisition. Phonological awareness had a larger effect on letter-sound knowledge when letter names were known than when letter names were unknown. Furthermore, students were more likely to know the sounds of consonant-vowel letters (e.g., b and d) than vowel-consonant letters (e.g., l and m) and letters with no sound cues (e.g., h and y) when the letter name was known and phonological awareness was accounted for. Sounds were least likely to be known for letters with no sound cues, but reliable differences from other groups of letters depended on students' levels of phonological awareness and letter-name knowledge.

Classroom organization and teacher stress predict learning motivation in kindergarten children

This study examined the extent to which observed teaching practices and self-reported teacher stress predict children’s learning motivation and phonological awareness in kindergarten. The pre-reading skills of 1,268 children were measured at the beginning of their kindergarten year. Their learning motivation and phonological awareness were assessed in the following spring. Questionnaires measuring teacher stress were filled out by 137 kindergarten teachers. A pair of trained observers used the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pianta et al. 2008) to observe 49 kindergarten teachers from the whole sample on their emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. The results of multilevel modeling showed that low teacher stress and high classroom organization predicted high learning motivation in children and that the children’s learning motivation contributed to their level of phonological awareness. Moreover, children’s learning motivation mediated the association between teacher stress and children’s phonological awareness. The results emphasize the importance of teachers’ pedagogical well-being and classroom organizational quality for children’s learning motivation.

Zusammenhang zwischen phonologischer Bewusstheit und Verhaltensauffälligkeiten bei Kindern im Vorschulalter

Phonological awareness is a key precursor of reading and writing skills in preschool children. Many children with reading and spelling problems have comorbid disorders that have a negative impact on their development. Research to date has rarely focused on the interaction between behavioral problems and phonological awareness. The study investigates whether preschool children with difficulties in phonological awareness already show behavioral problems. Children (N = 188) were interviewed to assess their level of phonological awareness and teachers used the SDQ to rate their behavioral strengths and difficulties. Children with low levels of phonological awareness have more emotional problems, are more hyperactive, and have more problems with peers than children with higher levels of phonological awareness. No gender differences were found. The results indicate that already at preschool age children with low levels of phonological awareness show more behavioral problems than children with higher levels of phonological awareness. The results are comparable to those of school children who have writing and reading difficulties and behavioral problems.

Phonological awareness and decoding skills in deaf adolescents

This study investigated the phonological awareness skills of a group of deaf adolescents and how these skills correlated with decoding skills (single word and non-word reading) and receptive vocabulary.Twenty, congenitally profoundly deaf adolescents with at least average nonverbal cognitive skills were tested on a range of phonological awareness tasks, and a non-word and real-word reading task, and their speech intelligibility was rated. Scores on a receptive vocabulary measure were gathered from existing records. All participants met an inclusion criterion of scoring within one standard deviation of the mean on a non-verbal reasoning task.As a group, compared to the hearing standardisation samples, the participants' single-word reading fell within the normal range; their non-word reading skills were significantly stronger and their phonological awareness skills and receptive vocabulary were significantly weaker. The participants' phonological awareness skills were relatively stronger at the level of the phoneme than the rhyme. Correlations between single word and non-word reading and phonological awareness skills were significant. Taking receptive vocabulary as a covariate, the association between word reading and phonological awareness was reduced but remained significant, but the association between non-word reading and phonological awareness became non-significant.The participants had developed good grapheme-phoneme knowledge in spite of relatively weak phonological awareness skills. This study is not able to inform whether this has occurred because only a minimal level of phonological awareness is necessary for grapheme-phoneme skills to develop or whether the process of learning to read has led to the development of grapheme-phoneme and phonological awareness skills, but ideas for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Shedding light on the role of poverty in brain development

Shedding light on the role of poverty in brain development

A influência da consciência fonológica em crianças alfabetizadas pelos métodos fônico e silábico

OBJETIVO: comparar o nível de consciência fonológica em classes alfabetizadas pelos métodos fônico e silábico, investigando a influência do método de alfabetização no desenvolvimento da consciência fonológica. MÉTODOS: participaram deste estudo 12 crianças com idade média de 7 anos, estudantes de duas escolas particulares do Distrito Federal, em que 6 destas crianças foram alfabetizadas pelo método fônico e 6 pelo método silábico, conforme a escola. Estas crianças foram submetidas à aplicação do teste "Perfil de Habilidades Fonológicas". RESULTADOS: o desempenho entre os alunos das duas escolas no total geral do teste e na maioria das provas foi semelhante. Nas provas de adição de fonemas, subtração de sílabas e subtração de fonemas, as crianças alfabetizadas pelo método fônico apresentaram resultados superiores. Na prova de segmentação frasal, os participantes do sexo feminino apresentaram melhores resultados em ambas as escolas. CONCLUSÃO: na população estudada, os participantes das duas escolas obtiveram resultados semelhantes na pontuação geral do teste de consciência fonológica.

Phonological awareness in Swedish‐speaking children with complex communication needs

Background Children with complex communication needs (CCN) often experience problems achieving literacy. The aim of this project was to study phonological awareness, a central predictor for literacy achievement, in children with CCN, and to compare their performance to a group of children with natural speech.Method One group of 15 Swedish children with CCN and cerebral palsy (CP), and one group of 15 children with natural speech, matched for gender, linguistic age and mental age, were administered nine phonological awareness tasks, testing onset/rime and phonemic awareness.Results Overall, children with CCN showed good levels of phonological awareness. However, on the one task that did not include any verbal support from the experimenter, the children with CCN performed at a significantly lower level.Conclusion Phonological awareness does not seem to depend on overt articulation, although the lack of speech might affect the children's ability to manipulate linguistic material that is not verbally presented.

Influência da consciência fonológica na escrita de pré-escolares

OBJETIVO: analisar a influência da consciência fonológica no estágio de desenvolvimento da escrita de crianças pré-escolares. MÉTODOS: estudo clínico randomizado comparado. Aplicou-se o protocolo CONFIAS e um ditado de palavras, a uma amostra constituída de 57 crianças, divididas aleatoriamente em grupo intervenção (30) e grupo controle (27). A faixa etária foi de 5 anos e 1 mês a 6 anos e 6 meses. Para o GI foram realizadas 10 intervenções de 30 minutos, com atividades lúdicas de consciência fonológica, enquanto que para o GC não foram realizadas atividades. Após, todas as crianças foram reavaliadas com os mesmos instrumentos. RESULTADOS: na avaliação inicial, 92,6% e 93,4% das crianças do GC e GI respectivamente, eram pré-silábicas quanto ao nível de escrita, e apresentavam pontuações da consciência fonológica semelhantes, para o GC 26 e para o GI 24 acertos. Ao passo que na avaliação final, no GI, 36,7% das crianças evoluíram para o nível silábico e 10% evoluíram para o nível silábico-alfabético da escrita (P<0,0001), contra apenas 14,8% e 3,7% respectivamente, das do GC (P=0,056). Com relação ao nível de consciência fonológica, a evolução do GI ainda é mais marcante, as crianças passaram de 24 para 37 acertos na avaliação final (P<0,0001), enquanto que os sujeitos do GC passaram de 26 para 28 pontos na avaliação final. CONCLUSÃO: a estimulação da consciência fonológica interferiu no estágio do desenvolvimento da escrita.

Relação entre Consciência Fonológica e os Níveis de Escrita de escolares da 1ª série do Ensino Fundamental de escola pública do Município de Porto Real - RJ

OBJETIVO: comparar o nível de Consciência Fonológica com os níveis de escrita dos escolares de 1ª série do Ensino Fundamental da rede pública do Município de Porto Real. MÉTODOS: foram avaliados 30 escolares de 1ª série, de ambos os sexos, idade entre sete e 11 anos, avaliados individualmente através da aplicação da prova de Consciência Fonológica (Capovilla&Capovilla) e de um autoditado de cinco gravuras. RESULTADO: o grupo silábico-alfabético/ alfabético apresentou melhor desempenho em 6 provas do teste em relação ao grupo de nível pré-silábico/ silábico. CONCLUSÃO: a partir dos resultados obtidos, concluiu-se que há relação significante entre as habilidades de Consciência Fonológica e os Níveis de Escrita dos escolares de 1ª série do Ensino Fundamental da rede pública do Município de Porto Real.

Phonological awareness in young Chinese children

Two studies explored the nature of phonological awareness (PA) in Chinese. In Study 1, involving 146 children, awareness of phoneme onset did not differ from chance levels at ages 3-5 years in preschool but increased to 70% correct in first grade, when children first received phonological coding (Pinyin) instruction. Similarly, tone awareness was at better than chance levels from second year kindergarten (age 4), but increased strongly and significantly in first grade to 74% accuracy. In contrast, syllable and rime awareness increased gradually and steadily across ages 3-6 years. Patterns suggest different influences of age and literacy instruction for different PA levels. In Study 2, involving 202 preschoolers, variance in Chinese character recognition was best explained by tasks of syllable awareness, tone awareness, and speeded naming. Findings underscore the unique importance of both tone and syllable for early character acquisition in Chinese children.

Third Graders’ Metalinguistic Skills, Reading Skills, and Stress Production in Derived English Words

This study examined relationships between 3rd graders' metalinguistic skills (phonological and morphological awareness), reading skills (decoding and word identification), and accurate stress production in derived words with stress-changing suffixes. Seventy-six typically developing 3rd-grade children (M=8;8[years;months]) participated in a battery of tests measuring general oral language ability, phonological and morphological awareness skills, reading skills, and derived word production. Significant positive correlations between stress accuracy in derived words and all other measures were found. Two multiple regressions were run, one with stress accuracy as the outcome variable and the other with decoding as the outcome variable. Metalinguistic and decoding skills independently accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in derived word stress production beyond that accounted for by age and general oral language ability. When decoding was the outcome variable, accurate stress production explained a significant amount of variance (11%) after phonological and morphological awareness were controlled. The relationship between accurate stress production and decoding appears to be strong and bidirectional. Possibly, the stress accuracy measure taps into another level of phonological awareness (i.e., morphophonological awareness), which develops later than typical segmental measures of phonological awareness.

On the benefits of bi-literacy: just a head start in reading or specific orthographic insights?

In a previous study [Schwartz et al. (2005). Written Language and Literacy, 8, 179–207] we showed that early literacy in Russian (L1) facilitated decoding acquisition in Hebrew (L2) among Russian-Hebrew first graders. The present study examined two alternative explanations for this finding. The first account concerns the general benefits of an early start in literacy. The second relates to the specific meta-linguistic insights engendered by early exposure to a fully fledged orthography—Russian. We therefore compared two groups who had acquired literacy prior to the onset of schooling: bi-literate bilinguals (Russian L1 literates and Hebrew L2 learners) (n = 26) and early-literacy monolinguals (Hebrew-speaking monolinguals) (n = 18). The research was conducted in two stages. First, linguistic, meta-linguistic and cognitive tasks in Hebrew were administered to all children and in Russian to the bilinguals at the beginning of the first grade. Next, reading and writing skills in Hebrew were assessed at the end of the first grade. Bi-literate bilinguals showed superior levels of phonological awareness on an initial phoneme isolation task in Hebrew compared to other three groups. In addition, the bi-literate bilinguals were found to be superior to the early-literacy monolinguals on measures of word and pseudoword accuracy, which are known to depend heavily on phonological processing efficiency, but not on fluency and spelling measures, which are more reliant on stored orthographic information. This pattern of outcomes was attributed to the facilitating effects of an orthography characterized by a fully fledged alphabet, in contrast to Hebrew’s primarily consonantal orthography, as well as the complex syllabic structure of Russian.

Teaching phoneme awareness to pre‐literate children with speech disorder: a randomized controlled trial

Awareness of individual phonemes in words is a late-acquired level of phonological awareness that usually develops in the early school years. It is generally agreed to have a close relationship with early literacy development, but its role in speech change is less well understood. Speech and language therapy for children with speech disorder involves tasks that appear, either implicitly or explicitly, to require a phonemic level of awareness. However, children typically attend for intervention at a pre-school, pre-literate stage, i.e. before they would be expected to have developed the relevant phoneme segmentation and manipulation skills. To investigate whether it is possible to teach phoneme awareness skills to pre-literate children with speech disorder. In a randomized controlled trial design 42 children with speech disorder, aged 4;0-4;6, were allocated to either a phonological awareness or a language stimulation programme. Children were assessed on four measures of phoneme awareness (alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation, word segmentation and phoneme addition/deletion) immediately before and after the programme and categorized as 'improved' or 'not improved' according to predetermined criteria. Fisher's Exact test was used to compare outcome in the two groups. Significantly more children improved in the phonological awareness group than in the language stimulation group for three out of the four measures (all except alliteration awareness). However, for the two most advanced tasks (segmentation and addition/deletion) only a small minority of children showed improvement. A marked improvement in Phoneme Isolation was made by the majority of children in the phonological awareness group. It is possible to teach some advanced phoneme awareness skills to some pre-literate children. Phoneme Isolation was the most easily learned and is a skill that appears very relevant to speech and language therapy. However, phoneme addition, deletion and word segmentation showed relatively limited improvement and only in a small number of cognitively able and older children. Whereas isolation of word initial consonants appears to be a skill that can be triggered at 4;0-4;6 by relevant activities, most children in the study were not cognitively ready for more advanced, abstract phoneme manipulation tasks. This raises questions about how speech and language therapists should tackle many common errors and the age at which we should aim to develop or draw on phoneme awareness to stimulate speech change.

Phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and literacy development in Indonesian beginner readers and spellers

The aim of the present study was to investigate the grain size predominantly used by children learning to read and spell in Indonesian. Indonesian is an orthographically transparent language, and the syllable is a salient unit. Tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness as well as letter knowledge, reading familiar words and nonwords, and spelling stem and affixed words were administered to children in Grade 1 and subsequently 1 year later in Grade 2. The results in general indicate that the phoneme is the prominent phonological unit in the early acquisition of reading and spelling in Indonesian, but the syllable also plays a significant role, particularly when reading long multisyllabic affixed words. This highlights the variable nature of grain size used by beginners, which is dependent on developmental stage, the demands of the task administered, and the characteristics of the language and its orthography.

Interactions with talking books: phonological awareness affects boys' use of talking books

Abstract Framed by current concerns about boys' attainment in literacy, this paper investigates the potential of talking books software to support the literacy development of male beginning readers. The study primarily considered whether typically developing boys who showed lower levels of attainment in phonological awareness would show a greater degree of improvement in phonological awareness or a change in reading strategy, following a talking books intervention, than boys who were demonstrating higher levels of phonological awareness. It also examined whether the boys' phonological awareness attainment would affect how they used the software to support their attempts at reading, both in terms of their interactions with the computer and the types of speech feedback that they selected. The analysis also considered whether there was any association between the nature of the boys' teaching and learning interactions with the computer and any changes in their reading strategies from pre‐ to post‐test. The findings suggest that the use of the talking books software was particularly beneficial for boys who initially showed lower phonological proficiency, and that the boys in this study utilised the talking books software adaptively depending on their phonological proficiency. Moreover, there was evidence that contact with the talking books affected the reading strategies of the boys who had higher phonological awareness. There was also evidence of an association between the way in which the boys interacted with the software and changes in their reading strategy between pre‐ and post‐test.

Name writing but not environmental print recognition is related to letter-sound knowledge and phonological awareness in pre-readers

This paper reports a study exploring the associations between measures of two levels of phonological representation: recognition (epi-linguistic) and production (meta-linguistic) tasks, and very early reading and writing skills. Thirty-eight pre-reading Ottawa-area children, aged 4–5 years, named environmental print (EP), wrote their own name, identified correct names and EP words amongst foils and detected foil letters within EP and names. Results showed that phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge were not related to EP recognition. Name writing accuracy and name identification were related to both levels of phonological awareness. Furthermore, name writing showed a unique association with phonological awareness even after letter-sound knowledge was controlled statistically. Pre-readers may first use meta-linguistic phonological awareness in their name writing and identification prior to learning to read.