Phonological Awareness Intervention Research Articles

Phonological Awareness Intervention: Beyond the Basics

The purpose of this article is to advance practitioners' knowledge base of best practices in phonological awareness intervention to facilitate the implementation of evidence- or research-based practices in everyday clinical practice. Although most speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have a basic knowledge of phonological awareness, this article provides additional information on the variables to consider in the design and implementation of phonological awareness intervention; access to this information has a clear impact on practitioners' efforts to move research to practice. We reviewed the relevant literature on the nature and development of phonological awareness and phonological awareness intervention to identify evidence-based intervention practices. We draw on clinical experience to supplement the research literature, particularly where the research literature provides limited direction. SLPs have a unique contribution to make in school-based teams' efforts to facilitate literacy development in children, particularly children who are at risk for reading disability. Research provides much information to guide clinicians in the design and implementation of phonological awareness intervention.

Longitudinal Effects of Phonological Awareness Intervention on Morphological Awareness in Children With Speech Impairment

This study examined reading performance and morphological awareness development in 2 groups of children with speech impairment who had received differing types of intervention during their preschool years. The children were aged between 7;6 and 9;5 (years;months) at the time of the study. Group 1 (n = 8) had received preschool intervention to facilitate phonological awareness and letter knowledge in addition to improving speech production. Group 2 (n = 9) had received preschool intervention that focused solely on improving speech intelligibility. A third group of children with typical development (Group 3, n = 24) also participated in the study. Two reading tests were administered, one that assessed word recognition and another that assessed nonword decoding. Two tests of morphological awareness were also administered, one that tested the spelling of morphologically complex words and another that tested the oral generation of the base form of derived words. Children with a history of speech impairment who had received phonological awareness intervention (Group 1) performed significantly better on nonword decoding and on the spelling of morphologically complex words than did children with a history of speech impairment whose intervention focused on speech only (Group 2). The typically developing children (Group 3) were not significantly different from Group 1 on the spelling of morphologically complex words, and like Group 1, they outperformed Group 2 on this measure. However, Group 3 did not perform significantly better than Group 2 on nonword decoding, and both of these groups performed significantly more poorly than Group 1 on this measure. There were no group differences in the ability to orally generate base words. Children with a history of speech impairment who had received phonological awareness intervention and who became proficient readers demonstrated an ability to use morphological awareness in the spelling process that was similar to that of their peers without speech impairment. These findings highlight the potential long-term benefits associated with early phonological awareness intervention.

Effective Practice In Phonological Awareness Intervention for Children With Speech Sound Disorder

Effective Practice In Phonological Awareness Intervention for Children With Speech Sound Disorder

Enhancing the phonological awareness and language skills of socially disadvantaged preschoolers: An interdisciplinary programme

The research reported investigated the efficacy of intervention, developed by a speech-language therapist and implemented by a teacher, for the language and phonological awareness (PA) abilities of pre-school, socially disadvantaged children. One study established that children from low socio-economic (SES) backgrounds had poorer skills on both measures compared to children of average SES. Half of the low SES group received language and PA intervention programmes and their progress was compared to untreated SES matched controls. Both programmes were highly effective with post-intervention performance not only exceeding that of SES controls but also equalling the performance of controls of average SES.

Phonological Awareness Treatment Effects for Children from Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds

This study investigated whether phonological awareness intervention is effective for children at risk when administered in a small group setting and whether such intervention is more effective following a period of language stimulation. A group of 20 children aged between 5;05 and 7;08 who attended a school in New Zealand with a government-defined low socioeconomic status participated in the study. These children displayed poor phonological awareness and weakness in some aspect of their spoken semantic and syntactic language development prior to intervention. The participants were randomly assigned to intervention groups. Group 1 received 16 hours of phonological awareness intervention, followed by 16 hours of language intervention, whereas Group 2 received the same interventions in the reverse order.The results indicated that the phonological awareness intervention implemented was effective in rapidly accelerating the participants' phonemeblending, segmentation, and manipulation skills and significantly improved their phonetic decoding ability. Both groups made comparable gains inphonological awareness and decoding ability regardless of whether they received the intervention first or following language intervention. The results suggested that for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds with delays in aspect of their spoken language development, the standard classroom curriculum provides sufficient language enrichment to allow rapid, positive responses to a direct approach to phonological awareness intervention. It is not necessary for these children to receive additional language stimulation before they can benefit from phonological awareness instruction.

The literacy abilities of 11 year-old students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds

This study investigated the literacy skills of all children in Year 6 of a Queensland school in a socially disadvantaged area who were exposed to a “whole language” approach to the learning of written language. Standardized tests of non-word spelling and reading comprehension (including written sentence responses) revealed a large group of children with literacy difficulties. This group of 11-year-old children, and a group of matched controls, were further assessed on measures of phonological awareness and letter sound knowledge. The results indicated that the means of both groups were below those of the standardization populations, and that the children had particular difficulty writing short answers to questions. The group of children identified as performing poorly on the non-word spelling test was heterogeneous. Some had poor phonological awareness skills, some had limited sound-letter correspondence knowledge, some children had problems with both skills. The data demonstrated the need for assessment to identify the specific sub-skills with which individuals have difficulty, in order to allow for appropriate intervention rather than a generic phonological awareness intervention package for all children with literacy difficulties irrespective of age or social status.

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.

The effect of phonological awareness intervention on non-word spelling ability in school-aged children: An analysis of qualitative change

The purpose of this pre-experimental, retrospective study was to examine the effect of a phonological awareness intervention program on qualitative changes in the non-word spelling skills of children with spelling difficulties. Additionally, this pilot study set out to determine the reliability and effectiveness of a newly developed spelling analysis tool. This tool, the Feature Analysis of Non-word Spelling (FANS) was devised to qualitatively describe children's non-word spelling performance. Participants were 16 school-aged children, ranging in age from 8 years 6 months to 10 years 1 month, who were selected for this study on the basis of their below average non-word spelling ability prior to intervention. All children in the study had received phonological awareness training based on the University of Queensland Phonological Awareness for Literacy (UQPAL) program. Pre- and post-intervention non-word spelling responses of participants were analysed using the FANS. Results revealed a significant overall ...

Enhancing Phonological Awareness and Letter Knowledge in Preschool Children with Down Syndrome

This study investigated the effectiveness of a phonological awareness intervention for 4‐year‐old children with Down syndrome. Seven children with Down syndrome who attended an early intervention centre participated in the intervention. Their performance on measures of phonological awareness (initial phoneme identity), letter name and sound knowledge, and print concepts pre‐intervention and post‐intervention, was compared with that of a randomly selected group of age‐matched peers with typical development. The intervention involved print referencing techniques whereby the children’s parents were instructed to bring the children’s attention to targeted letters and sounds within words and to draw their attention to the initial phonemes in words during daily shared book reading activities. The intervention was presented for a 6‐week period. The results indicated a significant treatment effect on phonological awareness and letter knowledge for the children with Down syndrome. Additionally, above‐chance performance on the initial phoneme identity task was contingent on letter knowledge of the particular phoneme. Individual profiles of the children with Down syndrome pre‐intervention and post‐intervention are presented, and implications for the management of preschool children approaching the age of integration into mainstream primary schools are discussed.

The Importance of Effect Sizes in the Interpretation of Research

The Importance of Effect Sizes in the Interpretation of Research

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.

Clinical Issues: Evidence-Based Speech-Language Pathology (Practice): What’s New?

No AccessPerspectives on Language Learning and EducationClinical Issues1 Mar 2006Clinical Issues: Evidence-Based Speech-Language Pathology (Practice): What’s New? Timothy Meline Timothy Meline Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas-Pan AmericanEdinburg, TX Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/lle13.1.2 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In References ASHA. (2005). Evidence-based practice in communication disorders [position statement]. Retrieved January 27, 2006, from www.asha.org/NR/rdonlyres/4837FDFC-576B-4D84-BDD6-8BFF2A803AD3/0/v4PS_ EBP.pdf Google Scholar Dewar, J. A. (1998). The informat ion ageand the printing press: Looking backward to see ahead (Document No. P-8014). Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. Google Scholar Dollaghan, C. (2004, April 13). Evidence-based practice: Myths and realities.The ASHA Leader, 4–5, 12. Google Scholar Gillon, G. T. (2000). The efficacy of phonological awareness intervention for children with spoken language impairment.Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 31,126–141. LinkGoogle Scholar Glass, G. V. (2000). Meta-analysis at 25. Retrieved July 3,2005, from http://glass.ed.asu.edu/gene/papers/meta25.html Google Scholar Justice, L. M., & Fey, M. E. (2004, September 21). Evidence-based practice in schools: Integrating craft and theory with science and data.The ASHA Leader, 4–5, 30–32. LinkGoogle Scholar Meline, T., & Mata-Pistokache, T. (2003). The perils of Pauline’s e-mail: Professional issues for audiologists and speech-language pathologists.Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders, 30,118–122. Google Scholar Straus, S. E., Richardson, W. S., Glasziou, P., & Haynes, R. B. (2005). Evidence-based medicine: How to practice and teach EBM. New York: Elsevier. Google Scholar Reilly, S., Douglas, J., & Oates, J. (2004). Evidence based practice in speech pathology. Philadelphia: Whurr. Google Scholar Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 13Issue 1March 2006Pages: 2-4 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in issue: Mar 1, 2006 Metrics Downloaded 23 times Topicsasha-topicsleader-topicsasha-article-typesasha-sigsCopyright & Permissions© 2006 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF DownloadLoading ...

Treatment integrity in a home‐based pre‐reading intervention programme

Treatment integrity is an underexposed issue in the phonological awareness intervention research. The current study assessed the integrity of treatment of the families (N = 32) participating in the experimental condition of a home-based pre-reading intervention study. The participating kindergartners were all genetically at risk for developing dyslexia. Two aspects of treatment integrity, the number of lessons completed (quantity) and the quality of the administration of the programme (observed in a videotaped session), were investigated. The level of treatment integrity turned out to be 66% when completion of all lessons was taken as quantitative criterion, and about 74% when quality of the parent-child interaction was assessed. The two measures could predict the pre-reading skills at the end of kindergarten. Together they accounted for 43% of the variance in this dependent variable. Together with pre-reading scores at the pre-test the total predicted variance was 87%. The number of lessons completed still contributed 12% to the prediction after controlling for pre-test scores. The results indicated that treatment integrity indeed appears to be an important aspect of treatment outcome and should therefore be included in intervention studies.

Phonological awareness intervention for children with childhood apraxia of speech

To investigate the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness intervention to improve the speech production, phonological awareness and printed word decoding skills for three children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) aged 7;3, 6;3 and 6;10. The three children presented with severely delayed phonological awareness skills before intervention. In consideration for the heterogeneity in the population with CAS, the study employed a multiple single-subject design with repeated measures. Baseline and post-intervention measures for speech, phonological awareness and decoding were compared. Each child received intervention for three 45-min sessions per week for 3 weeks (approximately 7 h of individual treatment). Sessions focused on developing phoneme awareness, linking graphemes to phonemes and providing opportunities for targeted speech production practice. Phonological awareness activities were linked with each child's speech production goals. Two participants significantly improved target speech and phonological awareness skills during intervention. These participants also generalized the phonological awareness skills from trained to untrained items and were able to transfer newly acquired knowledge to improved performance on a non-word reading task. The results suggest that integrated phonological awareness intervention may be an effective method simultaneously to treat speech production, phonological awareness and decoding skills in some children with CAS. The findings are discussed within the context of the phonological representational theory of CAS.

Phonological Awareness Intervention and the Acquisition of Literacy Skills in Children From Deprived Social Backgrounds

This study examined the effect of phonological awareness intervention that focused on syllable and rhyme awareness on the acquisition of literacy and the development of phonological awareness skills 2 years post intervention. The longitudinal study compared two groups of children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds in the United Kingdom. One group received a program of phonological awareness intervention and one did not. Ninety-nine children received a 9-week program of phonological awareness intervention in the summer term of their final preschool year. These children were then assessed on measures of phonological awareness and language in the first term of their first year at school (M age = 4;7 [years; months]) and again 2 years later (M age = 6;8) on measures of phonological awareness and literacy. One year earlier, a control group of 114 children from the same schools were also assessed at these two points in their schooling on the same measures. This group did not receive any phonological awareness intervention. At the second assessment, the group of children who received phonological awareness intervention performed better than those children who received no intervention (control group) on rhyme awareness and nonword spelling. Surprisingly, however, the control group performed better than the children who had received intervention on the phoneme segmentation task. The phonological awareness intervention that was implemented, which focused on enhancing syllable and rhyme awareness, had little effect on later literacy development and may have interfered with the acquisition of phoneme awareness. Implications for intervention with children from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds are discussed in the context of current research.

Phonological Awareness

No AccessLanguage, Speech, and Hearing Services in SchoolsClinical Forum1 Oct 2005Phonological AwarenessEffecting Change Through the Integration of Research Findings Gail T. Gillon Gail T. Gillon Corresponding author: e-mail: E-mail Address: [email protected] Department of Communication Disorders, University of Canterbury, Private Bag, 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461(2005/034) SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In REFERENCES Abdelrahman, A. I., Rodriguez, G., Ryan, J. A., French, J. E., & Weinbaum, D. (1998). The epidemiology of substance use among middle school students: The impact of school, familial, community and individual risk factors.Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse, 8(1), 55–75. Google Scholar Bernthal, J., & Bankson, N. (1998). Articulation and phonological disorders. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Google Scholar Ehri, L. (1992). Reconceptualizing the development of sight word reading and its relationship to recoding.In P. Gough, L. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 107–143). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Google Scholar Gillon, G. (2002). Follow-up study investigating benefits of phonological awareness intervention for children with spoken language impairment.International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 37(4), 381–400. Google Scholar Gillon, G. (2004). Phonological awareness: From research to practice. New York: The Guilford Press. Google Scholar Gillon, G., & Dodd, B. (1995). The effects of training phonological, semantic and syntactic processing skills in spoken language on reading ability.Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 26, 58–68. ASHAWireGoogle Scholar Gillon, G. T. (2005). Facilitating phoneme awareness development in 3- and 4-year-old children with speech impairment.Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 308–324. 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The development of early literacy skills among children with speech difficulties: A test of the “critical age hypothesis.”.Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 377–391. ASHAWireGoogle Scholar Perfetti, C. A., & Hogaboam, T. (1975). The relationship between single word decoding and reading comprehension.Journal of Educational Psychology, 56, 461–469. Google Scholar Rvachew, S., Ohberg, A., Grawburg, M., & Heyding, J. (2003). Phonological awareness and phonemic perception in 4-year-old children with delayed expressive phonology skills.Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 12, 463–471. ASHAWireGoogle Scholar Share, D. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition.Cognition, 55, 151–218. CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar Sutherland, D., & Gillon, G. T. (2005). Assessment of phonological representations in children with speech impairment.Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 294–307. 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A Constructive Comment on Rvachew and Grawburg’s (2006) StudyErich Hartmann Volume 36Issue 4October 2005Pages: 346-349 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library HistoryReceived: May 6, 2005Accepted: May 10, 2005 Published in issue: Oct 1, 2005 Metrics Topicsasha-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & PermissionsCopyright © 2005 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF downloadLoading ...

Language Impairment, Parent—Child Shared Reading, and Phonological Awareness

This study evaluated the feasibility and outcomes of a parent-implemented phonological awareness (PA) intervention for young children with specific language impairment. The intervention was delivered within the context of 40 parent— child shared storybook reading sessions conducted over a 10-week period in the families' homes. Children in an experimental group ( n = 11) completed a rhyme and alliteration task at the end of each storybook reading session; children in a comparison group ( n = 11) completed an alternate vocabulary-building task. Evaluation of pre-and posttest PA performance showed differential group effects for rhyme but not alliteration. The magnitude of PA change during intervention was influenced by children's age and level of speech and language impairment. Parents provided favorable reports concerning their delivery of the intervention and demonstrated a high degree of fidelity to the task conditions. Future research directions are discussed.

Early Literacy Interventions for English Language Learners: Support for an RTI Model

As part of a three tier prevention model, first grade students in a large urban school district were screened with measures of phonological awareness and nonsense word fluency to determine those in need of a Tier 2 reading intervention. The 15 lowest performing English language learner (ELL) students were selected and received a manualized phonological awareness intervention combined with a token economy. The students were monitored weekly with a Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) task and a Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) task to assess improvement of their reading skills. Students were exited from the intervention upon reaching a predetermined level of both the PSF and NWF tasks. Twelve of the fifteen students were exited from the intervention and the remaining three students were referred for Tier three (intensive) intervention.

Low intensity phonological awareness training in a preschool classroom for children with communication impairments

Phonological awareness is a term that refers to one’s knowledge of the sound structure of spoken language. Children who understand that sounds in language represent the letters used in reading and writing typically learn to read more easily than children who do not. Children with language and/or speech impairments often demonstrate a lack of phonological awareness. Thus, it is important to identify problems in phonological awareness and to implement intervention programs early. The purpose of this study was to determine if a low intensity, classroom phonological awareness program improved phonological awareness skills for preschool children with language and/or speech impairments. Results suggested that children made significant gains in phonological awareness after participating in the intervention. Learning outcomes As a result of this activity, the reader will be able to: (1) identify components of phonological awareness program; (2) evaluate effectiveness of phonological awareness intervention.

The Effects of a Phonological Awareness Intervention on the Oral English Proficiency of Spanish-Speaking Kindergarten Children

The primary aim of this study was to determine whether a phonological awareness intervention promoted oral English proficiency more than a story-reading condition for Spanish-speaking kindergarten children, most of whom were limited English proficient. A second aim was to determine the extent to which change in English proficiency over the course of the intervention could be attributed to change in phonological awareness. Pre- and posttest measures included tests of oral English proficiency, receptive English vocabulary, and phonological awareness. Although both groups showed significant change in oral English proficiency over pretest scores, an analysis of covariance, covarying pretest scores, indicated the phonological awareness group showed greater change than did the story-reading group. Multiple regression analyses were conducted with measures of sound discrimination, short-term memory, and change in vocabulary and phonological awareness in the predictive model. Results indicated that changes in phonological awareness variables were the only significant predictors of change in oral English proficiency. These results suggest that phonological awareness instruction promotes oral English proficiency for Spanish-speaking kindergarten children. Thus, a balanced reading program for limited English proficient, Spanish-speaking kindergarten children, including story reading, should also include phonological awareness instruction for the added benefit of greater change in oral English proficiency.