The importance of letter knowledge in the relationship between phonological awareness and reading

Previous correlational and experimental research has found a positive association between phonological awareness and reading skills. This paper provides an overview of studies in this area and shows that many studies have neglected to control for extraneous variables such as ability, phonological memory, pre‐existing reading skills and letter knowledge. The paper reports on the results of a longitudinal study that took account of these variables when examining the relationship between phonological awareness and reading for a group of children during their first two years at school. Children showed rhyme awareness before they began to read but were unable to perform a phoneme deletion task until after they had developed word‐reading skills. Concurrent and predictive correlations between phonological awareness scores and later reading were often significant and remained so after adjusting for verbal ability or phonological memory. Controlling for letter knowledge, however, reduced most correlations to nonsignificant levels.     

Effects of a phonological awareness program on English reading and spelling among Hong Kong Chinese ESL children

This study investigated the effects of a 12-week language-enriched phonological awareness instruction on 76 Hong Kong young children who were learning English as a second language. The children were assigned randomly to receive the instruction on phonological awareness skills embedded in vocabulary learning activities or comparison instruction which consisted of vocabulary learning and writing tasks but no direct instruction in phonological awareness skills. They were tested on receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness at the syllable, rhyme and phoneme levels, reading, and spelling in English before and after the program implementation. The results indicated that children who received the phonological awareness instruction performed significantly better than the comparison group on English word reading, spelling, phonological awareness at all levels and expressive vocabulary on the posttest when age, general intelligence and the pretest scores were controlled statistically. The findings suggest that phonological awareness instruction embedded in vocabulary learning activities might be beneficial to kindergarteners learning English as a second language.     

Reading and reading-related skills in children using cochlear implants: prospects for the influence of cued speech

We assessed the reading and reading-related skills (phonemic awareness and phonological short-term memory) of deaf children fitted with cochlear implants (CI), either exposed to cued speech early (before 2 years old) (CS+) or never (CS-). Their performance was compared to that of 2 hearing control groups, 1 matched for reading level (RL), and 1 matched for chronological age (CA). Phonemic awareness and phonological short-term memory were assessed respectively through a phonemic similarity judgment task and through a word span task measuring phonological similarity effects. To assess the use of sublexical and lexical reading procedures, children read pseudowords and irregular words aloud. Results showed that cued speech improved performance on both the phonemic awareness and the reading tasks but not on the phonological short-term memory task. In phonemic awareness and reading, CS+ children obtained accuracy and rapidity scores similar to CA controls, whereas CS- children obtained lower scores than hearing controls. Nevertheless, in phonological short-term memory task, the phonological similarity effect of both CI groups was similar. Overall, these results support the use of cued speech to improve phonemic awareness and reading skills in CI children.     

Chinese-English biscriptal reading: cognitive component skills across orthographies

This study examined the associations of Chinese visual-orthographic skills, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness to Chinese and English word reading among 326 Hong Kong Chinese second- and fifth-graders learning English as a second language. Developmentally, tasks of visual-orthographic skill, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness improved with age. However, the extent to which each of the constructs explained variance in Chinese and English word reading was stable across age but differed by orthography. Across grades, visual-orthographic skills and morphological awareness, but not phonological awareness, were uniquely associated with Chinese character recognition with age and nonverbal IQ statistically controlled. In contrast, Chinese visual-orthographic skills and phonological awareness, but not morphological awareness, accounted for unique variance in English word reading even with the effects of Chinese character recognition and other reading-related cognitive tasks statistically controlled. Thus, only visual-orthographic skills appeared to be a consistent factor in explaining both Chinese and English word reading, perhaps in part because Hong Kong Chinese children are taught in school to read both Chinese and English using a “look and say” strategy that emphasizes visual analysis for word recognition. These findings extend previous research on Chinese visual-orthographic skills to English word reading and underscore commonality and uniqueness in bilingual reading acquisition.     

Rhythm and reading development in school‐age children: a longitudinal study

Rhythm production in 53 children in grade 1 was investigated as a predictor of reading ability in the same children in grades 1–5. This paper reports the results of correlations and hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for shared variance between phonological awareness and naming speed. Rhythm was correlated significantly with both phonological awareness and naming speed. Rhythm predicted significant variance in reading ability at each grade level. Once phonological awareness was controlled, however, rhythm was a significant predictor only in grade 5. When naming speed was controlled, rhythm predicted unique variance in reading ability in grades 2, 3 and 5. Implications for the relationship between rhythm and the development of reading skills are discussed.     

Developmental changes in the contributions of phonological processing skills to Chinese character reading and arithmetic

This study examined the associations of phonological processing skills with reading and arithmetic ability in Chinese kindergartners (Mage = 5.56 years), third graders (Mage = 9.72 years), and fifth graders (Mage = 11.75 years) (N = 413) of Han descent. The results showed that phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) showed stronger relations than phonological memory with reading and arithmetic across grades. Furthermore, the associations of phonological awareness and RAN with reading were much stronger in kindergartners than in primary school children, whereas their relationships with arithmetic remained stable across grades. Among phonological skills, phonological awareness has a unique influence on arithmetic that is independent of Chinese character reading in third-graders and kindergartners. In contrast, RAN uniquely explained the variation in arithmetic skills in fifth graders when reading was statistically controlled for. These findings have important implications for understanding the co-development of reading and arithmetic across grades and raise the possibility of training in phonological awareness and/or RAN to help children at risk for learning disabilities.     

Phonological awareness,speech development,and letter knowledge in preschool children

Phonological awareness has been shown to be one of the most reliable predictors and associates of reading ability. In an attempt to better understand its development, we have examined the interrelations of speech skills and letter knowledge to the phonological awareness and early reading skills of 99 preschool children. We found that phoneme awareness, but not rhyme awareness, correlated with early reading measures. We further found that phoneme manipulation was closely associated with letter knowledge and with letter sound knowledge, in particular, where rhyme awareness was closely linked with speech perception and vocabulary. Phoneme judgment fell in between. The overall pattern of results is consistent with phonological representation as an important factor in the complex relationship between preschool children’s phonological awareness, their emerging knowledge of the orthography, and their developing speech skills. However, where rhyme awareness is a concomitant of speech and vocabulary development, phoneme awareness more clearly associates with the products of literacy experience.     

Phonological task comparability in Arabic and relation to reading: a longitudinal assessment in kindergarten and first grade

The universal role of phonological processing skills for reading acquisition has been established in many different languages including Arabic. However, in Arabic little knowledge exists about the development of wide-range of phonological tasks and about the correlations between them. We longitudinally studied the developmental trends and correlations between different phonological tasks in kindergarten and first grade and tested their relation to reading accuracy and fluency. Thirty-two children individually completed the same ten phonological processing tasks in kindergarten and first grade. In first grade, reading measures and letter naming were also assessed. Developmental effects of phonological skills showed significant improvement of performance between the two phases in the majority of tasks. Task comparability has raised interesting issues related to the developmental hierarchy of phonological awareness tasks. Moreover, phonological awareness tasks were more inter-correlated in first grade compared to kindergarten, and their correlations to reading were also more established when phonological measures were collected in first grade. The developmental hierarchy of phonological tasks seems to depend on the linguistic and cognitive complexity (unit position, maintenance of the coherent unit and word length) of the items, beyond the size of the phonological unit which was manipulated. The observations reported here have practical implications for planning graded phonological instruction and intervention strategies.

     

Preliterate phonological awareness and early literacy skills in Turkish

The role of preschool phonological awareness in early reading and spelling skills was investigated in the transparent orthography of Turkish. Fifty‐six preschool children (mean age=5.6 years) were followed into Grade 2 (mean age=7.6 years). While preschool phonological awareness failed to make any reliable contribution to future reading skills, it was the strongest longitudinal correlate of spelling skills measured at the end of Grades 1 and 2. Overall findings suggested that phonological awareness may be differentially related to reading and spelling, and that spelling is a more sensitive index of phonological processing skills. In this study, verbal short‐term memory emerged as the most powerful and consistent longitudinal correlate of reading speed. This finding raised important questions about the component processes of reading speed, and the role of memory and morphosyntactic skills in an agglutinative and transparent orthography such as Turkish.     

Bidirectional relationships between children’s executive functioning,visual skills,and word reading ability during the transition from kindergarten to primary school

This longitudinal study investigated the bidirectional relationships between executive functioning (EF), visual skills, Chinese and English word reading abilities in children transitioning to primary school. A total of 165 children in Hong Kong were followed from the third year of kindergarten (Time 1) (mean age: 62.80 months, SD: 3.74) to the first year of primary school (Time 2) (mean age: 77.25 months, SD: 4.60). Assessments for measuring EF, visual skills, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and Chinese and English word reading were administered to the children at the two time points. Results of cross-lagged panel analyses revealed that after age, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness were controlled, EF and visual skills exhibited a bidirectional relationship. Furthermore, EF and word reading in Chinese or English reciprocally predicted each other during the school transition period after other skills were controlled. However, visual skills and word reading in Chinese or English did not predict each other. These findings highlight the close associations between EF and visual skills as well as the importance of EF in learning to read Chinese and English in kindergarten and early primary school.     

Morphological Awareness,Orthographic Knowledge,and Spelling Errors: Keys to Understanding Early Chinese Literacy Acquisition

This 1-year longitudinal study examined the extent to which morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness, along with speeded naming, uniquely explained word recognition, dictation (i.e., spelling), and reading comprehension among 171 young Hong Kong Chinese children. With age and vocabulary knowledge statistically controlled, both morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge were uniquely associated with all three concurrently measured literacy skills, as well as longitudinal measures of specific literacy skills. Naming speed was also uniquely associated with concurrent word reading, as well as all three literacy skills longitudinally, even with their autoregressive effects controlled. Analyses of children's spelling mistakes indicated that 97% and 95% of all errors were either morpholexically or orthographically based at times 1 and 2, respectively. Morphologically based spelling errors were also uniquely associated with all three literacy skills across time. Findings underscore the importance of morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge for Chinese literacy acquisition.     

The relationship between prosodic perception,phonological awareness and vocabulary in emergent literacy

Studies have begun to focus on what skills contribute to the development of phonological awareness, an important predictor of reading attainment. One of these skills is the perception of prosody, which is the rhythm, tempo and stress of a language. To examine whether prosodic perception contributes to phonological awareness prior to reading tuition, we assessed 49 prereaders. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we found that measures of prosodic perception and phonological awareness loaded onto separate factors. Our regression analyses revealed that prosodic perception accounted for significant variance after partialling out definitional vocabulary and memory for digits, but not after accounting for receptive vocabulary. Based on the independence of prosodic perception from definitional vocabulary, we concluded that prosodic perception contributes to the development of phonological awareness indirectly through receptive vocabulary, by improving speech‐processing skills, but independently of semantic knowledge. Further studies should examine the role of prosody in children at risk of later reading difficulties.     

Phonemic awareness development in 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children: an examination of emergent,receptive, knowledge and skills

The National Institutes of Health has deemed illiteracy a national health crisis based on reading proficiency rates among American children. In 2002, the National Early Literacy Panel identified six pre-reading skills that are most crucial precursors to reading mastery and predict future reading outcomes. Of those skills, phonological awareness, and in particular phonemic awareness, is the strongest independent predictor of early reading outcomes. However, limited research has addressed the development of these component skills due in part to the fact that many of the measures used to assess sub-skills such as phonemic awareness are oral production measures that cannot easily be administered with children under the age of five, and are not designed to detect implicit or emerging knowledge. To address this limitation, we developed and administered two receptive measures of phonemic awareness to 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children. We found evidence for the emergence of this component skill earlier in ontogeny than is currently acknowledged in the literature. Overall, children performed at above chance rates on measures of receptive phonemic awareness at the level of the individual phoneme as early as 2.5-years-old. Results are discussed in terms of the need for a paradigm shift in prevailing models of how phonological awareness develops, as well as the potential to identify children at-risk for reading failure at an earlier point in ontogeny than is currently feasible.     

Disabled Readers' Performance on Tasks of Phonological Processing,Rapid Naming,and Letter Knowledge Before and After Kindergarten

The importance of early identification of children at risk for reading failure is clearly established in the literature. The purpose of this longitudinal retrospective study was to further define the relationship between the development of prereading skills and later reading outcome in two groups of children; a group of reading‐disabled children and a group of their normally reading peers. Children's alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and rapid naming skills were explored at the beginning of kindergarten and again prior to first grade as a function of later reading outcomes. Results indicate that differences found between the groups in all measures at prekindergarten age diminish by prefirst grade with the exception of phonological awareness abilities. Findings have direct implications for screening children at risk for reading difficulties and the time‐sensitive nature of these tasks during the preliteracy period.     

How socioeconomic status,executive functioning and verbal interactions contribute to early academic achievement in Chinese children

The present study investigated the relative importance of executive functioning, parent–child verbal interactions, phonological awareness and visual skills on reading and mathematics for Chinese children from low-versus middle-socio economic status (SES) backgrounds. A total of 199 kindergarten children were assessed on executive functioning, verbal interactions, phonological awareness, visual skills, mathematics and word reading in Chinese and English. Results revealed that low-SES children exhibited lower levels of cognitive-linguistic skills, verbal interactions, reading and mathematics achievement than their middle-SES counterparts. Path analyses also indicated that executive functioning and verbal interactions made significant and direct contributions to mathematics, and indirect contributions to reading through phonological awareness. These results suggest that executive functioning and verbal interactions provide the foundation for phonological awareness and visual skills, which in turn affect reading and mathematics achievement. Overall, findings underscore the potential importance of SES inequalities, cognitive-linguistic skills and parental verbal input to their children for early reading and mathematics achievement.     

Predicting reading ability over the long term: The changing roles of letter naming,phonological awareness and orthographic processing

A cohort of 92 children was followed through sixth grade to investigate the relationship of preschool skills and first grade phonological awareness to reading and spelling. In particular, the focus was on the changing roles of letter naming, orthographic awareness, and phonological processing in prediction, as reading experience increased. Preschool letter naming was a consistently significant predictor of reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, and spelling at each grade level, but the preschool orthographic task contributed most to reading comprehension and spelling at the higher grades. Conversely, the contribution of the first grade phonemic awareness measures to reading skills dropped sharply after third grade, although they continued to contribute to spelling prediction. When preschool precursors of phonological processing were examined, letter naming was found to be a predictor of first and third grade phonemic awareness. Findings confirm the importance of letter naming as a predictor and of the role of phonemic awareness in early reading acquisition, but also highlight the contribution of orthographic processing skills to later reading.     

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.     

Relationship of rapid automatized naming and phonological awareness in early reading development: implications for the double-deficit hypothesis

It is widely accepted that deficits in phonological awareness skills are related to reading difficulties. Recently, another source of reading difficulty has been identified that involves naming speed, and combined impairments in phonological skills and naming speed will produce more severe reading deficits than single deficits in either of these cognitive skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the consequences of grouping children based on the presence or absence of deficits in these skills. We demonstrate that the greater severity of reading impairment found in children with a double deficit could be due in part to a statistical artifact caused by grouping children based on their performance on two correlated continuous variables. This artifact also makes it difficult to establish the relative impact of deficits in naming speed on reading ability independent of deficits in phonological awareness.     

Sensitivity to linguistic stress,phonological awareness and early reading ability in preschoolers

Recent research has found that sensitivity to linguistic stress is related to phonological awareness and reading development. This study investigated the roles of two types of linguistic stress sensitivity (lexical and metrical stress) in the phonological awareness and reading development of young children. Forty‐five kindergarten children were tested on a battery of tasks that examined linguistic stress sensitivity and early reading ability. Results indicated that lexical stress, but not metrical stress sensitivity, is significantly related to phonological awareness and early reading ability. However, lexical stress is not able to predict unique variance in early reading ability once phonological awareness is controlled for. The relationships of both lexical and metrical stress sensitivity with phonological awareness and early reading development are discussed.     

On the interaction between phonological awareness and reading acquisition: It’s a two-way Street

We have investigated the reciprocal influence of reading acquisition and phonemic awareness. Using a between-grades quasi-experimental design, we have found that learning to read is the most important factor that accounts for the drastic improvement of phonemic segmentation skills during the first year of schooling. On the other hand, we found that improving phonemic skills in kindergarten facilitated reading acquisition in children at risk for developing reading disorders. We suggest that, for most children, exposure to the alphabet automatically triggers phonemic awareness, which is a necessary condition for efficient acquisition of reading. However, the emergence of phonemic awareness requires a previously developed sensitivity to phonology, which in some children may be absent. The present data suggest that, if phonological skills are absent, they may be developed in preschoolers by explicit training, thereby preventing failure in reading acquisition.