The development of phonological awareness throughout the school years: The case of a transparent orthography

This article discusses phonological awareness, reading decoding and spelling of 280 Greek elementary school students of all grades, with and without reading difficulties. Phonological awareness was assessed by using ten oral activities. Decoding was assessed for accuracy and fluency by using 80 real words and 20 non-words. Spelling was also assessed by using two different scoring methods. We explored differences in performance and developmental images between children with and without reading difficulties. The results revealed that the level of written language manipulation as well as of phonological awareness of children with reading difficulties was significantly lower than that of their peers without reading difficulties. This trend was recorded for all primary school grades. The differences were not eliminated despite the transition from grade to grade. Results pertaining to the development of phonological awareness are discussed in light of the transparent orthography of Greek language. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers