Phonemic Awareness: the Development of Early Reading Competency.

Phonemic awareness, the ability to examine language independent of its meaning and to manipulate component sounds of language is highly implicated in reading acquisition. However, the precise nature of this relationship has yet to be specified. A variety of studies have investigated age and ability with respect to phonemic awareness, but no one study has traced the developmental and experimental effects of teaching phonemic awareness to children in the beginning stages of reading acquisition. Similarly, the impact and dimensions of teaching phonemic awareness have not been fully assessed. For example, the type of training in phonemic awareness may prove to be an important tool in facilitating reading ability. The purpose of this study was to document the effect of phonemic awareness on reading acquisition in kindergarten and first grade children. Two instructional approaches (skill and drill, and conceptual) and one control group were employed in an experimental design. Training took place over a 10 week period. Forty-eight kindergarten (M = 6.2 years) and 48 first grade children (M = 7.2 years) were r and omly assigned to one of the three groups, based on a earlier match for reading ability. Each group received a battery of tasks assessing phonemic awareness, IQ, and reading achievement in late Fall and again in early Spring. The results of this study demonstrated that (1) training in phonemic awareness facilitates reading achievement for kindergarten and first grade children and suggests a causal role for phonemic awareness in reading acquisition, (2) kindergarten and first grade children alike benefit from a program in phonemic awareness, (3) skilled readers perform better on phonemic awareness tasks, but do not derive greater benefit from training in phonemic awareness than the less-skilled readers, and (4) the type of instructional program does not make a significant difference in subsequent reading acquisition for first graders. The children who were more advanced readers derived greater benefit from a conceptual approach than a skill and drill approach.PhDDevelopmental psychologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161232/1/8702716.pd