Fonologisk medvetenhet och läsförmågor hos barn i åk 1 och 3 : En jämförelse mellan de fonologiska deltesten ur ett standardiserat test (UMESOL och projektet Legilexis testmaterial

The present study is a small part of a project that is named Legilexi which includes a screening test where the purpose is to identify children who are at risk of having reading- and writing difficulties. The aim of the present study was primarily to investigate the relationship between phonological awareness and different reading abilities in children in year 1 and 3. A further aim was to contribute to the validation of Legilexi’s screening test. There were 48 children from four different schools that participated in the study, 29 of these children were in grade 1, and 19 were in grade 3. The students in first grade were in the ages of 7;0–8:1 years and the children in third grade were between the ages of 9;1 and 9;11 years. The recruitment of the schools was done in consultation with project managers of Legilexi. In this study the schools were selected throughout a convenience sample, because of Legilexi’s spread throughout the whole of Sweden. Phonological awareness was assessed with UMESOL’s phonological elements; phoneme segmentation, phoneme synthesis, position analysis and segment subtraction. The teachers tested the children with Legilexi ́s test material. The relations between the collected data were later examined together with secondary data from Legilexi. The results showed strong correlations between different aspects of phonological awareness, reading- and listening comprehension. However, ceiling effects were discovered in Legilexi’s subtest phoneme analysis in grade 1. This indicates that the design of the test was too simple for the participating children. The conclusion of the present study was that the results were in line with previous research regarding phonological awareness and early reading development. An important and useful finding was the ceiling effect on Legilexi’s test of phonological awarenes