Possible interactive relationships between phoneme awareness and early letter-sound knowledge: Evidence from an experimental training study
Abstract
Phoneme awareness (PA) and letter knowledge (LK) are important predictors of early literacy development in alphabetic languages (Caravolas et al 2012; Ziegler and Goswami 2005). However, contrasting theories describe different causal relationships between these two skills: A prevalent view is that LK is a necessary precursor for the emergence of PA, and both skills then contribute to early literacy (e.g., Castles, Coltheart 2004).
An alternative view sees PA and LK developing separately, albeit in a reciprocally beneficial relationship, and each contributing uniquely to growth in early literacy (e.g., Hulme et al., 2005). Our 7-week intervention study aimed to elucidate the relationship between PA and LK and their respective and joint impacts on early literacy development.
In addition to expected benefits of training on PA and LK, we predicted that children in the PA group would show greater generalization in PA across phoneme types and positions, and in turn this would contribute to faster learning of LK, and early literacy skills. In contrast, we anticipated that the LK trained group would show more skill-specific benefits of training and lesser contributions to growth in PA skill and early literacy.
Method: 180 Czech preschool children in 12 schools aged 4,5-5 years were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: phoneme or letter knowledge training or an untreated group. Intervention groups received 35 daily lessons of either PA or LK.
All groups were pre-tested on PA, LK, literacy measures and nonverbal IQ, retested in the middle of the training, tested right after the end of training and after a 5 month delay.