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Cross-Language Studies of Learning to Read and Spell pp 31–52Cite as

Toward an Understanding of Phonological Awareness

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Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASID,volume 87))

Abstract

Numerous studies have documented a relationship between phonological awareness and reading achievement. Despite this work, phonological awareness and its development are not well understood. This chapter examines phonological awareness, first by considering how it has been measured, and then, by studying factors related to performance on a frequently used measure of phonological awareness. A review of the literature showed that numerous tasks have been used to measure children’s awareness of phonemes. These can be divided into phoneme segmentation, phoneme blending, and sound comparison tasks. It is proposed that performance on phoneme segmentation and phoneme blending tasks is heavily influenced by experience with an alphabetic writing system. An investigation of a commonly used sound comparison task, the oddity task, suggested that performance on this task was dependent in part on chidren’s perceptual and memory abilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders, University of Kansas, 3031 Dole, Lawrence, Kansas, 66045-2181, USA

    Hugh W. Catts, Kim A. Wilcox, Carla Wood-Jackson, Linda S. Larrivee & Victoria G. Scott

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  1. Hugh W. Catts
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  2. Kim A. Wilcox
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  3. Carla Wood-Jackson
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  4. Linda S. Larrivee
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  5. Victoria G. Scott
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, 28 Campus Drive, S7N 0X1, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Che Kan Leong

  2. Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, Oklahoma State University, 252 Willard Hall, 74078, Stillwater, OK, USA

    R. Malatesha Joshi

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Catts, H.W., Wilcox, K.A., Wood-Jackson, C., Larrivee, L.S., Scott, V.G. (1997). Toward an Understanding of Phonological Awareness. In: Leong, C.K., Joshi, R.M. (eds) Cross-Language Studies of Learning to Read and Spell. NATO ASI Series, vol 87. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1197-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1197-5_2

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