Abilities of phonological awareness in the context of cognitive development in preschool age

Abstract

Phonological awareness is considered a key phenomenon having crucial position among abilities and processes which are important and responsible for the development of reading and writing (initial literacy). The paper deals with the significance and level of development of selected cognitive functions of a child in relation to the abilities of phonological awareness. The child´s current cognitive development is a predictor for certain level of phonological awareness. The paper is focused on a description of speech perception, language, oral vocabulary and phonological memory of children in preschool age. It is an output of the research project VEGA no. 1/0637/16 Development of a Diagnostic Tool to Assess the Level of Phonemic Awareness of Children in Preschool Age.

Research of the Ability to Isolate Syllables From Words in Preschool Aged Children

“…Therefore, learning to read an alphabetic orthography provides most children with the opportunity to develop full phonemic awareness. On the other hand, pre-literate activities in kindergartens can help the children to develop a certain level of phonological and phonemic awareness which is necessary later in the formal reading and writing instruction (Bentin, 1992;Anthony and Francis, 2005;Grofčíková and Máčajová, 2017). Abbott et al (2008) stated that five and six-year-old preschoolers should be able orally blend and delete words and syllables without the support of pictures or objects; orally blend the onsets, rimes, and phonemes of the words; and orally delete the onsets of words, with the support of pictures.…”

“…It refers to a specific audible ability which help us to recognize separate sounds in the words, distinguish sounds from the flow of speech like perceiving sounds, identifying word boundaries, identifying segments of words, and detecting similarities among words. These abilities demonstrated in the manipulation with speech sounds are required for the successful decoding of orthographic symbols, the alphabet (Mikulajová and Dujčíková, 2001;Torgesen, 2002;Seidlová Málková, 2014;Grofčíková and Máčajová, 2017). Liberman (in Vaessen, 2010) stated that the perception of phonemes cannot be considered as an integral part of the human language system, and it is a reason why a child´s preliterate level of phonemic awareness is very low.…”

Supportive Development of Phonological Awareness Through Musical Activities According to Edgar Willems

“…This usually takes from one to three years, depending on the orthographic transparency of the written language. (Vaessen, 2010, in Grofčíková & Máčajová, 2017 Furthermore, "perceptual learning mechanisms, e.g., learning linguistic sounds, require direct social interaction in order to be effective" (Goswami, 2015, in Grofčíková & Máčajová, 2017. Kjeldsen et al (2003) examined the effects of phonological awareness training in preschool children and concluded that there was progress in phonological awareness skills and that consistency and continuity of training was more important than quantity of training.…”

Learning by Doing Intervention: Addressing Phonological Difficulties of Children through Audiolingual Method and Total Physical Response

“…Readers gain access to the alphabetic principle through phonics when they apply their knowledge of sound and letter relationships to familiar or unfamiliar words. Likewise, phonological knowledge as a central phenomenon plays a critical role in the growth of reading and writing capacities and processes of the children (Grofčíková & Máčajová, 2017). Phonological awareness indicates that the area of oral language relates to the ability to think about the sounds in a word (the word's phonological structure) rather than just the meaning of the word (Mohammed, 2014).…”