Metaphonological abilities of Japanese children

Abstract

Linguists generally conceive of speech as a sequence of elementary soundunits or "phones". On the other hand, cognitive psychologists have established the existence of a close link between segmental awareness (SA) and alphabetic literacy: the best speech segmenters are also the best readers; conversely, the lack of SA leads to lagging in the acquisition of the written code. Studies carded out with illiterate adults and preliterate children suggest that SA does not arise outside the context of learning to read and write. Furthermore, cross-cultural studies have so far supported the hypothesis that SA is promoted by alphabetic literacy only, and not by logographic or syllabic literacy. The present study is inspired by Mann's (1986) research and aims at studying the phonological (i.e. syllabic and phonemic) analysis abilities of Japanese first-graders who are learning to read in a syllabic writing system. The relatively poor performance of subjects tends to confirm the starting hypothesis that SA is closely linked to alphabetic literacy. Moreover, the subjects apparently resorted to spelling-based strategies to accomplish the tasks presented. This comes to support the general idea that the written characters used to transcribe a language tend to exert a strong influence on the conscious perceptual representation of the phonology of this language.

The role of phonemic awareness in second language reading

“…The differential rate of decline in the phonemic condition is presumably attributable to the differential orthographic experiences in their respective languages, i.e., Japanese first-graders learn syllabaries and logography, while American children learn an alphabet. Spagnoletti et al (1989) replicated Mann's study with two groups of Japanese first-graders in Brussels: one group learned to read a Roman alphabet, subsequent to the Japanese writing systems, while the other learned the Japanese scripts only. The researchers found that (1) both groups performed better in the syllable, than phoneme, condition; and (2) despite the differential alphabetic experience, the groups did not differ in their phoneme manipulation skills.…”

Phonological Awareness: A Bridge Between Language and Literacy

“…and Bertelson (1987) have suggested that prereaders acquire, from corrective feedback, a procedure for deleting the initial consonant, which consists in finding the first vocalic sound as an attack point for the answer and which presumably differs from the operation that is used by literate people. Spagnoletti, Morais, Alegria, and Dominicy (1989) found results supporting the idea that Japanese children can perform correctly in the same task by resorting to the Kana matrix, which they learn at school. AH this shows that one should not attribute a particular operation to a metaphonological task on an intuitive basis; some independent empirical evidence is required.…”

The acquisition of phoneme awareness in children learning the hiragana syllabary

“…Although obtaining similar results for Japanese children attending school in Brussels, Spagnoletti, Morais, Alegria, and Dominicy (1989) noted that Mann had neglected several issues relating to the properties of the hiragana syllabary in her explanatory framework. We note that there were additional methodological problems.…”