Phonetic awareness and reading acquisition

Abstract

Summary. Three issues are dealt with: the relationship between phonetic awareness and reading acquisition, the nature of the cognitive capacities that make phonetic awareness possible, and the potential influence pf phonetic awareness on language perception and comprehension. Data on the relationships between phonetic awareness and reading acquisition support an interactive view. For most people, learning to read in the alphabetic system stimulates phonetic awareness. On the other hand, phonetic awareness is a critical factor for success in reading acquisition. Indications about the nature of the cognitive capacities that underlie phonetic awareness may be obtained by inspecting its development. Two capacities at least seem to be required: the capacity to ignore meaning and focus on the sound properties of speech and the capacity of segmentation.Lack of phonetic awareness does not imply that phonetic processing does not take place during speech perception. Recent data suggest that speech perception includes a stage of extraction of phonetic features regardless of whether or not the subject is able to segment speech into phones explicitly. However, phonetic awareness may influence perceptual strategies and the relative weight of meaning expectancies in identification. Phonetic awareness and reading acquisition:

Acquisition of Literacy in Bilingual Children: A Framework for Research

“…Phonological awareness is the metalinguistic concept most clearly connected to reading. Its role in initiating and promoting literacy in children has been documented in countless empirical studies (e.g., Bryant & Goswami, 1987;Liberman, Shankweiler, Liberman, Fowler, & Fischer, 1977;Morais, 1987;Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1988;Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). Contrary to earlier claims that limited its effect to alphabetic literacy (Perfetti & Zhang, 1991;Read, Yun-Fei, Hong-Yin, & Bao-Qing, 1986), researchers now propose that it is also essential in learning to read nonalphabetic languages such as Chinese (Hanley, Tzeng, & Huang, 1999;Ho & Bryant, 1997a, 1997bShu, Anderson, & Wu, 2000), although these claims tend to be based on tasks assessing units larger than individual phonemes.…”

Identification of vowel speech sounds by skilled and less skilled readers and the relation with vowel spelling

“…However, the phonological processing necessary for reading and spelling appears not to be as immediate or precise in persons who manifest reading and spelling disabilities (e.g., Rubin and Liberman 1983). Such persons show deficits in phonemic awareness (Bradley and Bryant 1978;Lundberg, Olofsson, and Wall 1980;Morais 1987) and in underlyng perceptual abilities (Brady 1997;Fowler 1991;McBride-Chang 1995) such as discrimination of speech sounds (Godfrey, SyrdalLasky, Millay, and Knox 1981;Kraus et al 1996;Reed 1989). They also have difficulties with pronunciation (Apthorp 1995;Lieberman et al 1985), and show slow access to the lexicon (Bowers and Wolf 1993).…”

Bilingualism and phonological awareness: the case of bilingual (French–Occitan) children

“…As far as metalinguistic abilities are concerned, over the last few decades a great many studies have highlighted the importance of phonological awareness when learning to read in alphabetic systems (Bryant & Goswami, 1987;Morais, 1987;Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1988;Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994) and, more recently, in nonalphabetic ones (Hanley, Tzeng & Huang, 1999;Shu, Anderson, & Wu, 2000). The development of phonological awareness in bilingual children has been the subject of a slightly smaller number of recent studies, and these have produced rather less categorical findings.…”