Initial reading acquisition and phonological development: a developmental sequence

Breen, Rhonda Marie (2007) Initial reading acquisition and phonological development: a developmental sequence. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The purpose of the study was to outline the development of children's initial reading and phonological-processing skills. As a first step towards literacy, children learn letter names, and then several months later, as a second step, children develop onset identity and onset phonetic-cue reading. These in turn are followed a few months later by coda identity and coda phonetic-cue reading. Grapheme-phoneme correspondences are acquired for onsets before codas, and knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences develops before onset and coda deletion, respectively. Children can recognize which one word out of three does not rhyme before they can recognize which word has a different onset or coda. Grapheme-phoneme correspondences for onsets and codas are needed before children can identify the word with the different onset or coda. To read words by analogy, children need to know grapheme-phoneme correspondences for onsets and codas. However, only children with well-established onset- and coda-deletion ability were proficient in reading words by analogy. Although phoneme-counting ability and reading and spelling were significantly correlated, the significance disappeared when age was statistically controlled. The findings do not support the theory that there is a causal relationship between phoneme counting or phoneme awareness and reading and spelling ability.

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