Phonological Knowledge in 5-year-old Bilingual Turkish Qashqai-Persian Children and Fars Monolingual Children

Background & Objectives: Phonological awareness is a part of metalinguistic knowledge that is significantly associated with a wide range of language skills and processes, including literacy, and reading and writing skills. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the phonological awareness skills in bilingual five years old Qashqai- Persian children with monolingual Persian speaking children. Methods: 15 bilingual and 15 monolingual children (10 girls and 5 boys) were selected from kindergartens in Firouzabad, Fars, in February and early March 2020 and evaluated by Auditory Test of Phonological Awareness Skills (ASHA-5) for 5-6 years old Persian speaking children. Results: The results implied that the mean total score (P=0.733), as well as the mean score of each component of phonological awareness skills, including syllable awareness (P=0.328), rhyme awareness (P=0.625), and phonemic awareness (P=0.946) in monolingual 5-year-old children, were higher than the Qashqai-Persian bilingual group, but the differences were not significant (P≥0.05). Conclusion: The findings of the present study demonstrated that phonological awareness skills in the Persian language are higher in monolingual children than in Qashqai-Persian bilingual children, but the differences were not significant. Therefore, paying more attention and increasing knowledge about this aspect of language in bilingual children can be more effective in planning for education, evaluation, and treatment of phonological disorders in this group of children, especially in pre-school ages.

effectiveness of a therapeutic teaching protocol in the treatment of reading difficulties for students of the Arabic-speaking primary

This study is concerned with highlighting the effect of vocal processing skills of vocal awareness and vocal working memory on the development of reading mechanisms and difficulties. The study was conducted on a total sample of 280 male and female pupils in the third, fourth and fifth phases of primary school ages 8-11, among them 50 children with dyslexia who were diagnosed according to a battery of standards that the researcher prepared for this purpose and that respond to the standards Psychometrics to build tests. The study aims to: To ensure the effectiveness of a pedagogical treatment program in developing reading skills for students with dyslexia dependent on phonological awareness activities and phonological working memory and the transition from part to whole gradually. In general, children with dyslexia suffer from a great and persistent difficulty in phonemic representation, in addition to a deficiency in the lower linguistic units in the Arabic language and their use to reach the skills of recognizing the written word by linking between the linear phonemic compatibility of the voice. Our findings support the evolutionary hypothesis of general disability in vocal processing skills and concluded that rhyme awareness appears before vocal syllabic awareness. A child at this level finds difficulty in phonograms with moving sound. Additionally, multiple regression analysis shows that poor vocal memory is the best indication of poor vocal awareness in the Arabic language. Studies also focused on the effectiveness of the proposed program for the treatment of vocal dyslexia in improving the ability to read in general.

Effects of ASL Rhyme and Rhythm on Deaf Children’s Engagement Behavior and Accuracy in Recitation: Evidence from a Single Case Design

Early language acquisition is critical for lifelong success in language, literacy, and academic studies. There is much to explore about the specific techniques used to foster deaf children’s language development. The use of rhyme and rhythm in American Sign Language (ASL) remains understudied. This single-subject study compared the effects of rhyming and non-rhyming ASL stories on the engagement behavior and accuracy in recitation of five deaf children between three and six years old in an ASL/English bilingual early childhood classroom. With the application of alternating treatment design with initial baseline, it is the first experimental research of its kind on ASL rhyme and rhythm. Baseline data revealed the lack of rhyme awareness in children and informed the decision to provide intervention as a condition to examine the effects of explicit handshape rhyme awareness instruction on increasing engagement behavior and accuracy in recitation. There were four phases in this study: baseline, handshape rhyme awareness intervention, alternating treatments, and preference. Visual analysis and total mean and mean difference procedures were employed to analyze results. The findings indicate that recitation skills in young deaf children can be supported through interventions utilizing ASL rhyme and rhythm supplemented with ASL phonological awareness activities. A potential case of sign language impairment was identified in a native signer, creating a new line of inquiry in using ASL rhyme, rhythm, and phonological awareness to detect atypical language patterns.

Factors affecting L2 phonological awareness in Chinese-Dutch preschoolers

The present study compared the relationship between Dutch phonological awareness (rhyme awareness, initial phoneme isolation), Dutch speech decoding and Dutch receptive vocabulary in two groups in different linguistic environments: 30 Mandarin Chinese-Dutch bilingual children and 24 monolingual Dutch peers. Chinese vocabulary and phonological awareness were taken into account in the bilingual group. Bilingual children scored below their Dutch monolingual counterparts on all Dutch tasks. In the bilingual group, Dutch rhyme awareness was predicted by Dutch speech decoding, both directly, and indirectly via Dutch receptive vocabulary. When adding Chinese proficiency to the model, Chinese rhyme awareness was found to mediate the relationship between Dutch speech decoding and Dutch rhyme awareness. It can thus be concluded that second language (L2) phonological awareness in Chinese-Dutch kindergartners is affected by their L2 speech and vocabulary level, on the one hand, and their level of phonological awareness in the first language (L1).

Rhyming in the Context of the Phonological Awareness of Pre-School Children

Rhyming is one of the basic skills associated with phonological awareness. This paper aims to introduce theoretical starting points and the results of research into children’s rhyming in the context of phonological awareness. The text explains theoretical circumstances pertaining to the theme and defines key concepts. The main part of the paper includes the results of the research of pre-school children in Slovakia. There were 866 respondents (children) of 4 to 7 years of age. The subject of the research was the rhyming skills of children, which was tested in three independent areas: completing the rhyme in a nursery-rhyme, awareness of rhymes, and the production of rhymes.

An Assessment of Chinese Adult Learners’ English Phonological Awareness

The present study aims to conduct a valid comprehensive assessment of Chinese adult learners’ phonological awareness (PA) in English. To do so, 408 college students were classified into three groups based on their English proficiency; four tasks (oddity, segmentation, blending, and deletion) with varying complexity employed to test all three levels of PA (syllable awareness, onset-rhyme awareness, and phoneme awareness). The results revealed that 1) overall PA improved with English proficiency; 2) among four tasks, only the performances on oddity were not significantly affected by English proficiency; 3) English proficiency attained significance for all three levels of PA; and 4) in terms of subtest where task and PA interacted, English proficiency’s impact was mediated by the complexity of task and level of PA. This study is meant to guide PA researchers on a valid PA assessment and Chinese English teachers on PA training for their Chinese English learners.

Assessing Early Literacy With Hispanic Preschoolers: The Factor Structure of the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening—Español

For two decades, it has been recommended that assessment of literacy for preschool children be conducted in a child’s primary language. However, only a few literacy assessments have been validated with a preschool, Spanish-speaking population. The purpose of the present study was to test the latent structure of the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschool (PALS-PreK) Español with a sample of Spanish-speaking children in the southwestern United States. Children who could recognize at least 16 uppercase and nine lowercase letters were included in the analyses. Subscales of the PreK Español included Name Writing, Letter/Sound Association, Print Concepts, and Rhyme Awareness. Confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a two-factor model of alphabet knowledge (upper and lowercase letter recognition, letter sounds) and print and phonological awareness (name writing, print and rhyme awareness, letter sounds) with letter sounds loading on both factors. We found that the structure of PALS-PreK Español is similar to the English version and discussed implications.

Do Chinese- and English-speaking preschoolers think differently about language?

Metalinguistic awareness is the ability to identify, reflect upon, and manipulate linguistic units. It plays a critical role in reading development. The present study investigated Chinese- and English-speaking preschoolers’ metalinguistic awareness development and the role of cognitive and linguistic abilities in its development. Forty-two Chinese-speaking and 36 English-speaking monolingual children completed a series of metalinguistic awareness, false belief, inhibitory control, and receptive vocabulary tasks. The results revealed distinct pathways for the two language groups. English speakers had a more advanced level of rhyme awareness. Chinese speakers developed homonym understanding faster during the preschool years. Inhibitory control was more important for Chinese speakers to develop synonym and homonym understanding, whereas receptive vocabulary was crucial for English speakers to develop rhyme awareness. These differences may be attributable to the characteristics of the Chinese and English languages, as well as the patterns of cognitive development in the two populations.