Phonological awareness is a set of language manipulation skills such as blending, rhyme, alliteration production and detection. There are disagreements among researchers how phonological awareness is connected to literacy learning and also how and if children with Down syndrome acquire phonological awareness. The specific phenotype of Down syndrome shows deficits in both short term memory and language development. It is therefore of great concern to investigate how children with Down syndrome acquire phonological awareness and later on literacy. The PhonicStick is a joystick that generates speech sounds. In this study, the PhonicStick was used in phonological awareness intervention in children with Down syndrome. It was compared to intervention with Praxis cards – an already existing picture material in Swedish speech and language therapy. The aim of the study was to investigate if children with Down syndrome can improve phonological awareness during a six week period, and if this was the case, was there a difference in effectiveness between the materials. Six children with Down syndrome participated in this cross-over study. The results indicated that some children can acquire phonological awareness during a six week period. However, it was not possible to address the effectiveness to a certain material. The preference among the children to play with PhonicStick, showed that this is a material that motivates the children to participate in intervention. If the PhonicStick is adapted to this population of children with Down syndrome, this material can be used for phonological awareness intervention in children with Down syndrome.

Reading skills are critically important for a child’s development and continued growth in school. The home and school literacy experiences of children who have developmental disabilities have been found to be qualitatively different from the experiences of their same age peers without disabilities. In addition to access to instruction, a number of intrinsic factors including cognitive ability, receptive language and expressive speech skills have been suggested as factors that may place children with developmental disabilities at a greater risk for limited development of reading skills. Currently, little is understood about how children who have developmental disabilities and may have limitations in productive speech learn to read. This study identifies key intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are related to the development of phonological awareness in 42 children between 4 years and 5 years 9 months of age with developmental disabilities and a range of speech abilities. Aims of this project were to 1- systematically assess children’s intrinsic factors of speech ability, receptive and expressive language and vocabulary, cognitive skills and phonological awareness to determine key intrinsic factors related to phonological awareness and 2- describe the extrinsic factors of home literacy experience and preschool literacy instruction provided to children. Children were found to have frequent and positive home literacy experiences. No significant correlations between speech ability and frequency of shared reading experiences were found. Parents reported low levels of preschool literacy instruction. Significant correlations were found between instruction in decoding and word recognition and children’s sound-symbol awareness. Correlations were found between the use of technology and media and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and children’s speech ability. Positive, significant relationships were found between phonological awareness and all direct assessment measures of developmental skill, speech ability and early reading skills but were not found between phonological awareness and home or school literacy experiences. Speech ability did not predict a significant amount of variance in phonological awareness skill beyond what would be expected by cognitive development, receptive language and orthographic knowledge. This study provides important implications for practitioners and researchers alike concerning the factors related to early reading development in children with limited speech ability.

The development of reading competency is one of the most significant pedagogical achievements during the first few years of schooling. Although most children learn to read successfully when exposed to reading instruction, up to 18% of children experience significant reading difficulty (Shaywitz, 1998). As a group, young children with speech impairment are at risk of reading impairment, with approximately 50% of these children demonstrating poor acquisition of early reading skills (Nathan, Stackhouse, Goulandris, & Snowling, 2004; Larivee & Catts, 1999). A number of variables contribute to reading outcomes for children with speech impairment including co-occurring language impairment, the nature and severity of their speech impairment as well as social and cultural influences. An area of research that has received increasing attention is understanding how access to the underlying sound structure or phonological representations of spoken words stored in long-term memory account for reading difficulties observed in children (Elbro, 1996; Fowler, 1991). Researchers have hypothesised that children with speech impairment may be at increased risk of reading disability due to deficits at the level of phonological representations (Bird, Bishop, & Freeman, 1995). Phonological representation deficits can manifest in poor performance on tasks that require children to think about the sound structure of words. Knowledge about the phonological components of words is commonly referred to as phonological awareness. Identifying and manipulating phonemes within words are examples of phonological awareness skills. Some children with speech impairment perform poorly on phonological awareness measures compared to children without speech difficulties (Bird et al., 1995; Carroll & Snowling, 2004; Rvachew, Ohberg, Grawburg, & Heyding, 2003). As performance on phonological awareness tasks is a strong predictor of early reading ability (Hogan, Catts, & Little, 2005), there is an important need to determine if children with speech impairment who demonstrate poor phonological awareness, have deficits at the level of phonological representations. This thesis reports a series of studies that investigated the relationship between phonological representations, phonological awareness, and word decoding ability in children with moderate to severe speech impairment. A child with complex communication needs (CCN) who used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) was also examined to determine how the absence of effective articulation skills influences the development of phonological representations. The study employed a longitudinal design to compare the performance of nine children (aged 3:09-5:03 at initial assessment) with moderate to severe speech impairment and 17 children with typical speech development on novel assessment measures designed to determine characteristics of children's phonological representations. The tasks required children to judge the accuracy of spoken multisyllable words and newly learned nonwords. The relationships between performance on these tasks and measures of speech, phonological awareness and early print decoding were also examined. Four assessment trials were implemented at six-monthly intervals over an 18-month period. The first assessment trial was administered approximately 6 to12 months before children commenced school. The fourth trial was administered after children had completed 6 to 12 months of formal education. The child with CCN completed three assessment trials over a period of 16 months. Data analyses revealed that the children with speech impairment had significantly greater difficulty (p<0.01) judging mispronounced multisyllable words compared to their peers with typical speech development. As a group, children with speech impairment also demonstrated inferior performance on the judgment of mispronounced forms of newly learned nonwords (p<0.05). No group differences were observed on the judgment of correctly pronounced real and nonword stimuli. Significant group differences on speech production and phoneme segmentation tasks were identified at each assessment trial. Moderate to high correlations (i.e., r = 0.40 to 0.70) were also observed between performance on the phonological representation tasks and performance on phonological awareness and speech production measures at each trial across the study. Although no significant group differences were observed on the nonword decoding task, 4 of the 9 children with speech impairment could not decode any letters in nonwords (compared to only 1 child without speech impairment) at the final assessment trial when children were 6-years-old. Two children with speech impairment showed superior nonword decoding ability at trial 3 and 4. The within-group variability observed on the nonword decoding task highlighted the heterogeneity of children with speech impairment. The performances of four children with speech impairment with differing types of speech error patterns were analysed to investigate the role of phonological representations in their speech and phonological awareness development. The child with delayed speech development and excellent phonological awareness at trial 1, demonstrated superior phonological awareness and word decoding skills at age 6 years, although his performance on phonological representation tasks was inconsistent across trials. In contrast, a child with delayed development and poor early phonological awareness demonstrated weak performance on phonological representation, phonological awareness, and decoding at each successive assessment trial. The child with a high percentage of inconsistent speech error patterns generally demonstrated poor performance on phonological representation, phonological awareness and decoding measures at each of the 4 assessment trials. The child with consistent and unusual speech error patterns showed increasingly stronger performance on the phonological representation tasks and average performance on phonological awareness but limited word decoding ability at age 6. The 11-year-old girl with CCN, whose speech attempts were limited and unintelligible, demonstrated below average performance on phonological representation tasks, suggesting that an absence of articulatory feedback may negatively influence the development of well-specified phonological representations. This thesis provides evidence for the use of receptive tasks to identify differences in the phonological representations of children with and without speech impairment. The findings also provide support for the link between the representation of phonological information in long-term memory and children's speech production accuracy, phonological awareness and print decoding ability. The variable performance of some children with speech impairment and the child with cerebral palsy demonstrate the need to consider individual characteristics to develop an understanding of how children store and access speech sound information to assist their acquisition of early reading skills.

There is agreement among researchers that phonological awareness deficits are one of the main causes of dyslexia. Some researchers support the view that phonological awareness can be improved by teaching reading through a topdown approach (whole word) or a bottom-up approach (grapheme-phoneme); others claim that the combination of these two complementary approaches is more successful. The goal of this research combined reading intervention programme was to enhance the six 'dyslexic students' phonological awareness and to improve their reading in English in the inclusive English as a foreign language classroom. The research studied the effects the reading intervention programme, which systematically combines the two complementary approaches for the same duration of time in each session, had on the six Israeli research 'dyslexic students'. The present study is an inductive action research applying a case study design using qualitative research tools. Data from in-depth pre- and post-intervention interviews is triangulated with the participants' diaries, the practitioner's journal and the documentation of the pre- and post-intervention participants' assessments. Thematic data analysis indicated an improvement in the participants' phonological awareness, reading in English and functioning in the inclusive EFL classroom as a result of the combined reading intervention programme. The contribution to knowledge points to the fact that while a four-month cognitive intervention programme with 'dyslexic students' in Israel, studying English as a foreign language may improve students' cognitive functioning in English, it is insufficient in enabling students to allay their fears regarding the expectations of Israeli society, and their ability to succeed in life. Propositions suggest conducting a further action research study which examines the implementation of an additional emotional intervention to the cognitive one. The development of the emotional intervention will enable evaluation of the effects of a combined programme on 'dyslexic students' in Israel.

The Phonic Inventories are an instrument consisting of three spelling tests. This study explored the potential of this instrument to be used in group administration to identify children with potential learning difficulties. This was done with a sample of full-time mainstream and full-time remedial learners. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to establish if the Phonic Inventories could distinguish the spelling error patterns of learners in different grades for mainstream and remedial. A distinct pattern of key errors was found, which was similar for mainstream and remedial learners. There were performance changes over grade for mainstream learners but not for remedial learners. This suggests the Phonic Inventories may be measuring an underlying spelling ability which progresses in normal learners and not remedial learners. A stepwise regression analysis was used to establish whether the Phonic Inventories predict performance on contrast spelling tests. A good degree of fit was found between the tests, suggesting the Phonic Inventories are measuring the same abilities as other spelling tests, with the advantage of providing additional information. Finally, a discriminant analysis found errors made on the Phonic Inventories to predict group affiliation between the mainstream and remedial group to a good degree. It was concluded that the Phonic Inventories have strong potential as a group administered screening instrument for identifying children with potential learning difficulties.

This paper critically reviewed the literature on the relationships between Pinyin and Chinese bilingual and monolingual children’s phonological awareness (PA) and identified areas of research worth of further investigation. As the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet providing pronunciation of the universal Chinese characters, Pinyin facilitates children’s early reading development. What research has found in English is that PA is a reliable indicator of later reading success and meta-linguistic training improves PA. In Chinese, a non-alphabetic language, there is also evidence that PA predicts reading in Chinese, which confirms the universality of PA’s role. However, research shows the uniqueness of each language: tonal awareness is stronger indicator in Chinese while phonemic awareness is stronger indicator in English. Moreover, Pinyin, the meta-linguistic training, has been found to improve PA in Chinese and reading in Chinese and possibly facilitate the cross-language transfer of PA from Chinese to English and vice versa.

This paper critically reviewed the literature on the relationships between Pinyin and Chinese bilingual and monolingual children’s phonological awareness (PA) and identified areas of research worth of further investigation. As the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet providing pronunciation of the universal Chinese characters, Pinyin facilitates children’s early reading development. What research has found in English is that PA is a reliable indicator of later reading success and meta-linguistic training improves PA. In Chinese, a non-alphabetic language, there is also evidence that PA predicts reading in Chinese, which confirms the universality of PA’s role. However, research shows the uniqueness of each language: tonal awareness is stronger indicator in Chinese while phonemic awareness is stronger indicator in English. Moreover, Pinyin, the meta-linguistic training, has been found to improve PA in Chinese and reading in Chinese and possibly facilitate the cross-language transfer of PA from Chinese to English and vice versa.

This quantitative study has been derived from a five-year federal experimental research project entitled English and Literacy Acquisition (ELLA- R305P030032) which targeted Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) receiving services in English immersion and bilingual program models. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive power of Spanish phonemic awareness in kindergarten on Spanish reading ability in first grade among Spanish-speaking ELLs. Fifty-five students from typical practice bilingual classrooms were included in this study. Phonemic awareness skills were measured using blending phonemes and segmenting words, two subtests from Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (C-TOPP). Reading ability was measured using letter-word identification and passage comprehension, two subtests from Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised (WLPB-R). Data of phonemic awareness skills were collected at the beginning and end of kindergarten and data of reading ability were collected at the beginning and end of first grade. Correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were performed to address the research questions. The data from this study present a picture of a predictive power of phonemic awareness skills on reading comprehension in Spanish. Results from this study suggest that both skill areas of phonemic awareness in kindergarten have a moderate predictive effect on reading ability at the beginning of first grade. However, phonemic awareness skills in kindergarten did not show a statistically significant relationship to Spanish literacy at the end of first grade. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

The primary purpose of the present review was to determine why conflicting findings have been reported regarding the long-term effects of phonological awareness training for children from low socioeconomic status families (low-SES) and children with familial risk for reading impairment. Four aspects of intervention were analyzed for each of the studies: service delivery, content of intervention, length of sessions, and total number of sessions. The second purpose of the review was to determine which aspects of intervention had the largest effect on improving later reading skills as well as if general aspects were beneficial to both at-risk groups or if there were population-specific factors. A total of ten intervention studies, five involving children from low-SES and five involving children with familial risk for reading impairment, were reviewed. Of the ten interventions reviewed, only three interventions, two involving children from low-SES and one involving children at familial risk for reading impairment, demonstrated successful long-term effects on reading. The remaining interventions demonstrated differences across the four aspects analyzed and conflicting long-term outcomes. As no population specific factors were observed across studies, the similarities found in the three successful interventions suggest that a general intervention program can be beneficial for both populations of at-risk children. / text

The purpose of this study is to investigate if the class teachers believe that their education has given them enough knowledge about dyslexia in order to succeed a successful education for these pupils. It will present what four class teachers and two special education teachers has answered what they know about dyslexia. The study aims to find out if class teachers believe that they have enough knowledge to determine whether a pupil has dyslexia. If they have knowledge of appropriate methods and if they know how to prevent that pupils fall behind in their literacy and also what factors they believes makes it problematic to implement a literacy for these pupils. I propose the following questions: Do the class teachers consider that their education has given them sufficient knowledge of dyslexia and its characteristics? What methods does the class teachers and special education teachers considers as useful for pupils with dyslexia? What does the class teachers consider can prevent that pupils with dyslexia fall behind in their reading and writing skills? What factors consider class teachers and special education teachers is problematic to to succeed a reading and writing education for pupils with dyslexia? This study is based on a qualitative method and my theoretical approach is based on Høien and Lundberg established view of what dyslexia is. The results show that teacher’s university studies do not provide sufficient knowledge about dyslexia and appropriate methods. This problem is also described in the research I have used. Attributed to this it is obvious that class teachers have enough knowledge what dyslexia is and they could tell which methods that are good to use. They could also declare how to prevent that pupil’s with dyslexia fall behind in their reading and writing education. This means that a teacher in grade F -3 has sufficient knowledge to be able to implement a teaching adapted for pupils with dyslexia.