<p>Literacy is an important part of communication. Phonological awareness, i.e. the ability to recognise the sound units of language and to manipulate them, has been found to be crucial in literacy acquisition.</p><p>In 2005 the development of a communication device, a talking joystick called the PhonicStick, started at The School of Computing at the University of Dundee in Scotland. The main focus with the project was to help children with physical disabilities to create spoken words by blending sounds together on the PhonicStick. It was also hypothesized that the PhonicStick could act as a support to literacy learning with typically developing children.</p><p>The aim of the present study was to investigate if a group of 10 typically developing South African 5-6 year old children could learn how to use the PhonicStick in three sessions and to see if their phonological awareness improved by using it. The training with the PhonicStick took place over a period of three weeks. The participants’ phonological awareness was screened before and after the sessions with two sub-tests of The Phonological Awareness Test (PHAT). In addition, their ability to produce sounds and words with the PhonicStick was tested.</p><p>The results showed that all the participants appeared to be interested in the PhonicStick and that they found it relatively easy to manoeuvre. The participants’ ability to produce sounds and words on the PhonicStick showed a statistically significant improvement from the first session to the third session. The participants’ phonological awareness skills did not appear to improve after three sessions. More time is needed to find out if this training would result in improved phonological awareness skills.</p>

Literacy is an important part of communication. Phonological awareness, i.e. the ability to recognise the sound units of language and to manipulate them, has been found to be crucial in literacy acquisition. In 2005 the development of a communication device, a talking joystick called the PhonicStick, started at The School of Computing at the University of Dundee in Scotland. The main focus with the project was to help children with physical disabilities to create spoken words by blending sounds together on the PhonicStick. It was also hypothesized that the PhonicStick could act as a support to literacy learning with typically developing children. The aim of the present study was to investigate if a group of 10 typically developing South African 5-6 year old children could learn how to use the PhonicStick in three sessions and to see if their phonological awareness improved by using it. The training with the PhonicStick took place over a period of three weeks. The participants’ phonological awareness was screened before and after the sessions with two sub-tests of The Phonological Awareness Test (PHAT). In addition, their ability to produce sounds and words with the PhonicStick was tested. The results showed that all the participants appeared to be interested in the PhonicStick and that they found it relatively easy to manoeuvre. The participants’ ability to produce sounds and words on the PhonicStick showed a statistically significant improvement from the first session to the third session. The participants’ phonological awareness skills did not appear to improve after three sessions. More time is needed to find out if this training would result in improved phonological awareness skills.

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.

International studies of reading achievement demonstrate that significant inequalities in reading outcomes continue to exist among some of the world’s wealthiest countries, despite strong investment in initiatives directed towards raising literacy achievement for all children (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation—UNESCO, 2009; United Nations Children’s Fund—UNICEF, 2010). One approach towards the elevation of reading achievement is to investigate how key predictors of reading success are incorporated into everyday classroom literacy practices. Phonological awareness (PA) is widely recognised as a powerful predictor and underlying precursor to early reading success for both typically developing and at-risk readers (Al Otaiba, Kosanovich, & Torgesen, 2012; Blachman, Ball, Black, & Tangel, 2000; Goswami, 2001; Pressley, 2006). A majority of research demonstrating the benefits of PA to literacy growth has been conducted under controlled research settings outside of the classroom environment (Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Shanahan, 2001; Gillon, 2000a, 2005; Gillon & McNeill, 2009), and thus less is known about whether such benefits hold true when integrated into the heterogeneous classroom setting. For this reason, four experiments reported in this thesis investigated whether PA can be efficiently and effectively integrated into the classroom literacy programme with the overarching aim of raising reading achievement and equalising reading outcomes for the majority of children in the first year of formal education. In the first experiment (reported in Chapter 3), time-efficiency and congruency of scores between a computer-based PA screening and monitoring tool (described in Chapter 2) and a paper-based equivalent were examined. Thirty-three children aged between four years 10 months and five years zero months participated in the study, 12 of whom presented with moderate-severe speech delay (MSD). Participants were randomly allocated to either Group A or Group B experimental assessment conditions. A crossover research design was employed where Group A received the paper-based version of the PA assessment followed two weeks later by the equivalent computer-based assessment (CBA). Group B received the same assessments but in the reverse order of delivery. That is, the computer-based PA assessment first followed two weeks later by the paper-based counterpart. Results demonstrated that: 1) the CBA generated comparable scores to the paper-based equivalent for both children with typical development and children with MSD, and 2) CBA took 31 per cent less time than paper-based administration. These results demonstrate that CBA can provide educators with a time-efficient approach to the screening and monitoring of PA development in the classroom while maintaining equivalency of scores with paper-based testing. Having established the time-efficiency of CBA, the next step was to investigate the use of the computer-based PA screening and monitoring tool as part of the beginning classroom reading programme. In the second experiment (reported in Chapter 4), the influence of a short and intensive period of teacher-implemented classroom PA instruction on reading outcomes in the first year of education was investigated. One-hundred and twenty-nine children aged five-years participated in the study. Using a quasi-experimental design, thirty-four children in two classrooms received 10 weeks of PA instruction from their teachers, as an adjunct to the ‘usual’ reading programme. Ninety-five children from 10 classrooms continued with the ‘usual’ reading programme, which included phonics instruction but did not target PA. Results demonstrated that children exposed to classroom PA instruction performed significantly higher on reading and spelling measures compared to children who received the ‘usual’ reading programme only. Of importance, the number of children experiencing word decoding difficulties after one year of schooling reduced from 26 per cent among children who followed the ‘usual’ reading programme to 6 per cent among children who received classroom PA instruction. These results provide evidence that a short and intensive period of classroom-wide PA instruction in the first year of schooling can have a positive influence on raising reading achievement. In the third experiment (reported in Chapter 5), the effect of classroom PA instruction on raising reading achievement and reducing inequality in literacy outcomes for children with spoken language impairment (SLI) was examined. The data from 129 five-year-old children who participated in the second experiment were extracted and analysed. End-of-year reading outcomes between children with SLI who received classroom PA instruction (n = 7) was compared to: 1) children with typical language development (TD) who received classroom PA instruction (n = 27), 2) children with SLI who followed the ‘usual’ reading programme (n = 21), and 3) children with TD who followed the ‘usual’ reading programme (n = 74). Children with SLI who received classroom PA instruction showed significant improvements in PA, reading and spelling acquisition immediately and up to six months following PA instruction. However, this cohort, in comparison to children with TD, appeared less able to transfer their enhanced PA knowledge to reading and writing tasks. Of importance, children with SLI who received PA instruction performed significantly higher than children with SLI who followed the ‘usual’ reading curriculum; and on par with children with TD who followed the ‘usual’ reading programme. Children with TD who received classroom PA instruction significantly outperformed all other cohorts in this experiment on end-of year reading measures. These results indicate that both children with TD and children with risk for reading difficulties can benefit from classroom-wide teacher-directed PA instruction. These findings have positive implications for elevating reading achievement and reducing inequality between good and poor readers. In the fourth experiment (reported in Chapter 6), the validity and reliability of the computer-based PA screening and monitoring tool was investigated and established. Using a longitudinal research design, the responses of 95 children to test items in the CBA at the start, middle and end of the first year at school were collated and analysed to provide evidence of content, construct and criterion validity, in addition to test-retest and internal consistency reliability. A number of statistical analyses were employed including Rasch Model analysis, exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. Results demonstrated that the majority of test items were appropriate for five-year-old children in the first year of school and sampled a spectrum of ability levels that would be present in a typical classroom environment. Rhyme oddity, initial phoneme identity and letter-knowledge tasks were most appropriate at school-entry while tasks of final phoneme identity, phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation became more suitable by the middle and end stages of the first year at school. Importantly, performance on the CBA predicted end-of-year reading status with 94 per cent accuracy, and in conjunction with language abilities accounted for 68.9 per cent of the variance in end-of-year reading performance. These findings indicate that the computer-based PA screening and monitoring tool developed and applied in this thesis has sufficient validity and reliability to be used confidently as a time-efficient assessment tool in the classroom. The results from the experiments reported in this thesis provide evidence that PA can be efficiently and effectively integrated into the beginning classroom reading programme from two complementary perspectives: 1) through use of computer-based screening and monitoring of PA skills, and 2) through implementation of a short and intensive period of teacher-directed classroom-wide PA instruction. The results reported in this thesis demonstrate that the evidenced-based integration of key predictors of literacy success, such as PA, into existing classroom programmes can support national and international initiatives that seek to raise reading achievement and reduce inequalities in literacy outcomes for all children.

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.

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of phonological awareness (PA) training with typically developing preschool children in a classroom setting. The PA training incorporated a range of PA skills and the training outcomes were assessed along a broad spectrum of PA abilities, pre-literacy skills, and general language abilities. This study consisted of 21 children (11 Experimental, 10 Control). The classroom PA training program was conducted with the Experimental class in one large group for 5 weeks with 20 minute sessions conducted three times a week. A variety of fun, play-based PA activities were used with the class that incorporated the spectrum of PA skills. No main effects were observed for any of the test measures, with the exception of the Experimental group’s statistically significant gains for total number of words, number of different words, and a negative effect on the Phonological Awareness Literacy-Pre-Kindergarten

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.