Relatively little is known about the reading acquisition process in a non-dominant language in multilingual children. This study examined reading difficulties in a nondominant language, English, among 91 Grade three children whose dominant spoken language was Kannada, a South Indian language. Three sets of research questions were addressed: a) the associations between single word reading in the non-dominant language and decoding skills, phonological skills, language proficiency levels and working memory, b) the associations of phonological processing across language systems (the non-dominant reading language and the dominant spoken language) and with single word reading, and c) the relative effectiveness of a fifteen hour phonological skills intervention when compared with a language exposure intervention on reading outcomes. The results extended the findings from the monolingual literature of close links between single word reading, decoding and phonological skills. The role of language proficiency was especially evident at higher levels of reading attainment, replicating models of reading developed on anglo-centric samples. Lower single word reading skills were also found to be associated with lower working memory again extending associations found in the early stages of reading development of monolingual children. The literacy culture in India and its impact on specific reading comprehension strategies and the labelling of reading difficulty are discussed. It is in the study of the mixed phonological domain that limitations of monolingual frameworks begin to show. The mixed language phonological domain was found to be characterised by close associations across language systems and sharing of underlying phonological abilities. Factor analysis of six phoneme level tasks found a two-factor phonological structure which have been labelled as explicit, whole word manipulation ability and implicit, partial manipulation ability. The implications of these findings for a model of the mixed language phonological domain, and for interventions and early screening are discussed. In the intervention study, positive training effects were found with the Phonological Intervention on the skills triad of single word reading, phonological skills and decoding skill. The unique role of the dominant language phonology on phonological, decoding strategies and implications for planning phonological interventions in a non-dominant language are discussed. The Language Exposure condition failed to show any intervention specific impact on the outcome variables. The possibility of the language exposure intervention being most suitable after decoding skills are firmly in place is discussed.

No description available.

Phonological awareness, and working memory, as a component of phonological awareness, have been found to be highly correlated, not only with the acquisition of reading skills, but also with each other. Existing data does not address this aspect of emergent literacy in South African children, for whom bilingualism may impact on their levels of phonological awareness, and possibly working memory. This research study was designed and conducted in an attempt to identify the relationship between these two skills in a sample of seventy-nine South African Grade 1 children (mean age 86 months). The sample consisted of two language groups, namely first-language English (EL1), an opaque orthography (n=42) and second-language English with first-language one of the nine official African languages of South Africa (EL2), a transparent orthography (n=37). The primary aim was to examine the relationship between phonological awareness (comprising a sound categorisation task, a phoneme deletion task, and a syllable splitting task) and working memory (comprising a verbal short-term memory task, a visuo-spatial short-term memory task, a verbal working memory task and a visuo-spatial working memory task). A measure of non-verbal intelligence was included as a control. Separate analyses were run for the two language groups in order to draw a comparison between their performance on the tasks. Results generally supported existing literature that showed that the relationship between working memory and phonological awareness appears to be dependent on the depth of analysis of phonological awareness, which determines the level of demand made on working memory, yet the relationship differed between the language groups, indicating that the EL2 children draw more on general or apparently unrelated skills to conduct working memory and phonological awareness tasks. A secondary aim of this study was to explore the predictive power of firstly, the four memory skills on phonological awareness; secondly, the sound categorisation skills on phoneme deletion and finally, non-verbal intelligence on working memory. Results again differed between the language groups, suggesting that a broader range of working memory skills predict performance on phonological awareness tasks in the EL2 group than in the EL1 group. The implications of these results are discussed in detail.

The purpose of this study was to further explore previously observed differences in phonological processing between adults who do and do not stutter through a list recall task. Three types of lists of words were generated according to their associations with a lure word: phonological, semantic, and hybrid. For the experimental task, participants were instructed to listen to recordings of lists of 12 words, 4 of each type, and immediately recall them in any order. We looked at recall accuracy and rate of production of each list's associated lure word. For recall accuracy, phonological lists were lowest, hybrid lists were in the middle, and semantic lists were highest. For production of the critical lure, phonological lists were the lowest, semantic lists were in the middle, and hybrid lists were highest. The pattern was the same for recall accuracy and critical lure production for both talker groups; however, the adults who stutter had lower means for each condition in both cases. The results provide further evidence that there are systematic and significant differences in the phonological working memory efficiency of AWS and AWNS, which may contribute to fluency differences. / text

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-119).

No description available.

Grapheme-to-phoneme conversion is a necessary part of reading, whether by an automated system or by children. Automated methods play a key role in text-to-speech and automated speech recognition systems. Children learning to read develop grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion rules that they use extensively until they build up their orthographic lexicon. Various solutions have been proposed for G2P conversion, each addressing specific problems and evaluated for different languages. In this thesis, I introduce a simple approach to G2P conversion that achieves good results, and compare these results to those of a study of children’s reading accuracy in the primary grades. The comparison highlights areas of weakness in the children’s reading skills, as well as particular phonemes for which the G2P system has difficulty. As part of the process, I also compare and discuss the wide range of discrepancies that exist between various French corpora.