The development of phonological awareness among preschoolers

ABSTRACT

The phonological awareness (PA) skills represent a major milestone in the development of reading abilities for preschool children. The purpose of this research study was to examine the developmental trajectories of preschoolers’ PA. A related purpose was to explore gender differences in PA. Participants in this study were 767 preschool children (336 males and 431 females) with 249 children in KG1 and 518 children in KG2. These children were randomly selected from a pool of 16 private preschools across the capital of Oman, Muscat. A battery of PA tasks were adapted from the Phonological Awareness Test-Second Edition (PAT-2; [Robertson, C., & Salter, W. (2007). The phonological awareness test 2 (PAT 2). Austin, TX: PRO-ED.]) and the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing – Second Edition (CTOPP-2; [Wagner, R., Torgesen, J., Rashotte, C., & Pearson, N. (2012). Comprehensive test of phonological processing (2nd ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.]). The PA tasks consisted of 19 subtests: rhyming discrimination, rhyming production, syllables segmentation, phoneme segmentation, isolation (firs, medial, and last sound), compound words deletion and phonemes deletion, sound matching (first and last sound), blending words, memory for digits, nonword repetition, and blending nonwords. The results of the study using multi-variate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed a significant main effect of the grade level, Wilks’ lambda [F(3,763) = 13.44, p < .001, η² = .29, gender, F(1,763) = 1.96, p < .001, η² = .06], while the interaction (grade level X gender) was not significant.

KEYWORDS:

• Phonological awareness
• development
• gender
• preschool

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Ahmed Hassan Hemdan Mohamed is an associate professor at the Special Education Department, College of Education, United Arab Emirates University, UAE. His research interests includes special education and early childhood.

Dr. Abdulhameed Said Hassan is an associate professor at the Psychology Department, College of Education, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. His research interests include measurement and evaluation.

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Qaryouti is an associate professor at the Early Childhood Education Department, College of Education, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. His research interests include special education and early child education.

Dr. Abullah Al-Hashemi is an associate professor at the College of Sharia Sciences in Muscat, Oman. His research interests include Islamic sciences.

Dr. Zuwaina Al-Kalbani is in educational expert at the Ministry of Education, Oman. Her research interests include language learning.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an internal research grant from Sultan Qaboos University (IG/EDU/PSYC/14/01).