Phonological processing and phonics: Towards an understanding of their relationship to each other and to reading development

Abstract

This study examines the effects of a phonics‐emphasis Direct Instruction beginning reading program on the phonological processes of students with teacher‐identified serious reading problems attending a northern Melbourne reading intervention centre. The students (16 males and 10 females, mean age 8.8 years) were assigned to the treatment condition or to a wait‐list comparison group. The 13 students in the intervention group received 100 lessons (in 2 groups) of the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons program from a teacher at the reading intervention centre. When compared with a similar cohort of wait‐list students, the students made statistically significant and educationally large gains in the phonologically‐related processes of word attack, phonemic awareness, phonological recoding in lexical access, phonological recoding in working memory and spelling. The study contributes to the long‐standing debate on how best to ensure that children learn to read; to the understanding of the relationship between phonological processes and reading; to an understanding of the effects of the current instructional approach to reading on at‐risk children, and how additional or alternative approaches more attuned to the findings of reading research may improve the effectiveness of the educational system.