A COMPARISON OF TWO PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS TECHNIQUES BETWEEN SAMPLES OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Abstract

This study examined the differential effects of sound boxes and sound sort phonological awareness instructional techniques on preschoolers' phonological awareness performance. Twenty preschoolers were randomly selected to participate in either the sound box or sound sort instructional group. All groups received pretests and posttest measures of rhyme, segmentation, isolation, blending, and detecting same and different beginning and ending sounds. A MANCOVA revealed that there were no significant differences between the groups on all posttest measures while controlling for initial performances on pretest measures. Univariate anaylses revealed that there were significant differences between the groups on an isolation measure and a segmentation measure. Children in the sound box group significantly outperformed children in the sound sort group on isolating medial sounds and segmenting phonemes. Gain scores from pretest to posttest were also calculated and results indicated that both groups made gains on approximately all phonological tasks. Moreover, the findings revealed that preschool children can obtain some phonological skills that are typically achieved in kindergarten and first grade.