Sixth Grade Pupils' Phonological Processing and School Achievement in a Second and the Native Language

Phonological processing was studied in relation to academic achievement in the native and a second language in a total of 66 12-13-year-old pupils at the end of their sixth school year. Phonological ability was assessed using a pseudoword spelling and an auditory discrimination task, which were assumed to probe two domains of phonological processing: verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness. School report marks and the scores they obtained in the Finnish national test of English were used as indicators of the pupils' academic achievement. Of the two phonological tasks, the pseudoword spelling was strongly related to success in both Finnish and English. The correlation coefficients remained statistically significant after the pupils' performances in other school subjects had been controlled for. In general, the results are in agreement with findings obtained in previous studies. The educational implications of the present results are discussed.

Keywords:

• Phonological Awareness
• Verbal Short-TERM Memory
• Second Language
• Native Language