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The four talks in this symposium investigated the contribution of phonology and semantics in young children's reading development. Julia Carroll and Margaret Snowling (from the University of York) began the session by reporting data from a study which followed a group of beginning readers between the ages of 4 and 5 years. They found that phonological awareness in pre-school children could be conceptualised as two separable types of abilities: awareness of large word segments such as syllables and rimes; and awareness of smaller segments (phonemes). The study also assessed a group of children with a history of articulatory difficulties. These children had difficulty with the tasks which involved awareness of phonemes, but had a normal awareness of syllables. The presentation concluded by suggesting that articulatory accuracy is related to phoneme awareness and letter knowledge.
The second talk, by Valerie Muter at the University of York, followed on from this by presenting data which suggested a strong link between the awareness of phonemes, sound knowledge of letters, and later reading ability. This study was also longitudinal in nature, following the development of a group of 90 children in the first two years of reading instruction. The results confirmed that phoneme awareness was a stronger predictor of reading than rime awareness, and the study concluded that the nature of children's phonological awareness changes with development and in interaction with the child's literacy learning experiences.
Lynne Duncan (University of Dundee) went on to talk about how children learn to read orthographically complex words. In this study, the linguistic aspects of words (such as syllable structure and stress pattern) were explored in relation to phonological skill and reading. The findings suggested that dyslexic children were less able to segment complex words. The presentation ended by an interesting discussion of how children learning to read in different orthographies (such as French and Italian) would follow prosodic patterns to read complex words.
The final talk in the session was given by Marketa Caravolas from the University of Liverpool. This study followed the spelling development of 153 children during the first 2 years of reading instruction. The best predictors of spelling ability in these children were earlier phoneme awareness and knowledge of letter-sounds. Caravolas concluded that good phoneme awareness and letter sound knowledge enable children to attempt phonologically acceptable spellings. This, in combination with reading experience, promotes children's knowledge of conventional spelling patterns.
Together, the four presentations in this session concurred on the importance of phoneme awareness, letter sound knowledge, awareness of the prosodic features of words, and reading experience in the development of both reading and spelling abilities in children.
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