Development of Phonological Awareness and Letter Knowledge in Bosnian Preschool Children

Abstract

A study was carried out on a group of 505 preschool children. The children were given tests measuring their phonological discrimination, rhyme, initial phoneme detection and letter knowledge. In general, phonological discrimination and initial phoneme tasks are easier than the rhyme task. As children increased in age, phonological awareness and letter knowledge both increased. There are differences in phonological awareness between children according to their number of letter known. Letter knowledge is associated with all phonological measures and all variables of phonological awareness were good predictors of letter knowledge.

Multisensory Learning Approach: Impacts on Phonological Awareness among Young ESL Learners in a Rural Setting

“…Most samples demonstrated a high understanding of initial phoneme detection. These findings are consistent with previous studies by Bandini et al [14] and Duranovic et al [25], which proved the hierarchical development of PA. Based on the elaborated data in the previous section, samples in both treatment and comparison groups improved in PA. Although the pretest measures revealed that the differences in PA during the period existed, statistical analysis showed that the differences were insignificant.…”

“…Thus, Bosnian children with transparent or regular orthography knowledge develop PA that begins with phonological discrimination, initial phoneme detection, and rhyme awareness. Druanovic et al [25] verified that the results of PA progressions obtained from the samples were different, compared with those of English, possibly due to certain reasons such as saliency of orthographic patterns.…”

“…In this perspective, general conception postulates that PA goes from larger to smaller sound units [26,17]. Furthermore, children are likely to develop their phonological sensitivity as they grow older in an independent manner that capacitates their language abilities to become stable [17,23,25]. A study by Bandini et al [14] on 254 elementary school children aged between 5 to nearly 7 years old aimed to investigate the existing relationships between PA abilities and phonological working memory, presented that children aged 5 to 6 years old portrayed a good mastery of syllabic and onset-rime awareness.…”

“…Druanovic et al [25] studied 505 Bosnian preschool children aged 4 to 6 years old to identify the progression of PA among typically developing preschool children. They found that children progressed differently and consecutively in PA depending on the age variable.…”