Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge in the child's acquisition of the alphabetic principle.

Abstract

Studied acquisition of the alphabetic principle in preliterate children, 3-5 yrs. The dependent variable throughout was a forced-choice between, e.g., "mow" and "sow" as pronunciations for the written word mow after the child had been taught to read the words mat and sat. Reliable performance on this transfer task was only achieved by children who (a) understood two aspects of phonological organization-phonemic segmentation of the speech items and the identity of their initial segments, and (b) had learned graphic symbols for the sounds u m" and "s." Most children who demonstrated alphabetic insight with symbols in word-initial position were also successful at transfer when the symbols were word-final. Thus, phonemic awareness and grapheme-phoneme knowledge were needed in combination for acquisition of the alphabetic principle, and, once gained, alphabetic insight proved relatively robust. Implications for reading acquisition are discussed.

Developing the Alphabetic Principle to Aid Text-Based Augmentative and Alternative Communication Use by Adults With Low Speech Intelligibility and Intellectual Disabilities

“…These results are consistent with the current consensus that letter-sound knowledge alone is not sufficient for establishing the alphabetic principle (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989;NRP, 2000). In addition to letter-sound knowledge, learners must develop phonological awareness (Byrne & Fielding- Barnsley, 1989;NRP, 2000).…”

“…The term alphabetic principle refers to the knowledge that specific units of print map on to specific units of sound (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989). Selecting the first letter for spoken words that have not been taught would reflect the alphabetic principle.…”

“…The studies operationalized the alphabetic principle similar to the methods used in the seminal studies by Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1989). Participants listened to spoken words and either spelled them by touching individual letters in a choice pool (Stewart, Hayashi, & Saunders, 2010) or selected the whole word from a choice pool of similar words (Saunders, 2011;Saunders, O'Donnell, Vaidya, & Williams, 2003).…”

Towards Optimal Education Including Self-Regulated Learning in Technology-Enhanced Preschools and Primary Schools

“…Guidelines 1.1-1.5 specify the PDKS referring to competence domains, the most important curricular concepts, and assessment from a double diagnostic point of view in particular. The domains may, for example, specify social-emotional performance; general intelligence; language; arithmetic/mathematics; physical-medical aspects; general psychological characteristics; or motor activities (see also Gallagher, 1975;Byrne, 1998). The diagnostic indicators must be related to sets of playing or learning tasks and other curricular activities in school practice, to build instructional lines concerning optimally differentiated and self-regulated playing and learning arrangements for various types of pupils.…”

“…Parents also vary in their regulation of their children's media use, trying to maximise the advantages and minimise the disadvantages and potential dangers (Livingstone, 2003;Livingstone & Helsper, 2008). In addition, children with high potential in cognitive and meta-cognitive competencies profit more from possibilities to develop autonomously than their peers without these competencies (Overtoom, 1991;Baroody, 1993;Mooij, 1994;Byrne, 1998;Kalyuga, 2007).…”