The relationship between phonological awareness and word reading accuracy in Oriya and English: A study of Oriya‐speaking fifth‐graders

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships between phonological awareness and reading in Oriya and English. Oriya is the official language of Orissa, an eastern state of India. The writing system is an alphasyllabary. Ninety-nine fifth grade children (mean age 9 years 7 months) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, word reading and pseudo-word reading in both languages. Forty-eight of the children attended Oriya-medium schools where they received literacy instruction in Oriya from grade 1 and learned English from grade 2. Fifty-one children attended Englishmedium schools where they received literacy instruction in English from grade 1 and in Oriya from grade 2. The results showed that phonological awareness in Oriya contributed significantly to reading Oriya and English words and pseudo-words for the children in the Oriya-medium schools. However, it only contributed to Oriya pseudo-word reading and English word reading for children in the English-medium schools. Phonological awareness in English contributed to English word and pseudoword reading for both groups. Further analyses investigated the contribution of awareness of large phonological units (syllable, onsets and rimes) and small phonological units (phonemes) to reading in each language. The data suggest that cross-language transfer and facilitation of phonological awareness to word reading is not symmetrical across languages and may depend both on the characteristics of the different orthographies of the languages being learned and whether the first literacy language is also the first spoken language. This paper reports a study of the relationship between phonological awareness and word reading in bilingual/biliterate children attending school in Orissa, a state in eastern India where the official state language is Oriya.

Atividades Lúdicas para o Desenvolvimento da Linguagem Oral e Escrita para Crianças e Adolescentes com Síndrome de Down

“…Likewise, the tasks of the phoneme level presented statistical significance in the comparison between pre-test and post-test, showing that the little experience with reading has already been able to positively impact this ability. These results indicate that, contrary to what Mishra and Stainthorp (2007) proposed, phonological awareness demonstrated important evolution, through stimulation, in a manner compatible with the gain presented in the learning of written language.…”

“…On the other hand, research showed that the training of phonological awareness on individuals with Down syndrome, at least in English language, was not as relevant as a process to favor the learning of written language, especially at a phonemic level (Mishra & Stainthorp, 2007).…”

The impact of an intervention on children's reading and spelling ability in low-income schools in India

“…Although having a first language that is nonalphabetic may slow down the development of phonemic awareness compared to those who read the Roman alphabet (Cheung, Chen, Lai, Wong, & Hills, 2001), there is evidence here also of a reciprocal relationship between first-and secondlanguage learning in this respect (Chien, Kao, & Wei, 2008;Kim, 2009;Wang, Perfetti, & Liu, 2005;Wang, Yang, & Cheng, 2009). However, there are indications that the relationship is not symmetrical and that the mutual benefit of learning sound-symbol correspondence in two language systems may be dependent on the characteristics of the orthographies and the level of development in each (Mishra & Stainthorp, 2007). Cisero and Royer (1995) point to the fact that phonemic knowledge may be a developmental concept and that learning progresses in a series of stages, regardless of the alphabetic language spoken (in the case of Cisero & Royer (1995) English and Spanish).…”

L2 reading in multilingual Eritrea: The influences of L1 reading and English proficiency

“…In another review of (English) second language reading research, Slavin and Cheung (2005, p. 274) argued that initial reading instruction in alphabetic languages such as Spanish and French may prove beneficial to the English as second language learner as ‘phonemic awareness, decoding, sound blending and generic comprehension strategies clearly transfer among languages that use phonemic orthographies’. In a cross‐script study of Oriya, an Indian alpha‐syllabary, and English, Mishra and Stainthorp (2007) investigated the influences of phonological awareness and word reading in the first and second language reading. The results showed transfer of phonological awareness with Oriya large unit (syllable) awareness influencing Oriya reading when Oriya was the first language of literacy but having no effect when Oriya was the second language of literacy instruction.…”