Which children benefit from letter names in learning letter sounds?

Abstract

Typical U.S. children use their knowledge of letters' names to help learn the letters' sounds. They perform better on letter sound tests with letters that have their sounds at the beginnings of their names, such as v, than with letters that have their sounds at the ends of their names, such as m, and letters that do not have their sounds in their names, such as h. We found this same pattern among children with speech sound disorders, children with language impairments as well as speech sound disorders, and children who later developed serious reading problems. Even children who scored at chance on rhyming and sound matching tasks performed better on the letter sound task with letters such as v than with letters such as m and h. Our results suggest that a wide range of children use the names of letters to help learn the sounds and that phonological awareness, as conventionally measured, is not required in order to do so.Knowledge about letters-their shapes, their names, and their linguistic functions-plays an important role in the development of reading and spelling ability. For example, children who are learning to read and write in English should know that the shape V is called /vi/ and that it generally represents the phoneme /v/ (see International Phonetic Association, 1999 for an explanation of the phonemic symbols). Children's knowledge about letters is often tested by providing them with one attribute of a letter and asking them to supply one or more other attributes. For example, children are shown the shape V and are asked to say its name in a letter name task or its sound in a letter sound task. Performance is typically pooled across all of the letters in each task to yield measures of children's letter name and letter sound knowledge. Some researchers additionally pool knowledge of names and sounds, for example by asking children to provide either the name or the sound of a letter and counting the number of letters for which either piece of information is known (e.g., Riley, 1996).Supporting the idea that letter knowledge is important in learning to read and spell, young children's knowledge as pooled across letters or across names and sounds predicts their later literacy skills (e.g., McBride-Chang, 1999;Riley, 1996). However, such pooling may mask Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. , 2006; Mc-Bride-Chang, 1999;Treiman et al., 1998). These differences suggest that children bring their knowledge of letter names to the learning of letter-sound correspondences, using the letters' names to help learn and remember the sounds they represent. Thu...

The genesis of reading ability: What helps children learn letter–sound correspondences?

“…In addition, the acrophonic letter effects described above may be confounded to some degree with phonemic awareness ability because benefiting from the sound information provided by the letter name presumably requires that children are sufficiently phonologically aware to be able to successfully segment the relevant phoneme (Share, 2004; but see Treiman, Pennington, Shriberg, & Boada, 2008). Some exploration of the role of letter familiarity and awareness in the learning of letter-sound correspondences independent of letter name knowledge would seem to be needed.…”

When does speech sound disorder matter for literacy? The role of disordered speech errors, co‐occurring language impairment and family risk of dyslexia

“…It may be that the effects are short‐lived because children are able to draw on compensatory mechanisms, for example in orthographic learning, to aid literacy development despite early deficits (e.g. Peterson et al., 2009; Treiman, Pennington, Shriberg, & Boada, 2008). …”

Letter names and phonological awareness help children to learn letter–sound relations

“…The ability to detect sounds in words should help children to pick phonemes out of letter names. However, results of two recent studies (de Jong, 2007;Treiman, Pennington, Shriberg, & Boada, 2008) suggest that the effect of letter name knowledge on learning letter sounds is largely independent of phonological awareness. In Treiman and colleagues' (2008) study, 14 children who scored at a chance level on tasks of phonological awareness were singled out of a larger sample.…”