Article Review on “Classroom Phonological Awareness Instruction and Literacy Outcomes in the First Year of School”

In this article, Carson, Gillon and Boustead (2013) discuss the importance of phonological awareness on the literacy rate of children. It is well known that the children who receive some sort of oral language training are more persistent to learn as compared to the children who do not. However, it is not well understood that how these awareness programs and classroom instructions help children to better perform at such a tender age. Moreover, does their phonological training helps them to direct these capabilities into the reading and writing process.

It has been perceived from the studies that children who do not receive any sort of oral language are not set to qualify the learning programs when compared to those who have. Therefore, this practice needs to be emphasized upon for the betterment of the child’s development. But first what phonological awareness is and what does it constitutes needs to be understood. It includes a complete set of instructions for children to learn in the form of speech, rhymes, syllables and phonics. It makes them master of mapping the speech sounds and letters. It is significant for those children especially who find it difficult to decode the words and sentences. The power of spelling the words increases while there blending decreases consequentially. Henceforth, it can be said that phonological awareness is the future because it inculcates the proficiency and excellency in children in every way.

The main question that arises now is that how these children are much more superior in terms of literacy to the other children. Is this just some kind of discrimination or is there any fact hidden inside it? Most of the parents do not find this therapy crucial for their children and this perception needs to be uprooted. The usual population of children consists of all kinds of minds some are quick to learn while some are slow. This does not imply in anyway that slow learners are any less than quick learners in terms of intelligence. But there must be equity between learning capabilities of them even when they are not on the similar pace. Many studies suggest that there is a condition known as Spoken Language Impairment (SLI) existing in children causing them difficulty to read. The research also tells about the positive effects of the group phonological learning on the reading abilities of these children. It did not only elevate their reading capability but also helped in the vocabulary, rhyme and letter knowledge.

Hence, the main objective of this study was to investigate the effects of small- and large-scale Phonological Awareness (PA) programs on the literacy outcomes of children. Two main hypotheses drawn out for this study were; 1) children needed to be subjected to 10-week PA program for 20 hours daily. The curriculum of this PA program would be based on usual learning abilities such as spellings, reading, writing. 2) children with SLI will be subjected to the same PA program but it was predicted that they might show difficulty in the spelling development and phonics and rhyme awareness.

The research was carried out in New Zealand with the study population consisting of total 129 children, 75 girls and 54 boys. Their ages were ranging from five years zero months to the five years two months, with a division of 12 classrooms and was assigned with a teacher respectively. The process of school and children selection was done by the stratification process which allowed different schools from the Christchurch to take part in this study based on their socioeconomic ratios. One grade class was chosen for the study and children were asked to fill out all the terms and conditions related to the study.

The experimental design of the study was Quasi-experimental and was applied to test the spelling, reading and PA of children. The assessment was done separately for each child in each classroom by the assigned teacher and data was recorded in the CDs. A statistical data analysis for the recorded data was carried out for each of the test variable. Children with the formal language education and SLI both had equally advanced in the classroom PA training. The difference in both the test subjects was their pace to learn where children with SLI were a bit slow to catch up with the rest. Hence, the results obtained from this test implied that there must be a compulsory PA program for the literary understanding of children under all circumstances.