Training Phonological Awareness With and Without Attention to Articulation

One hundred twenty-two second- to fifth-grade (7- to 11-year-old) children with reading difficulties studied phonological awarenessA group of skills related to the ability to recognize the parts of spoken words. with or without explicit attention to articulationThe formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech. and with or without manipulation of sounds. They all studied identical phonicsReading instruction that focuses on the alphabetic principle — the systematic, predictable relationship between spoken sounds (phonemes) and written letters (graphemes) — to allow readers to identify or “decode” words. and read stories on the computer with speech and decodingThe ability to translate a word from print to speech by using your knowledge of sound–symbol (letter) correspondences. support for difficult words. Regular-instruction controls received regularly scheduled language-arts or reading activities. After 40 hours of training, children in all three trained conditions outperformed controls on all tests except math. Conditions that manipulated sounds showed advantages over the condition without explicit practice manipulating sounds, but only on the two measures of phonological awareness. Articulatory awareness training yielded no unique benefits during this training period. Individual differences in response to treatment related to initial levels of phonological awareness, naming speedThe rate at which a student reads. , IQ, and grade. The similar outcomes of the three conditions suggest that specific variations in good phonological training may be less important than once thought for most children with reading difficulties.