ABSTRACT
Byrne, Brian and Fielding-Barnsley,
Ruth. (1995). Evaluation of a
program to teach phonemic awareness to young children:
A 2- and 3-year follow-up and a new preschool trial.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 488-503.
Introduction
The purpose of this study was to follow up on students in grades one and two who had received training in phonemic awareness in preschool.
Population
The participants in the original study were preschool students. Sixty-four (64) students comprised the experimental group. They were trained in Sound Foundations, a phonemic awareness program written by the authors of this study. The children worked in a small group setting, a half an hour a week for twelve weeks. The students learned to classify items by shared sounds. Sixty-two (62) preschoolers served as a control group. They worked with the same experimenter in small groups, a half an hour a week for twelve weeks. This control group learned to classify words on formal or semantic grounds.
At the conclusion of this study the experimental group showed greater growth in phonemic awareness than the control group. A year later, the children in the experimental group outscored the control group on tests of pseudoword decoding. These children also displayed evidence of advanced literacy development.
In this study, the same students were evaluated again at the end of grade one and the end of grade two.
Methodology
Grade 1
At the end of grade one there were sixty-four students from the original experimental group. There were thirty-three (33) boys and thirty-one (31) girls. They had a mean age of 84.4 months. Some members of the control group had moved. Of those children, fifty-four remained, twenty-nine (29) boys and twenty-five (25) girls. They had a mean age of 84.0 months.
Each child was tested in two testing sessions. The sessions were held on consecutive days. On day one a phonemic identification test and a rapid naming test were individually administered. On the second day, students were tested in groups of four (4) to five (5). The tests administered included: a spelling test, a reading test of pseudowords, and an alphabet test (phonemes spoken, children wrote grapheme).
Grade 2
By the end of grade two, sixty-two (62) children remained in the experimental group (32 boys and 30 girls). They had a mean age of 96.4 months. Fifty-three (53) students remained in the control group (28 boys and 25 girls). Their mean age was 96.0 months.
At the end of grade two the students in both groups were administered nine tests:
Numerals – children had to
name eight single digit numerals presented one at a time
Number Names – children were
required to read number words
Pseudowords – List 1 –
children read eight single syllable pseudowords
Regular Words – students read
30 regular high frequency words
Irregular Words – students
read 30 irregular high frequency words
Pseudowords List 2 – students
read 15 one-syllable words
Pseudowords List 3 – students read pseudowords that were consistent with words that
have irregular spelling
Reading and Listening Comprehension Tests – The students read one story and answered
comprehension questions. They listened to another story and answered comprehension
questions.
Title recognition test – The students were presented with thirty-two titles (20 real and 12 false) and asked to identify the ones of which they had heard.
The testing was divided into two sessions spread out over two consecutive days. The seven reading tests were administered on day one. The comprehension tests and the title test were administered on day two.
Results
Grade 1
The results of the testing of the grade one students indicated that the experimental group significantly out-performed the control group in pseudoword reading. The control group marginally out-performed the experimental group in reading regular words. On the irregular word reading test and the spelling test there were no significant differences between the two groups on the alphabet or phoneme identity test.
Grade 2
In grade two significant differences favored the experimental group on the three pseudoword reading tests. This did not hold true for the identification of real words test or the numeral tests.
On the test of reading comprehension, the experimental group significantly out-performed the control group. The researchers surmised that the difference in the reading comprehension scores can be attributed to the superior word identification skills of the experimental group. No significant differences were found on the listening comprehension test, nor were any significant differences found on the title recognition test.
Discussion
The most important finding resulting from this study is the continued superiority of the students in the experimental treatment group in decoding (measured by pseudoword reading test) and reading comprehension. The authors of this study conclude that by exposing preschoolers to the concept of phoneme identification at an early age, their literacy development was enhanced. They also assert that phonemic awareness and letter knowledge each contribute independently to a student's understanding of the alphabetic principle.
Supplementary
Experiment
Introduction
The purpose of the Supplementary Experiment was to examine the effects of the phonemic awareness program when it is administered by preschool classroom teachers using the manuals written by the researchers.
Population
Ninety-three (93) preschoolers from three separate preschools participated in this study. Forty-eight (48) students were boys and forty-five (45) were girls. They had a mean age of 53.9 months at the time of the pretest.
Methodology
The children were tested with the authors' phoneme identity test. Twenty-four (24) items were tested to determine a student's ability to identify phonemes in the initial position and an additional twenty-four (24) items tested their ability to identify phonemes in the final position.
After the pretesting, the teachers were instructed to use the authors' Sound Foundations phonemic awareness training program. Two of the schools used the program for twelve (12) weeks. The other preschool used it for only six (6) weeks. Each of the schools covered the twelve phonemes specified in the manual. The schools that worked on the program for twelve (12) weeks covered one (1) phoneme per week. The third school covered two (2) phonemes per week. All of the teachers emphasized the phonemes in the initial position. Only one school addressed the phonemes in the final position. Instruction was delivered in a whole class setting. All schools tested their students at the conclusion of their program.
Results
In two of the preschools there was both a control group and an experimental group (the groups attended school on alternate days). In the third preschool, all students received the treatment.
When comparing the results of the posttest on initial phonemes, the experimental group significantly out-performed the control group.
In the preschool that instructed in final phonemes (the single instruction group) the mean scores on the tests changed from 10.91 on the pretest to 16.74 on the posttest.
The researchers also looked at the numbers of students who reached the
passing criterion on both the pre and posttests.
On the pretest, the percentage of those passing in the full class setting
was twenty percent (20%), in the experimental group twenty percent (20%), and in
the control group twenty-two percent (22%).
The respective percentages on the posttest were fifty-one percent (51%),
ninety-five percent (95%), and thirty-one percent (31%).
A significant percentage of students in the treatment groups
out-performed the control groups.
Discussion
The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effectiveness of the program in training students in whole class settings where instruction is delivered by the regular classroom teacher. The results of the posttest proved that the effects were positive, although not as positive as the posttest results of the students in the original study who were instructed by the researchers in small group settings.
Training in phonemic awareness has been proven to be effective in enhancing the literacy development of young children. Further research needs to be done to determine the most effective method of delivering that instruction.