ABSTRACT
McGuinness, D., McGuinness,
C., & Donohue, J. (1995). Phonological
training and the alphabet principle: Evidence
for reciprocal causality. Reading
Research Quarterly, 30, 830-852.
Introduction
The authors completed two studies in order to draw conclusions about phonological training and the alphabetic principle. The first study sought to develop a predictive test battery for basic decoding skills. The aim of the second study was to answer unresolved questions regarding the causal connection between phonological awareness and reading.
Study 1
The goal of this study was to assemble a battery of tests that could serve as a predictor of student achievement with decoding skills. The authors developed their test battery based on research on the topic of phonological awareness from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. The tests were chosen on the basis of things that can be learned independent of formal educational training. The tests represented three specific areas: phonological awareness, working memory, and lexical access.
Population
The twenty-nine (29) students who participated in Study 1, a pilot study, were enrolled in a Primary 1 or first grade class in two schools in Lee County, Florida. For the most part, the children came from white, middle to upper-middle class families. They ranged in age from 5.11 years to 7.9 years. English was the primary language of each of the subjects.
Methodology
The students in the pilot study were administered an extensive battery of tests. Tests of phonological awareness included: Rosner Auditory Analysis Test and the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test. Tests of verbal recall and short-term memory included: Rhyming and nonrhming test and The Token Test. Two tests of Lexical access/rapid memory included Color-naming Speed and Picture naming Speed. Other tests in the battery were the Listening Comprehension subtest of the Murphy-Durrell, Peabody Comprehension subtest, The Probe Test, The Purdue Pegboard, The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and The Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests: Word Identification and Word Attack subtests.
The twenty-nine (29) students were individually tested by the authors in their own school. The tests were administered individually in a separate room. Test sessions did not exceed thirty (30) minutes so as not to fatigue the children. Students who were experiencing difficult days were retested using an alternate form of the test. It took approximately four months to complete the pilot testing.
Results
Based on the performance of the twenty-nine students in the pilot trials, the following tests were eliminated from the battery. The Rosner AAT did not discriminate in the pilot population. The Murphy Durrell Listening Test was eliminated based on the sex bias in the content of the stories. Finally, The Token Test was discarded because too many children obtained a perfect score.
Results of the remaining tests were carefully examined. If simple correlations revealed that the variables did not correlate specifically to a Woodcock reading score the test was eliminated from the battery. Of the tests that remained in the battery scores were analyzed for the total group and by gender.
Discussion
The results of this study (Study 1) showed that four tests proved to be powerful predictors of performance for word recognition and decoding. Those tests were the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test (LAC), Rapid Color Naming tests, Short-term Memory for Rhyming Words, and The Probe Test of visual sequential memory.
Study II
Introduction
The purpose of this study was to seek answers to four important questions regarding the casual connection between phonological awareness and reading that remained unresolved despite a plethora of previous research:
1.
Do initial levels of phonological processing skills prior to reading
instruction, impact later reading ability?
2.
Does learning to read (any method) simultaneously improve phonological
processing?
3.
Which phonological tasks (analysis, lexical access, working memory)
predict reading success later in time?
4.
Does a reading method which incorporates specific
phonological awareness training and instruction in the alphabet principle have
an advantage over one which does not, independent
of phonological processing skill?
Population
The subjects for this study were enrolled in two private schools, one of which was a Montessori school. One classroom of sixteen Primary 1 students in the Montessori school was designated Experimental Group 1 (EXP1). The children ranged in age from 5.11 to 7.9 years old. First grade students in the other private school comprised the second experimental group (EXP2) and the control group (CON). The fifteen (15) children in EXP2 ranged in age from 5.10-7.7 years of age. The fourteen (14) children in the CON group ranged in age from 6.1-7.0 years of age. The children were high in regards to SES and had above average verbal skills as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.
The three first grade teachers who participated in this study had a minimum of six years experience in the classroom. All of the teachers were held in high esteem by their administrators and their colleagues.
Methodology
During the summer, prior to the start of the study, the two EXP teachers received extensive training by one of the authors, which included a full day practicum of working with students. The teachers were trained in:
1.
Discovery and categorization of voiced and unvoiced consonant pairs
2.
Discovery and categorization of nasals, aspirated, continuant,
consonants, and “borrowers” (c, qu, x)
3.
Discovery and categorization of simple vowels based on mouth postures
4.
Discovery of complex vowels: (dipthongs,
sliders, r-controlled and y)
5.
Representation of phoneme sequences CV and VC
6.
Representation of phoneme sequences CVC, CCV and VCC, and CCVCC
7.
Multisyllable units (CVCV)
8.
Spelling patterns
The teachers were instructed to fully inform the children as to what they are doing and the reasoning behind it. Children learned:
1. The alphabet is an arbitrary code for the sounds of language
2. Every language has vowels and consonants
3. How speech is produced
4. Upon memorizing sound/letter relationships most words can be read
5. Multisyllable words are combinations of shorter units of sound
The training exercises provided by the two EXP teachers were taught in a small group setting. The teachers were amply provided with all the materials they needed to implement the program. These materials included felts printed with graphemes, printed sheets of graphemes, mouth pictures, vowels charts, movable tiles printed with graphemes, sets of colored blocks, and small mirrors so that students could observe their mouth postures. The rest of the curriculum was taught as it had been traditionally handled in the past. The Montessori teacher introduced new concepts during a three period lesson. The other EXP teacher used a modified whole language approach in concert with the training program. Students in the CON group were taught by a modified whole language approach which included phonics instruction.
Each of the teachers used literature based reading materials as part of their reading program. Basal texts were not used in any of the classes.
Prior to the training, all the students were tested with the battery of tests developed in Study 1: The Woodcock Reading Mastery Word Identification and Word Attack subtests, The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, an oral comprehension test, the LAC tests of short-term memory for rhyming and nonrhyming words, the RAN Color and Picture Naming Tasks, and the Probe Test of Visual Sequential Memory.
During the course of the study, the children were trained in small groups for 20-30 minutes each day. They also continued to participate in the regular classroom reading program. After eight (8) months of training, the children were posttested using the previously stated measures.
Results
At the time of the pretest, there were no significant differences among the three groups with respect to the Word Identification or Word Attack subtests of the Woodcock.
When compared in a one-way ANOVA, results of the Word Identification subtest showed that EXP1 expressed a gain of eleven (11) months (3 months greater than expected), EXP2 expressed a gain of fourteen (14) months (6 months greater than expected), while the CON group did not make any gains. Similar findings were noted for the Word Attack subtest.
On the LAC test (phonological awareness), raw scores proved to be nonsignificant when all groups were compared by ANOVA. Each group showed improvement. The findings that the CON group improved on the LAC, but not on the two reading subtests suggest that phonological processing by itself is not the cause for reading success.
Discussion
The results of this study suggest that students who receive systematic training in phonological awareness can significantly increase their reading achievement. Phonological training has a significant positive effect on decoding skills. However, the effects of phonological training transfer more slowly to tasks of word recognition. From this fact it can be surmised that phonological processing is an important component in the acquisition of reading skills. However, it is imperative that it be connected to knowledge of the alphabetic principle and phoneme-grapheme correspondences.
Of all the tests administered The LAC test proved to be the strongest predictor of reading success. Additionally, it is important to note that phonological processing ability is greatly impacted during the acquisition of reading skills. In order for a student to succeed in learning to read, phonological awareness must connect to graphemes so that students can comprehend the alphabetic principle and employ it for accuracy and fluency when decoding.