The effects of early phonological awareness training on reading success

This longitudinal study establishes predictive and causal relationships between pre-reading phonological awareness (PA) and reading success in first and third grades. Seventy students from two kindergarten classes, who subsequently registered in the same elementary school, were studied. The experimental class received an eight-month PA training program. Phonological awareness was measured at three points of time: pre-training, end of kindergarten and end of first grade and reading comprehension was assessed at the end of the first and third grades. A significant difference in PA skills was found between groups at the end of the kindergarten year. A comparison of reading comprehension scores, controlling for the pre-training PA scores, yielded significant differences for the experimental group in both first and third grades. The phonological awareness tasks of initial phoneme isolation and sound deletion were highly predictive of success in first-grade reading acquisition.