Development of Phonological Awareness in Korean Children

Hong, Sung In; Jeon, Sae Il; Pae, Soyeong; Lee, Ikhwan

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2002;7(1): 49-64.

Sung In Hong^` , Sae Il Jeon^` , Soyeong Pae^` , and Ikhwan Lee^`

홍성인(Sung In Hong)| 전세일(Sae Il Jeon)| 배소영(Soyeong Pae)| 이익환(Ikhwan Lee)

ABSTRACT

Phonological awareness refer s to the recognizing the speech- sound unit s and their forms in a word in spoken language. Phonological awareness progresses into word awareness, syllable awareness, and phonemic awareness step by step and is highly correlated with word reading which is the first step of reading. Especially phonological awareness has been identified as the primary predictor for reading rather than language ability or intellectual ability. The purpose of this study was to examine the development of phonologcal awreness of 72 normal Korean children between 4-6 years of age, and to see whether this phonological awareness influences word reading. Four -year - old children showed correct response of 50 % in word awareness, 34 % in syllable awareness, and 8 % in phonemic awareness. Fiveyear - old children showed correct response of 75 % in word awareness, 67 % in syllable awareness, and 13 % in phonemic awareness. Six-year - old children showed correct response of 95 % or more in word and syllable awareness, and 51 % in phonemic awareness. The scores of phonological awareness changed depending on the age, the type of phonological awareness tasks (deletion, blending, categorization), and the level of phonological awareness tasks (word, syllable, phoneme). Reading and phonological awareness correlation score was .888, reading and PPVT -K correlation score was .448, and reading and KEDI-WISC cor - relation score was .361. The highest score obtained was the correlation between reading achievement and phonological awareness. This result may indicate that the phonological awareness of Korean children develops in the order of word level, syllable level, and phonemic level in line with the increase in age. The correlation analysis shows that phonological awarenes is highly correlated with early reading rather than PPVT -K or KEDI-WISC. There is a strong possibility that phonological awareness is the primary predictor of early reading development.