| Phonological-awareness skills have been found to predict reading skills, and phonological-awareness instruction has been found to improve children's reading skills and phonological awareness. Markviss malorvun (MM) is such an instructional program, which is based on Ingvar Lundberg's theories on phonological awareness. Follow-up studies have been conducted on MM instruction in Scandinavia, Germany, and the United States but not in Iceland. Traditionally, the MM program has been delivered as a classroom package in Grade 1. Of the 160 Icelandic preschool children who participated, 123 received either a traditional or an adapted MM. In the adapted instruction, 96 children got assignments commensurate with their skills (3 levels). Measures of reading skills at the end of preschool were of limited value, however, because approximately 4 out of 5 children could not read at the time. Results of this study indicated that phonological awareness can be taught. Comparing children who had received MM instruction with children who had not, revealed differences in reading skills in first grade. However, when visual recognition and language skills were controlled for, reading skills in first grade did not seem to be affected by MM. Indications on reduced need for remedial reading in the group that had received MM instruction were found, but further research is needed accordingly. More research on gender differences is also required, because the data vaguely reflected that boys might profit more than girls from MM and also from its adapted form. A simple comparison of the adapted and traditional instruction indicated that children receiving the adapted MM did better on phonological awareness measures, first-grade reading, language development, and grapheme knowledge. Yet, when previous skills (grapheme knowledge and language) were controlled for, significant differences between the two forms were not detected. When reading skills in first grade were predicted from preschool measures, grapheme recognition was the strongest predictor followed by language skills and age. Because phonological awareness overlaps other skills, overall conclusions based on phonological awareness only, might imply differences where detailed empirical evidence is missing. Overall assumptions might also have hidden valuable gender differences in the effects of phonological-awareness instruction. |
