The Influence Of The Development Of Children's Phonological Awareness On Reading Ability And Speech Production Ability

Background:Reading is an important skill in our daily life,yet some children develop dyslexia as a result of persistent difficulties in reading comprehension and spelling during early development.Finding the early predictors that affect the development of children's reading ability can not only help us better understand the process of children's reading acquisition,but also facilitate us to discuss the causes of dyslexia,so as to diagnose and intervene dyslexia as early as possible in the process of children's development.No matter in which language system,Phonological processing ability is considered to be one of the most important factors affecting children's reading development.Phonological awareness,under the branch of phonological processing ability,has been proved to be particularly important for children's reading development.Phonological awareness is usually defined as the ability to consciously detect and manipulate spoken phonological units and belongs to a kind of meta-linguistic awareness.According to the degree to which cognitive control participates in the task of phonological awareness,phonological awareness can be divided into two different types:Implicit phonological awareness(a kind of speech system that is unconsciously controlled)and Explicit phonological awareness(the consciousness of purposefully controlled speech system).Phonological awareness is a relatively advanced skill,so in addition to exploring the relationship between phonological awareness and reading,we also want to explore the relationship between underlying phonological processing ability and reading ability,such as the relationship between speech production and reading ability.The main purpose of this study is to explore the developmental trajectories of different types and levels of phonological awareness of Chinese children aged 4-6 years and their effects on Chinese reading ability,and to make a preliminary discussion on the effects of speech production on phonological awareness and reading ability of children.Method:The experimental subjects of this study were 130 small-class children(average age:51 months)from the affiliated kindergarten of shaanxi normal university.The subjects were followed for three years.Due to a certain degree of loss of the subjects,a total of 96 subjects(average age:75 months)participated in the three-year complete experiment.Study one explores the development trajectory of these children's different types and levels of phonological awareness in three years.Implicit phonological awareness tasks include syllable detection tasks,rime detection tasks and onset detection tasks.The tasks of explicit phonological awareness include syllable deletion,onset deletion and rime deletion.Study two used the Chinese character recognition task to measure children's reading ability,In addition,the slope and intercept of children's phonological awareness development were obtained according to their phonological awareness scores.The slope represented the growth rate of phonological awareness ability,and the intercept represented the initial level of phonological awareness ability,Children were divided into three groups by slope and intercept level(High intercept low slope group;Middle intercept middle slope group;Low intercept high slope group)to explore the relationship between the development of phonological awareness and the development of reading in children at different class.On the basis of study 2,study 3 measured the rapid naming ability of objects(oral processing speed)of children for three years,and measured the pronunciation quality and pronunciation stability of children's speech production ability in the second year of the experiment,so as to explore the influence of children's speech production ability on phonological awareness and reading ability.Results:(1)At the age of 4,the implicit phonological awareness of children had reached a high level,in which the correct rate of implicit syllable awareness was 82%,the correct rate of implicit rime awareness was 69%,and the correct rate of implicit onset awareness was 63%;Only the explicit syllabic awareness developed to a higher level,and the correct rate was 80%.During the period of 4-5 years old,there is little development of implicit syllable awareness,rime awareness and onset awareness;The development of explicit rime consciousness and onset awareness is very weak,while the development of explicit syllable awareness is remarkable.During the period of 5-6 years old,children's phonological awareness increased significantly,among which,the explicit rime awareness and onset awareness increased most significantly.(2)According to the slope and intercept of children's phonological awareness achievement,the subjects were divided into three classes,among which,there were 26 students in the high-intercept and low-slope group(CLASS1),36 students in the middle-intercept and middle-slope group(CLASS2),and 34 students in the low-intercept and high-slope group(CLASS3),The reading ability of the three groups showed an increasing trend year by year and a similar development trajectory,but the reading ability of the highintercept group(CLASS1)was always ahead of the other two groups;The main differences of the three classes of subjects were in the implicit syllabic awareness and various explicit phonological awareness,especially the explicit rime consciousness and onset awareness at the age of 4-5,indicating that these tasks were the main reasons for the differences in children's reading ability.(3)The indicators of multiple speech production tasks in CLASS1 were better than that of CLASS3,and after controlling for the effect of phonological awareness on reading,the speech production task of 5-yearold children could explain 35.7%variation in Chinese character recognition.Conclusion:(1)Different types and levels of phonological awareness of 4-6 year old children have different developmental trajectory,among which the development of implicit phonological awareness is earlier than that of explicit phonological awareness,and the development of syllabic awareness is earlier than that of other levels of phonological awareness.(2)The initial level of children's phonological awareness(early phonological awareness)has a greater impact on their reading ability.The implicit syllable awareness,explicit rime awareness and explicit onset awareness of 45 year old children are important indicators affecting their reading ability.(3)Early children's phonological awareness has a positive effect on speech production ability,which can be used as one of the important predictors of reading ability.