THE ROLE OF RHYME AWARENESS IN LEARNING TO READ A REGULAR ORTHOGRAPHY

The present research examined whether children's awareness of phonolog ical similarities between words with respect to rhyme and consonantal word onset is of the same importance for learning to read German as it was found to be for learning to read English. In two longitudinal stu dies differences in phonological sensitivity among children before lea rning to read (at age 6 to 7) were tested with versions of Bradley & B ryant's (1985) oddity detection task. Children's reading and spelling achievements were tested about one year later at the end of grade one, and again at around the age of 10. The main finding was a development al change in the predictive relationship of rhyme and word-onset aware ness. Rhyme awareness was only minimally predictive for reading and sp elling achievement at the end of grade one, but gained substantially i n predictive importance for reading and spelling achievement in grades three and four. No such predictive improvement was observed for word- onset awareness. It is proposed that rhyme awareness is initially of l ittle importance, because in the first phase of learning to read Germa n children rely heavily on indirect word recognition via grapheme-phon eme translation and blending. The gain in the predictive importance of rhyme awareness is explained by its helpful effect on the establishme nt of mental representations of written words. Such mental representat ions allow fast, direct word recognition and orthographically correct spellings. Awareness of larger phonological units is helpful for the e fficient establishment of such representations, by allowing connection s of recurring grapheme clusters in written words with phonology.