EVALUATION OF A PROGRAM TO TEACH PHONEMIC AWARENESS TO YOUNG-CHILDREN- A 2-YEAR AND 3-YEAR FOLLOW-UP AND A NEW PRESCHOOL TRIAL

This article reports a follow-up study of children in Grades 1 and 2 w ho had been instructed in phonemic awareness in preschool. Compared to a control condition, the trained children were superior in nonword re ading 2 and 3 years later and in reading comprehension at 3 years. Con trol children furnished a disproportionate number of readers dependent on sight word reading. The superiority of the experimental condition did not extend to measures of automaticity in reading. W. A. Hoover an d P. B. Gough's (1990) ''simple view'' of reading (Reading Comprehensi on = Listening Comprehension X Decoding) was supported. In a supplemen tary experiment, preschool children were trained with the program by t heir regular teachers and showed greater progress in aspects of phonem ic awareness than the control condition from the main experiment Howev er, they did not gain as much as those in the more intensely trained e xperimental condition.