THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDRENS CONCEPT OF WORD IN TEXT AND PHONEME AWARENESS IN LEARNING TO READ - A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY

Using a longitudinal design, this study tested a developmental hypothe sis about the growth of word knowledge in kindergarten readers. Based on previous work (Henderson, 1980; Morris, 1980, 1983), it was predict ed that beginning consonant knowledge (BC) facilitates a child's conce pt of word in text (CW), which in turn facilitates phoneme segmentatio n (PS), which in turn facilitates word recognition (WR). Fifty-three k indergartners were tested at two-month intervals during the school yea r on BC, CK PS, and WR tasks. The results of two different analyses pr ovided convergent support for the developmental hypothesis (BC-->CW--> PS-->WR). Generalizability of the results is limited by the specific k indergarten instructional contexts in this study. Nonetheless, the fin dings do highlight some interesting relationships between beginning re aders' emerging phonological awareness and their understanding of how spoken words map to printed words in text.