GAINING ALPHABETIC INSIGHT - IS PHONEME MANIPULATION SKILL OR IDENTITY KNOWLEDGE CAUSAL

The type of phoneme awareness that supports reading acquisition has be en unclear. Phoneme awareness is usually operationalized as skill in m anipulating phonemes in blending and segmentation tasks. However, B. B yrne and R. Fielding-Barnsley (1990) argued that phoneme awareness is knowledge of phoneme identities (i.e., recognition of individual phone mes in spoken word contexts). In a double-blind teaching experiment, 4 8 kindergartners were randomly assigned to identity, manipulation, or language experience programs. Children in the manipulation program mad e significantly greater gains on tests of blending and segmentation. H owever, children in the identity program made significantly greater ga ins on a test of phonetic cue reading, a measure of rudimentary decodi ng ability. Teaching recognition of particular phonemes in word contex ts may help beginners gain insight into the alphabetic principle and a pply their insights in early word identification.