O desenvolvimento da consciência fonológica no início da pré-escola

Abstract

There are evidences that the phonological awareness develop during the pre-school years, through a relatively invariant sequence, starting from large phonological units (syllables, rhymes) to small ones (phonemes). The present study investigates the development of phonological awareness in the first year of pre-school. In particular, the study evaluates the contribution of vocabulary and letter knowledge for the development of rhyme and phoneme sensibility. Participants were eighty-three Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children. At the beginning of the study, they were on average age of 4 years 2 months. Participants were tested in two different occasions: at the beginning of the first year of pre-school and, one year later, at the beginning of the second year of pre-school. On both occasions, tests assessed their phonological awareness, their knowledge of the letters of the alphabet, their intelligence levels and their reading and spelling abilities. Overall, the results suggest that the development of rhyme and phoneme sensibility depends on different influences. Specifically, while the development of rhyme was more strongly associated with vocabulary, the development of sensitivity to phoneme was more strongly correlated with letter sound knowledge.