Abstract
This publication presents outcomes of 7-week intervention study implemented to elucidate developmental relationship of phoneme awareness and letter knowledge. Training procedures were prepared and given to preliterate children between 4,5 and 5 years of age.
Possible interactive relationship between phoneme awareness and letter knowledge as a result of both kinds of training activities and its impacts on very early reading skills were monitored .Theoretical background assessing current state of knowledge about the developmental relationship of phoneme awareness and letter knowledge is presented along with the methodological issues in implementing intervention or training studies. Developmental profiles of Czech preschool age children along with detailed description of assessment procedures in phoneme awareness, phonological processes, nonverbal IQ, letter knowledge, orthographic awareness and early reading are also presented.
Description of both training programs is provided to enable further use in educational contexts. During the study 192 Czech preschool children were randomly assigned to: phoneme awareness, letter knowledge training or an untreated group.
All groups were pre-tested on phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, reading measures and nonverbal IQ, tested right after the end of training and in an 8 month delay. Letter trained group differed significantly from both other groups in letter knowledge measures in both posttest times.
Only letter knowledge training seems to immediately boost both letter knowledge and phoneme awareness growth and gradually also helps early reading emergence. Phoneme awareness training has an immediate effect on phoneme awareness and a delayed effect on letter knowledge.