Preliterate phonological awareness and early literacy skills in Turkish

Babayigit, Selma; Stainthorp, Rhona

Abstract

The role of preschool phonological awareness in early reading and spelling skills was investigated in the transparent orthography of Turkish. Fifty-six preschool children (mean age=5.6 years) were followed into Grade 2 (mean age=7.6 years). While preschool phonological awareness failed to make any reliable contribution to future reading skills, it was the strongest longitudinal correlate of spelling skills measured at the end of Grades 1 and 2. Overall findings suggested that phonological awareness may be differentially related to reading and spelling, and that spelling is a more sensitive index of phonological processing skills. In this study, verbal short-term memory emerged as the most powerful and consistent longitudinal correlate of reading speed. This finding raised important questions about the component processes of reading speed, and the role of memory and morphosyntactic skills in an agglutinative and transparent orthography such as Turkish. © United Kingdom Literacy Association 2007.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Sep 24, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 2, 2016
• Journal: Journal of Research in Reading
• Print ISSN: 0141-0423
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9817
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 30
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 394-413
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2007.00350.x
• Keywords: phonological awareness, Turkish, reading, phonological STM, spelling
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1023753
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2007.00350.x
• Additional Information: Additional Information : © United Kingdom Literacy Association and Blackwell Publishing. The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com
• Contract Date: Apr 2, 2016