The development of phonological skills in preschool children

Abstract

The paper presents a portion of the results obtained in the first phase of a longitudinal study of the development of children’s literacy. The aim of the research was to study the level of development of phonological skills in preschool children. The development of phonological skills, as part of meta linguistic skills, was studied by the assessment of voice analysis and synthesis in words and recognizing rhyme. The sample included preschool children. The obtained results have pointed to an average development of children’s phonological skills in the domain of the ability of voice synthesis and analysis in words, as well as to the difficulties in solving items that contained more complex demands of manipulating phonemes within words. It was also determined that there were difficulties in recognizing rhyme in words where phonological similarity was more prominent on the level of the whole word. Since there are very few research studies in our country that deal with the development of phonological skills in preschool children, which are an important predictor for the acquisition of reading and writing skills, the findings of this research can provide an insight into the development of this aspect of children’s speech and language, while in the long run they would enable us to observe the influence of this predictor on the success in initial reading and writing.

U radu je izložen deo rezultata prve faze longitudinalnog istraživanja o razvoju dečje pismenosti. Cilj istraživanja bio je da se ispita razvijenost fonološke sposobnosti kod dece predškolskog uzrasta. Razvijenost fonološke sposobnosti, kao metalingvističke sposobnosti, ispitivana je procenom glasovne analize i sinteze u rečima i prepoznavanjem rime. Uzorak su činila deca predškolskog uzrasta. Dobijeni nalazi ukazuju na prosečnu razvijenost fonoloških sposobnosti dece u domenu sposobnosti analize i sinteze glasova u rečima, ali i na teškoće pri rešavanju ajtema koji sadrže složenije zahteve manipulisanja fonemama u okviru reči. Utvrđeno je i da se javljaju teškoće u prepoznavanju rime u rečima kod kojih je fonološka sličnost bila izraženija na nivou cele reči. Budući da u našoj sredini postoji mali broj istraživanja o razvijenosti fonoloških sposobnosti dece predš- kolskog uzrasta koje predstavljaju značajan prediktor za usvajanje veština čitanja i pisanja, nalazi ovog istraživanja omogućavaju da se sagleda razvijenost ovog aspekta njihovog govora i jezika, dok će nam u perspektivi omogućiti da sagledamo uticaj ovog prediktora na uspeh u početnom čitanju i pisanju.