Phonological Awareness and Reading Acquisition:An Educational Proposal for Introducing English in Italian Preschools
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Phonological awareness refers to children’s ability to distinguish and manipulate the auditory segments of spoken language, such as syllables and phonemes. This work investigates phonological awareness skills in preschool children in relation to children’s later development of reading and writing abilities, both in an L1 and an L2. First of all, we explore the situation of early foreign/second language teaching/learning in Italy, as well as the issues that are unsolved or neglected within the field of early language teaching methodology. What follows is a detailed description of phonological awareness skills and development in English-speaking children, and of its role within children’s process of learning to read and write an alphabetic or a non-alphabetic L1. We then review some of the most relevant evidence-based studies that give support to the role of phonological awareness as an emergent literacy skill in preschool children, and as a predictor of children’s later literacy acquisition. The positive relationship between phonological awareness training programs for preschool children and their phonological awareness and literacy development is also examined. This study then investigates the development of phonological awareness in children acquiring a language other than English as their L1, or English as a second language, as well as the issue of transfer of phonological awareness skills across English and other alphabetic or non-alphabetic languages in plurilingual educational settings. The following section describes the general educational environment where phonological awareness tasks in English as a foreign language could be carried out in Italian preschools, as well as the features of these activities. Lastly, we present a set of newly designed teaching/learning activities and games in English aimed at fostering Italian preschool children’ phonological awareness skills, as well as their overall oral skills (both listening/speaking skills and pronunciation skills) in English.
Author: Verusca Costenaro
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W130201086