Play and Development of Phonological Skills Among Preschoolers in Public Early Childhood Education Centres in Rivers West Senatorial District of Rivers State
CHAPTER ONE
Objectives of the study
This study is an attempt to identify the Play and development of phonological skills among pre-schoolers. It also aimed at identifying the differences between male and females, gender influence, in phonological awareness. In addition to identifying pre-schoolers attitudes towards phonological awareness tasks.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read any alphabetic writing system. Previous studies show that poor phoneme awareness and other phonological skills is a predictor of poor reading and spelling development. Ehri et al., 2004 and Troia, 1999 asserts that phonological awareness is critical for learning to read any alphabetic writing system. Phonological awareness is even important for reading other kinds of writing systems, such as Chinese and Japanese. There are several well-established lines of argument about the importance of phonological skills to reading and spelling. English uses an alphabetic writing system in which the letters, singly and in combination, represent single speech sounds. According to Liberman & Shankweiler, 1985 and Troia, 1999, people who can turn words to sounds and put them together have the basic skill of using the alphabetic. Without phoneme awareness, students may be mystified by the print system and how it represents the spoken word. Phoneme awareness facilitates growth in printed word recognition. Even before a student learns to read, we can predict with a high level of accuracy whether that student will be a good reader or a poor reader by the end of third grade and beyond (Good and Kaminski, 2007 and Torgesen, 2000). Prediction is possible with simple tests that measure awareness of speech sounds in words, knowledge of letter names, knowledge of sound-symbol correspondence, and vocabulary, so phoneme awareness predicts later outcomes in reading and spelling. The majority of poor readers have relative difficulty with phoneme awareness and other phonological skills.
Previous studies have repeatedly referred to poor readers as individuals with lower achievement in phoneme awareness tasks than other cognitive tasks. In addition, at least 80% of poor readers are estimated to have weak phonological awareness and/or phonological memory. Readers with phonological processing weaknesses also tend to be the poorest spellers. Instruction in speech-sound awareness reduces and alleviates reading and spelling difficulties (Adams et al., 1998 and Gillon, 2004). Teaching speech sounds explicitly and directly accelerates learning the alphabetic code. Therefore, classroom instruction for beginning readers should include phoneme awareness activities.
Phonological Awareness
Definition of Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is the awareness that an individual has of the sounds in spoken words. It is the awareness that speech consists of a sequence of sounds, also known as phonemes (the smallest component of speech). Children who have acquired PA skills have the ability to notice, mentally grab hold of, and manipulate phonemes (Yopp & Yopp, 2000). PA skills include the ability to (1) identify and create rhyming words; (2) identify and create words through alliteration; (3) count syllables; (4) match words by initial or final sounds; (5) isolate a sound in a word; (6) delete a sound in a word; (7) blend individual sounds to form a word; (8) substitute sounds in a word; and (9) segment a word into its constituent sounds (Ball, 1997; Griffith & Olson, 1992; Major & Bernhardt, 1998; McBride-Chang, 1995; Roth & Baden, 2001; Yopp, 1992; Yopp & Yopp, 2000). Harbers, Paden, and Halle (1999) stated that a phonologically aware individual can be defined as having mastered the following components:
(1) awareness of phonological strings; (2) awareness of syllables; (3) awareness of phoneme segments; and (4) awareness of phonetic features. PA begins to develop during the preschool and early elementary years and, therefore, is a crucial component of formal and intentional instruction that needs to be addressed in order to prevent reading difficulties in children as they progress through their educational years.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
In this chapter, we would describe how the study was carried out.
Research design
Research design is a detailed outline of how an investigation took place. It entails how data is collected, the data collection tools used and the mode of analyzing data collected (Cooper & Schindler (2006).
The current study utilized experimental and descriptive approach to investigate the impact of Play and development of phonological skills among pre-schoolers . After being written, the pre- and post-evaluation test items, and observations items were submitted to five reviewers, who were university teachers, to comment about the tasks. They gave their opinion by adding, omitting or modifying some items.
Research settings
This study was carried out in river State Nigeria; River State is one of the 36 states of Nigeria, located in the southern region of the country.
Sources of Data
The data for this study were generated from two main sources; Primary sources and secondary sources. The primary sources include questionnaire, interviews and observation. The secondary sources include journals, bulletins, textbooks and the internet.
Population of the study
A study population is a group of elements or individuals as the case may be, who share similar characteristics. These similar features can include location, gender, age, sex or specific interest. The emphasis on study population is that it constitute of individuals or elements that are homogeneous in description (Udoyen, 2019).
CHAPTER FOUR
ANALYSIS, RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Descriptive analysis utilized to analyze the questionnaires output. The statistical package of social sciences (SPSS) applied to conduct such analyses. In addition to utilizing simple coding scheme where all Likert options were codes from (1) Excellent to (6) V .Poor whereas the frequencies and arithmetic mean were also calculated.
Reliability Statistics
To answer the question, which states: Do phonological awareness tasks have an impact on reading comprehension skill?
Table (1) pre- and post-test reading level deals with the analysis of data collected through the tests for the students of the experimental and control groups. The arithmetic mean is compared to identify the impact of phonological awareness tasks on reading comprehension skills, Figure (1).
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Reading skill is one of the basic skills required for the students in their English language learning. Based on the findings of this study, it is concluded that training in phonological awareness skills has significant effects in improving the reading ability and performance of pre-schoolers. The findings of the study is very significant to teachers, parents, government and school proprietors that not all students who could not read are either slow learners or lack sound background in reading. But that some of such students have learning difficulties which proper intervention can curb their problems. The study equally concludes that there is no significant effect of gender on the reading performance of pre-schoolers.
Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations were made: 1. The training on phonological awareness has revealed that it is significant in improving the reading performanceofthepre-schoolers;
- Early childhood education should give students a phonemic course;
- Since gender is not a barrier to acquiring reading skills, both male and female should be encouraged to participate actively in intervention programs that will help overcome their reading difficulties.
REFERENCES
- Adams, M. J. and Pressely (1998) Reading Writing and Literacy. In I.E. Sigel and K.A. Renninger (Eds) Hand book in child psychology in practice (Vol 4, pp 275-355) New York: Wiley.
- Chard, D. J., and Dickson, S. V. 1999. Phonological Awareness: Instructional and Assessment Guidelines. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34, 5. Www.ldonline.org/ld indepth/reading/chard_phono_awareness.html.
- Fitzpatrick, J. 1997. Phonemic Awareness: Playing With Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Skills. Creative Teaching Press.
- Good, H. R., & Kaminski, R. A. [Eds.]. (2007). Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (6th ed.). Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Assessment. Available: http://dibels.uoregon.edu.
- Gillon, G. (2004). Phonological awareness: From research to practice. New York: Guilford Press.
- Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan,287.(2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s metaanalysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250– 287.
- Liberman, I. Y., & Shankweiler, D. (1985). Phonology and the problems of learning to read and write. Remedial and Special Education, 6, 8–17.
- O’Connor, R., Jenkins, J., Leicester, N., & Slocum, T. (1993). Teaching phonological awareness to young children with learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 59, 532– 546.
