Carien Wilsenach
Phonological awareness and reading in Northern Sotho – Understanding the contribution of phonemes and syllables in Grade 3 reading attainment
University of South Africa
background role phonological awareness pa successful reading attainment northern sotho received attention however importance developing awareness different phonological grain sizes underlie decoding ie different dimensions pa established languageaim study assessed different levels pa northern sotho learners order determine relationship phoneme awareness syllable awareness readingsetting research conducted atteridgeville suburb tshwane participants grade 3 learners spoke northern sotho home language received literacy instruction northern sotho foundation phasemethods research crosssectional correlational component phoneme awareness assessed via phoneme identification elision task whereas syllable awareness assessed syllable elision taskresults statistical analyses revealed northern sotho learners significantly better identifying syllables phonemes phoneme awareness predicts reading outcomes accuratelyconclusion study suggests phoneme awareness necessarily develop early automatically languages simple syllable structure transparent orthography evaluates finding predictions psycholinguistic grain size theory importance explicitly teaching phonemegrapheme correspondences northern sotho learners highlighted