THE EFFECT OF ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE INPUT ON CHILDRENS PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS - A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of oral and written language input on the development of phonological awareness (PA) in 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children. The abilities of Czech and English speakers were contrasted because these two languages differ considerably both with respect to syllable structure (oral language) and in orthographic depth (written language). Czech contains a greater variety and frequency of complex syllabic onsets than English. Also, the Czech orthography is transparent whereas English orthography is opaque. It was hypothesized that if language input affects children′s PA development, Czech children should show higher levels of awareness for complex onsets prior to formal schooling. The Czech first graders should show greater improvement in PA skills than their Anglophone peers as well as better spelling skills after formal exposure to literacy. The results revealed that Czech children do possess higher levels of awareness of complex onsets than English-Canadian children and that they have more advanced spelling skills by the end of grade one. However, the English children showed better awareness of simple onsets than the Czech children on one oral task. Together, these results suggest that the early development of PA is shaped to some extent by aspects of the phonological input and that the nature of the orthography additionally impacts on the rate and pattern of development of PA and literacy skills. © 1993 by Academic Press, Inc.