EFFECTS OF 2 TYPES OF PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS TRAINING ON WORD LEARNING IN KINDERGARTEN-CHILDREN

The effects of two types of oral-language training programs on development of phonological awareness skills and word learning ability was examined. One of the training programs provided explicit instruction on both analytic (segmenting) and synthetic (blending) phonological tasks; the other program trained synthetic skills only. Effects of these programs were contrasted with a language-experience control group that received no phonologically oriented training. Forty-eight kindergarten children participated in small-group training sessions 3 times per week for 7-8 weeks. Children who received both analytic and synthetic training improved significantly on both types of skills, whereas children receiving the synthetic skills training alone improved only on blending skills. Only children receiving training on both types of tasks showed a positive training effect for the word learning, or reading analog, task.