Studies of the factors governing reading development in young children have achieved a remarkable degree of consensus over the past two decades. The consensus concerns the causal role of ’phonological skills in young children’s reading progress. Children who have good phonological skills, or good ’phonological awareness’ become good readers and good spellers. Children with poor phonological skills progress more poorly. In particular, those who have a specific phonological deficit are likely to be classified as dyslexic by the time that they are 9 or 10 years old.
Phonological skills in young children can be measured at a number of different levels. The term phonological awareness is a global one, and refers to a deficit in recognising smaller units of sound within spoken words. Development work has shown that this deficit can be at the level of syllables, of onsets and rimes, or phonemes. For example, a 4-year old child might have difficulty in recognising that a word like valentine has three syllables, suggesting a lack of syllabic awareness. A five-year-old might have difficulty in recognising that the odd word out in the set of words fan, cat, mat, hat, mat is fan. This task requires an awareness of the sub-syllabic units of the onset and the rime. The onset corresponds to any initial consonants in a syllable word, and the rime corresponds to the vowel and to any following consonants. Rimes correspond to rhyme in single-syllable words, and so the rime in fan differs from the rime in cat, hat and mat. In longer words, rime and rhyme may differ. The onsets in val:en:tine are /v/ and /t/, and the rimes correspond to the selling patterns ’al’, ’en’ and ’ine’.
A six-year-old might have difficulty in recognising that plea and pray begin with the same initial sound. This is a phonemic judgement. Although the initial phoneme /p/ is shared between the two words, in plea it is part of the onset ’pl’ and in pray it is part if the onset ’pr’. Until children can segment the onset (or the rime), such phonemic judgements are difficult for them to make. In fact, a recent survey of different developmental studies has shown that the different levels of phonological awareness appear to emerge sequentially. The awareness of syllables, onsets, and rimes appears to merge at around the ages of 3 and 4, long before most children go to school. The awareness of phonemes, on the other hand, usually emerges at around the age of 5 or 6, when children have been taught to read for about a year. An awareness of onsets and rimes thus appears to be a precursor of reading, whereas an awareness of phonemes at every serial position in a word only appears to develop as reading is taught. The onset-rime and phonemic levels of phonological structure, however, are not distinct. Many onsets in English are single phonemes, and so are some rimes (e.g. sea, go, zoo).
The early availability of onsets and rimes is supported by studies that have compared the development of phonological awareness of onsets, rimes, and phonemes in the same subjects using the same phonological awareness tasks. For example, a study by Treiman and Zudowski used a same/different judgement task based on the beginning or the end sounds of words. In the beginning sound task, the words either began with the same onset, as in plea and plank, or shared only the initial phoneme, as in plea and pray. In the end-sound task, the words either shared the entire rime, as in spit and wit, or shared only the final phoneme, as in rat and wit. Treiman and Zudowski showed that four- and five-year-old children found the onset-rime version of the same/different task significantly easier than the version based on phonemes. Only the six-year-olds, who had been learning to read for about a year, were able to perform both versions of the tasks with an equal level of success.
From the following statements, pick out the true statement according to the passage.
Show Hint
- A mono-syllabic word can have only one onset.
- A mono-syllabic word can have only one rhyme but more than one rime.
- A mono-syllabic word can have only one phoneme.
- All of these
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Which one of the following is likely to emerge last in the cognitive development of a child?
Show Hint
- Rhyme
- Rime
- Onset
- Phoneme
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
A phonological deficit in which of the following is likely to be classified as dyslexia?
Show Hint
- Phonemic judgement
- Onset judgement
- Rime judgement
- Any one or more of the above
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
The Treiman and Zudowski experiment found evidence to support which of the following conclusions?
Show Hint
- At age six, reading instruction helps children perform both, the same-different judgement task.
- The development of onset-rime awareness precedes the development of an awareness of phonemes.
- At age four to five children find the onset-rime version of the same/different task significantly easier.
- The development of onset-rime awareness is a necessary and sufficient condition for the development of an awareness of phonemes.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The single-syllable words Rhyme and Rime are constituted by the exact same set of:
(A) rime(s)
(B) onset(s)
(C) rhyme(s)
(D) phoneme(s)
The single-syllable words Rhyme and Rime are constituted by the exact same set of:
(A) rime(s)
(B) onset(s)
(C) rhyme(s)
(D) phoneme(s)
Show Hint
- A and B
- A and C
- A, B and C
- B, C and D
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
As of 2009, there are 890 World Heritage Sites that are located in 148 countries (map). 689 of these sites are cultural and include places like the Sydney Opera House in Australia and the Historic Center of Vienna in Austria. 176 are natural and feature such locations as the U.S.’s Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks. 25 of the World Heritage Sites are considered mixed i.e. natural and cultural Peru’s Machu Picchu is one of these. Italy has the highest number of World Heritage Sites with 44. India has 36 (28 cultural, 7 natural and 1 mixed) World Heritage Sites. The World Heritage Committee has divided the world’s countries into five geographic zones which include (1) Africa, (2) Arab States, (3) Asia Pacific (including Australia and Oceania), (4) Europe and North America and (5) Latin America and the Caribbean.
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