The Effects of a Phonological Awareness and Alphabet Knowledge Intervention on Four Year Old Kindergarten Children

Abstract

Phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are two of the strongest predictors of reading acquisition. Many New Zealand children are entering school with low levels of emergent literacy skills, so an important area of study is how to boost the phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge of four year olds in preparation for their entrance into school. The current research proposed an evidence-based intervention, using games and books, could raise the levels of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge in children who were shown to have low levels of emergent literacy. The study examined the variation of emergent literacy knowledge, assessed using PALS Pre-K, in a sample of 42 New Zealand four year old children attending kindergarten. The study also investigated the effects of a phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge intervention in a sample of 24 four year old children (taken from the original sample of 42). The results showed 1) a large range in the emergent literacy scores of the 42 four year olds and 2) that a phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge intervention was effective in significantly raising the levels of upper-case letter-naming, letter-sound awareness and beginning sound awareness in the intervention group. The scores for name writing, lower-case letter-naming and rhyming although higher for the intervention group were not significantly so. The results suggest there is a relationship between letter-naming knowledge and letter-sound knowledge and that beginning sound knowledge was a difficult concept for many children to grasp without explicit teaching. The findings showed an evidence-based intervention that is designed appropriately with regard to focus, length of session and group size, can be effective in raising the emergent literacy knowledge of a group of four year old children with low levels of emergent literacy knowledge.