Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Semester of Degree Completion

2001

Thesis Director

Rebecca M. Throneburg

Thesis Committee Member

Jean M. Smitley

Abstract

Many researchers have reported that phonological awareness training is highly related to the acquisition of pre-reading skills (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Lundberg, Frost, & Peterson, 1988) and that phonological awareness should be a part of any good reading curriculum (Adams, 1990; Blachman, 1989). In addition, when phonological awareness is taught in the classroom it has been proven that class averages of phonological awareness skills improve (Blachman, 1991; Barnes, Smitley, & Throneburg, 1998). However, the research also suggests that students with speech and/or language disorders often exhibit poor reading skills (Gillam & Carlile, 1997; Menyuk & Chestnick, 1997). The purpose of the current study was to determine if phoneme awareness and blending/segmenting skills of three first grade children with speech/language disorders improved after individual phonological awareness training. The three subjects were involved in a classroom based phonological awareness program during their kindergarten year, but their scores were greater than one standard deviation below the class mean. During 8 weeks of individual training, the percentage for accuracy of phoneme awareness and blending increased significantly in all three subjects.

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