Effects of phonological awareness training on reading achievement

Phonological awareness is usually considered to be an important prerequisite for success in literacy acquisition. Children who had phonological awareness training in preschool not only show a better performance in phonological awareness tasks at elementary school but also perform better in reading and writing than untrained children. As part of the EVES longitudinal study, reading and spelling skills of 1520 children who entered school in the fall of 2001 and 2002 were assessed throughout elementary school. The comparison of a matched sample of 107 trained with 107 untrained children shows that untrained children are outperformed by trained children in reading. The best training effects can be found with girls while boys seem to profit from the intervention only towards the end of elementary school. Training phonological awareness in preschool thus facilitates reading acquisition, even if there are other important influencing factors (e.g. class context).