Exploring the Relationship Between Phonological Awareness, Speech Impairment, and Literacy

Intervention focusing on phonological awareness activities for children with spoken language disorders is currently being promoted. This article raises issues about the appropriateness of intervention targeting phonological awareness abilities and cautions against the wide scale adoption of new interventions for children with differing symptoms of disorder. Relatively little is known about the phonological awareness development of children with speech impairment. A review of the literature on normal acquisition of phonological awareness abilities reveals wide variation in children's development. It is affected by educational exposure and socioeconomic class. Many 4year-old children with typically developing speech and language skills exhibit limited phonological awareness knowledge and subskills and do not necessarily show a steady improvement with maturation. Recent research indicates that phonological awareness intervention holds promise for children with speech impairment (e.g., Gillon, 2000). However, march needs to establish criteria for idetifiying those children who will benefit from phonological awareness training, and evaluate the efficacy of differing programme content. The article concludes by posing four questions for future research.