Effects of Phonological Awareness Skills on Reading and Reading Comprehension: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the effects of phonological awareness skills on students’ reading
and reading comprehension performances. Participants were 85 students (45 of whom have proficient
phonological awareness skills, 40 of whom have poor phonological awareness skills) from kindergarten
classes. Two testing procedure were run in the study. Firstly, participants’ phonological abilities were tested
when they were in kindergarten classes, then their reading and reading comprehension performances when
they were at first grade. Three independent subtests (Phonological Awareness Test, Word Reading Test and
Text Reading and Reading Comprehension Test) were used to evaluate the participants’ phonological
awareness, reading and reading comprehension skills. All the testing sessions were carried out in a quiet
room located on the school grounds of the tested participants, individually. One-Way Anova, two factors
MANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H Test were used to analyze the data gathered from participants’ reading and
reading comprehension performances. Findings from the present study indeed point that although
participants with proficient phonological skills have similar reading accuracy with the participants with
poor phonological abilities, they had better reading fluency and reading comprehension performances. All
these findings are discussed with reference to the levels of phonological abilities of the participants