An item analysis of measures of phonemic awareness administered to Maltese infants

Abstract

This dissertation item analyses a number of phonemic awareness tasks which have been shown to have good predictive validity for the acquisition of reading and spelling in English and Maltese. Specifically, the measures are modelled on published measures in the area and adapted for use in a Maltese setting. The measures are Letter-Sound Knowledge, Phoneme Segmentation, Phoneme Deletion and Phoneme Isolation. A sample of children in Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 are used to item analyse these measures for the respective ages. A cross-sectional approach across the three Year-levels affords a developmental perspective. Some degree of comparison between the norms established by the administration of these measures in Maltese to a Maltese population and the norms available for similar tests in English are presented. Statistical analyses involve the use of oneway ANOV A From our findings, we conclude that all tests are suitable for Year l students, while most of them, especially the tests in the English version, are also suitable for Year 2 students. The same tests are unsuitable for Year 3 students. An improvement in the children' s level of phonemic awareness is evident among the three groups, especially between Year l and Year 2.