A phonological awareness programme for Maltese pre-school children

Abstract

From a previous study carried out by the researcher, 'A Screening Test for Speech and Language for Maltese 3-year olds' (Gellel, 1999), it was clear that Maltesespeak. ing pre-school children arc delayed when compared to their English-speaking peers, with regards to phonological awareness skills. This research is directed at devising and validating a phonological awareness programme for Maltese pre-schoolchildren. The programme aims ut consolidating phonological awareness skills already present and building upon them. Existing programmes devised for foreign children were examined and adapted to the Maltese context. Children participating in the study were screened in order to find out the level of phonological awareness present before and then after the programme was carried out. The classroom kindergarten assistant carried out the programme in a class of eighteen four- and five-year old children, under the supervision of the researcher, who is a qualified Speech Language Pathologist. A control group of another eighteen children of approximately the same ages and abilities were also tested in order to distinguish changes in skills occurring due to the normal developmental process from those occurring because of the programme, and thus test the validity of the programme. The children's phonological awareness skills were tested pre- and post-programme. From results obtained, the sections of the programme related to syllable segmentation, phoneme segmentation at the word initial position, phoneme segmentation at the word final position, and alliteration were proved to be effective in that a statistically significant difference was found in the performance of the two groups of children those who participated in the programme and the control group. Results related to syllable blending, verbal memory and rhyme were not significantly different. Recommendations were made to improve the content and administration of such sections in order to make it possible for the programme to be carried out in various preschool settings more effectively.