exploring english and spanish rhyme awareness and beginning sound segmentation skills in prekindergarten spanish-speaking english learners精品.pdfVIP

Read Writ DOI 10.1007/s11145-016-9696-y Exploring English and Spanish rhyme awareness and beginning sound segmentation skills in prekindergarten Spanish-speaking English Learners 1 1 • • ´ ´ Laura B. Raynolds Angela Lopez-Velasquez ´ 1 Laura E. Olivo Valentın Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 Abstract Twenty-five 4- and 5-year-old Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) were tested in order to compare their English and Spanish performance in two phonological awareness skills: Rhyme awareness (RA) and beginning sound segmen- tation (BSS). The children had received formal instruction of phonological awareness, with an emphasis on RA and BSS for 1 year and in English only, using the Opening the World of Learning curriculum (Schickedanz Dickinson, 2005). The results showed that the children scored higher on the English BSS than on the English RA tests (p \.001), even though RA is generally considered to be an earlier developing skill than BSS among English-monolingual children. No significant difference was found between the English BSS and Spanish BSS tests despite the fact that the children had received English-only instruction in these phonological awareness skills for 1 year. The results are discussed in terms of the possible impact of the similarities and differences between the Spanish and English linguistic structures on the learning and cross-lin- guistic transfer of phonological awareness skills in young Spanish-speaking ELs. Keywords Spanish-speaking English Learners Prekindergarten Phonological awareness Rhyme awareness Beginning sound segmentation English-only instruction Introduction Over the last 40 years, letter identification and phonologi