The Role of Phonological Awareness in Korean Elementary

29

어교육 64권 2호 2009년 여름

The Role of Phonological Awareness in Korean Elementary EFL Learners’ Word Reading

Yusun Kang

(Korea University)

Kang, Yusun. (2009). The role of phonological awareness in Korean elementary

EFL learners’ word reading. English Teaching, 64(2), 29-45.

This study examined the relationship between phonological awareness in the two

languages of Korean elementary EFL learners and its predictive role in word decoding

skills in English. 113 4th grade students enrolled in a Korean public elementary school

were tested on a range of phonological awareness and emergent literacy skills measures,

including word and pseudoword reading and English vocabulary knowledge. The

findings indicate that their English phonological awareness was a significant predictor

for their word reading skills, when controlling for the effects of outside-school English-

learning factors, and that their Korean phonological awareness significantly explained

their English reading abilities over and above their English phonological awareness. The

results are discussed in terms of implications for phonological awareness training and

phonics instruction.

I. INTRODUCTION

Through constant research effort in the last two decades, it is well established by now

that both monolingual and bilingual children’s early decoding skill is an important

precursor to their later reading success and that their phonological awareness (PA) is a

crucial factor that explains early decoding skills and later reading abilities (Snow, Burns, &

Griffin, 1999). Research with bilingual children and second language (L2) learners has

demonstrated that in general, PA in one language is not only related to PA in the other

language, but is also associated with reading abilities across languages. However, since

most studies with bilinguals focused on bilingual children in second language contexts,

little is known about whether such cross-language influence of PA on L2 reading occurs

for children learning an L2 in a foreign language context, as is the case for Korean children

Yusun Kang

30

learning English as a foreign language through formal schooling. Thus, this study aims to

examine Korean elementary EFL learners’ early reading skills and investigate whether

their PA in either language is related to their English word reading abilities. Such analyses

will provide much needed insights about early English literacy instruction for Korean EFL

learners.

II. BACKGROUND

Phonological awareness (PA) is an understanding that words are made up of different

sounds and is often reflected in one’s ability to manipulate or segment different sound

units of the words, such as syllable, phoneme and rhyme. Past research in reading

development has continuously shown that PA is a significant predictor of children’s early

reading acquisition in diverse languages (Adams, 1990; Bryant, MacLean., & Bradley,

1990; Cronin & Carver, 1998; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; MacLean, Bryant, & Bradley,

1987; Stanovich, 1992; Stanovich & Siegel, 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 2001; Wagner et

al., 1997). For example, previous studies with English-acquiring children have shown that

lower level phonological skills such as syllable and onset- rhyme awareness are almost

prerequisites of reading development (Goswami & Mead, 1992). Also, PA turned out to be

a powerful predictor of both speed and efficiency of overall reading acquisition (Share,

Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews, 1984). In general, studies that examine the relationship

between PA and reading development in monolingual children have identified varying

levels of predictive power of PA in different phonological units on reading, and have

highlighted PA to be the strongest and the most reliable predictor of decoding ability

(Bowers, 1995; Bowers & Wolf, 1993; Mann, 1984; Wagner et al., 1994).

Studies which examined the PA skills of Korean native speaking monolingual children

have shown that body-coda units are the most basic and salient features of the Korean

language (Cho & McBride-Chang, 2005; Kim, 2007; Yi, 1998; Yoon et al., 2002), a

phenomenon that is distinct from what has been observed with children acquiring other

languages. In other words, language-specific properties of PA development are identified.

More specifically, body-coda structure with consonant-vowel-consonant [CV-C], e.g.,

go-m) is a more salient subsyllabic structure than onset- rhyme (C-VC, e.g., g-om) for

Korean native speakers, while the contrary is true for English native speakers. Despite the

L1-specific sensitivity to a particular phonological unit that is not often recognized in other

languages, the facilitative role of PA for reading abilities was identified with Korean

children. For example, in relation to the word reading abilities of Korean children, Yoon

and her colleagues (2002) showed that Korean children might use an analogy of the body

unit in pseudoword reading. Similarly, Kim (2007) analyzed Korean monolingual early


31

readers’ PA skills in relation to their word reading skills and found that children’s

body-coda awareness is an important predictor of word decoding and spelling in learning

the Korean language. Thus the significant relationship between PA and reading skills is

present in Korean-acquiring monolingual children as well.

There has been a growing interest in the PA skills of bilingual children and L2 learners

as well (Loizou & Stuart, 2003). Such studies have shown that PA in one language is

significantly related to, and in most cases is the strongest predictor of reading abilities in

bilingual children (Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Durgunoğlu, 2002;

Durgunoğlu, Nagy, Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Geva & Wang, 2001; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel., &

Wade-Wooley, 2001; Lindsey et al., 2003). For example, Comeau and his colleagues

(1999) investigated English-French bilingual children’s PA and reading abilities and

revealed the presence of a cross-language transfer of phonological processing skills and

reading performance. Specifically, they showed that PA skills in children’s L1 transferred

to their L2 reading, thus supporting the hypothesis that phonological processing skills

transfer across languages and across tasks. Similarly, Branum-Martin and his colleagues

(2006) showed that English and Spanish PA variables were related to each other and to

word reading, both within and across languages for Spanish-English bilingual

kindergarteners. Lafrance and Gottardo (2005) also showed that French-English bilingual

children’s PA skills in both French and English were uniquely predictive of reading

abilities in the two languages, after controlling for the influences of children’s cognitive

ability, emergent literacy skills and language abilities.

However, these studies that provided evidence for the transfer of PA and word reading

skills in two languages have mostly compared languages that are both alphabetic, sharing

the same Roman alphabets, such as English and Spanish, and English and French. Thus,

not as much is known about the relationship between L1 and/or L2 PA and L2 reading

competence of bilinguals or L2 learners who are acquiring phonologically and

orthographically distinct two languages, such as Korean-English bilinguals or Korean

English learners. The few studies that did explore the potential effects of the degree of

similarities between the two languages that are being acquired have revealed mixed

findings: There has been a finding that Chinese PA was a significant predictor for English

reading beyond the variance accounted for by English PA for Cantonese-English bilingual

children (Gottardo, Yan, Siegel., & Wade-Wooley, 2001). On the other hand, some

researchers showed that such cross-language and cross-task transfer was observed only in

bilinguals acquiring two languages that share the same writing system (Bialystok, Luk., &

Kwan, 2005).

Although relatively less attention has been paid to the facilitative role of PA for early

reading skills in Korean-English bilinguals or Korean English learners, the few existing

studies are in agreement regarding the presence of significant relationship between PA and

Yusun Kang

32

reading competence within and across the two languages (Cho & Lee, 2004; Cho &

McBride-Chang, 2005; Han & Lee, 2003; Wang et al., 2006). Cho and McBride-Chang

(2005), for example, investigated how Korean native speaking children’s phonological

processing abilities relate to their reading skills in English. They examined associations

between PA and word reading in Korean and English in a one-year longitudinal study of

second grade Korean EFL learners in Korea. They found significant correlations among

the PA measures in two languages and also showed that the most powerful predictors of

English word recognition were the ages of children in the second grade and phoneme

awareness in English. Similarly, Wang and her colleagues (2006) examined the relationship

between PA and orthographic skills in first and second grade Korean-English bilingual

children in terms of their reading ability in the two languages. In addition to the significant

correlations between L1 and L2 PA skills, they found that children’s Korean phonological

skill was a significant predictor for English reading. Furthermore, they argued for a

cross-language PA transfer across languages that are typologically very different.

However, both studies described above did not control for the influences of the Korean

participants’ overall English oral language proficiency, which may play an important role

in their phonological processing and literacy task performance as documented in other

research with English-speaking children (Chaney, 1992; Goswami, 2001; Metsala, 1999;

Metsala & Walley, 1998). In addition, as a large number of Korean students receive

English exposure or instruction outside school, relying on tutoring and private language

institutions, such factors need to be taken into consideration in order to provide an accurate

picture of the role of L1 and L2 PA in their L2 early reading abilities.

Thus, the present study attempts to understand the relationship between PA in the two

languages in Korean elementary EFL learners and investigate whether the facilitative role

of L1 and L2 PA in L2 reading skill is still present when their English proficiency and

informal English-learning experiences are accounted for.

III. METHOD

1. Participants

The participants were 113 (66 boys and 47 girls) Korean fourth graders attending a local

public elementary school in Seoul, Korea. They were recruited from four different fourth

grade classrooms, and every student in those four classrooms participated in the study, in

order to ensure representation of diverse English-learning backgrounds within the whole

student body. The fourth graders in this study had been learning English at school through

TETE (Teaching English Through English) approach from the third grade.


33

2. Measures

The measures administered in this study included PA tasks, word- and pseudoword

reading, oral language comprehension measured by a listening comprehension test, and

receptive vocabulary in English. Their Korean PA in four different phonological units was

also assessed in order to investigate whether L1 PA makes any contribution to their L2

reading.

1) Phonological awareness tasks

Phoneme matching task of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Wagner

et al., 1999) and rhyme matching task of PAL-RW (Beringer, 2001) were used to assess

children’s English phoneme and rhyme awareness, respectively. For both tests, they were

asked to choose a picture among three different choices, that had the same beginning

sound as the word they heard (phoneme awareness task) and that rhymed with the word

they heard (rhyme awareness task). There were ten items in each task, and each correct

answer scored one point. The maximum possible score was thus ten for the two English PA

tasks. In assessing their Korean PA, they were tested on syllable, rhyme, body-coda, and

phoneme awareness tasks. Since standardized tests for these constructs are not yet

developed in Korean, the PA test battery developed by Kim (2009) was adapted. The

Cronbach’s alpha for these measures were all above .87. The content and format of these

tests were similar to their English counterparts, as the students were told to choose the odd

word among the three words they heard in the target phonological units. Each of the three

words in the test items were represented by pictures in order to minimize any ambiguities

and to allow them to simply point to their selected choice. Each Korean PA test contained

15 items, with each correct answer scoring one point. Therefore, the maximum possible

score a child could receive on each test was 15.

2) Vocabulary

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Tasks-III (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997) was used to

test students’ receptive vocabulary in English. Students were asked to point to the correct

picture, among the four choices that corresponded to the vocabulary word given. The test

terminated when the student made five consecutive errors. Each correct item was given 1

point.

3) Word reading and Pseudoword reading

Yusun Kang

34

English word- and pseudoword-reading were measured with Word Identification and

Word Attack sections of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised (Woodcock, 1987).

Children were shown one word at a time and were told to read the word aloud as best they

could. The tests contained 50 items for the word reading and 40 items for the pseudoword

reading tasks, and each correct answer scored one point. The test was stopped when the

students gave incorrect responses for five consecutive words.

4) Oral language comprehension

In order to measure students’ overall comprehension of English, their scores on the

listening comprehension test that was administered school-wide was used. There were total

50 items on the test, and it was a typical listening comprehension test containing a range of

items including those that assess students’ microskills such as distinguishing different

sounds and word meanings to those that test more macro-level oral skills such as choosing

sociolinguistically and culturally appropriate responses in the given situations and

comprehending conversations in extended discourse. Each correct answer scored one

point.

3. Procedure

All testing took place in a separate classroom in the school. Students were tested

individually on the range of measures. In addition to the tests that were administered, the

students were also interviewed by trained researchers to collect information about their

English-learning backgrounds. In particular, they were asked whether they learn English

outside school, from whom and for how many hours per week, whether they learned

English outside school in the past or before entering elementary school, from whom and

for how many hours per week for how many months, whether they have been to

English-speaking countries and for how long, how many books they read in English per

week on their own, at what age they started to get constant exposure to English, and so on.

Their responses to the interview questions were used as control variables in the later

analyses.

After first observing the overall relationships among the measures, in the subsequent

regression analyses, students’ performance on the English word- and pseudo-word reading

tasks served as the dependent variables, and their PA scores on different phonological units

in the two languages acted as the main question variables, as this study was designed

specifically to explore the relationship between PA in L1 and L2 and L2 reading skills. The

other measures, including children’s English vocabulary knowledge, English oral

comprehension abilities, and other background variables such as the amount of time they


35

study English outside school and duration of oversea stay in an English-speaking country

served as the control variables, to examine the predictive power of PA beyond the effects

of those variables.

IV. RESULTS

As Table 1 shows, the participants in this study, on average, were studying English

outside school through tutoring or enrollment in private language institutions for about 3.5

hours per week. The standard deviation was as big as the mean, indicating a wide range

of such experiences and opportunities among the students. Similarly, the range of overseas

experiences in English-speaking countries was quite large, ranging from no experience to

four years of oversea stay. On average, students had about one-month experience abroad

where they were exposed to English, but the standard deviation which was nearly five

times bigger than the mean reflects the huge gap among the students in terms of overseas

experiences. The look at the means and standard deviations in the amount of time the

participants spend for outside-school English-learning and overseas experiences further

highlights the need to use these factors as control variables to account for the differences in

the amount of exposure to English in identifying the relationship between PA and early

reading skills in English.

TABLE 1 Means and Standard Deviations of Background and Literacy Variables

Min Max Mean SD

Duration of Oversea Stay (months) 0 48 1.23 5.60

Hours Studying English Outside School (hrs/wk) 0 14 3.52 3.19

English Listening Comprehension 27 50 44.94 4.28

English Phonological Awareness

English Rhyme Awareness 1 10 8.03 2.29

English Phoneme Awareness 0 10 8.25 2.51

Korean Phonological Awareness

Korean Syllable Awareness 1 15 13.51 3.19

Korean Body-Coda Awareness 0 15 13.43 2.84

Korean Rhyme Awareness 2 15 11.89 2.47

Korean Phoneme Awareness 0 15 12.54 3.43

English Word Reading 6 50 43.75 9.56

English Pseudoword Reading 1 40 24.27 10.51

In addition, the Korean EFL fourth grade students in this study, on average, performed

well on the range of English and Korean emergent literacy measures examined, getting

Yusun Kang

36

more than 70% of the test items correct on each PA task. Although the minimum scores on

each task indicate that there were students who were not yet reading in English or have PA

in English and/or Korean, most students seemed to have quite a good grasp of oral

comprehension in English as reflected in their listening comprehension performance.

Interesting to note is that it was not only English PA students had difficulty with, as the

minimum scores of Korean PA were equally quite low, suggesting that PA is not only

related to language proficiency but to metalinguistic awareness in general (Chaney, 1992).

There was also a great variance in the students’ ability to correctly decode words. As

hypothesized, students seemed to have more difficulties with pseudoword reading task, as

they could not rely on their knowledge of sight words or memory. This corroborates

previous claims that pseudoword reading is a better and more accurate reflection of

decoding skills than word reading tasks (Oller et al., 1998). In order to examine any potential associations among the language and literacy

measures within each language and also across the two languages, correlation analysis was

conducted. As can be seen from Table 2, the duration of stay in English-speaking countries

was only significantly correlated with students’ English oral comprehension ability (r=.22,

p<.01), measured by an English listening comprehension test, and their pseudoword

reading ability (r=.22, p<.01). It did not show any significant relation with students’ PA in

either language. Likewise, the amount of time they devoted in studying English outside

school had significant relationship with English vocabulary only (r=.30, p<.001), and was

not correlated to PA in either language or English reading skills. Further, the number of

English books they read was not related to their emergent literacy skills measured in this

study and was only marginally related to their receptive vocabulary knowledge in English.

On the other hand, the size of their English vocabulary knowledge was not significantly

related to their PA, although it did reveal a significant relationship with their English word

(r=.29, p<.001) and pseudoword reading abilities (r=.45, p<.001). Thus, the more English

words students knew, the better they were at decoding English. This contradicts previous

studies that found close relationship between vocabulary knowledge and PA in

English-speaking children. In fact, most studies with English-speaking children have

shown that vocabulary knowledge is one of the strongest predictor of their PA (Goswami,

2001; Metsala, 1999; Metsala & Walley, 1998). Goswami (2001) attributed the

relationship between vocabulary and PA to lexical restructuring processes. That is, as

children pick up more and more words, they are required to distinguish similar-sounding

words and re-represent their phonological segmentations in order to differentiate them.

This lexical restructuring process further promotes children’s PA, as it requires them to

attend to smaller sound segments in words. Thus, PA is strengthened through oral

vocabulary growth. Since there has been little attention paid to the role of vocabulary

knowledge in PA development of L2 learners or bilinguals, it is difficult to explain such


37

TABLE 2 Correlations among Phonological Awareness and Other Emergent Literacy Measures

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Time Spent on Studying

English (Hrs/Week)

1

2. Oversea Stay -0.03 1

3. # of English Books Read 0.18~ 0.2* 1

4. English Vocabulary 0.08 0.3*** 0.19~ 1

5. English Rhyme Awareness 0.14 0.17~ 0.11 0.22 1

6. English Phoneme Awareness 0.17~ 0.13 0.12 0.08 0.43*** 1

7. Korean Syllable Awareness 0.03 0.08 0.08 0.19 0.17~ 0.22*

8. Korean Body Awareness 0.05 0.09 0.02 0.11 0.31*** 0.32***

9. Korean Rhyme Awareness 0.01 -0.02 -0.05 0.23 0.12 0.03

10. Korean Phoneme Awareness -0.09 0 0.04 0.15 0.27*** 0.08

11. English Listening

Comprehension

0.22* 0.15 0.04 0.35*** 0.36*** 0.15

12. English Word Reading 0.3 -0.01 0.13 0.29*** 0.49*** 0.27*

13. English Pseudoword

Reading

0.22* 0.02 0.19~ 0.45*** 0.38*** 0.16

7 8 9 10 11 12

1. Time Spent on Studying

English (Hrs/Week)

2. Oversea Stay

3. # of English Books Read

4. English Vocabulary

5. English Rhyme Awareness

6. English Phoneme Awareness

7. Korean Syllable Awareness 1

8. Korean Body Awareness 0.22* 1

9. Korean Rhyme Awareness 0.32*** 0.17~ 1

10. Korean Phoneme Awareness 0.21* 0.09 0.34*** 1

11. English Listening

Comprehension

0.19~ 0.17~ 0.2~ 0.18~ 1

12. English Word Reading 0 0.25* -0.01 0.13 0.46*** 1

13. English Pseudoword

Reading

-0.03 0.19~ 0.04 0.23* 0.33*** 0.74***

~p<.10 *p<.05 **p<.01 *** p<.001

Yusun Kang

38

absence of relationship between vocabulary knowledge and PA for the participants in this

study. However, it can well be attributed to the foreign language, as opposed to second

language, context in which the students learned English. That is, the relatively less

exposure to the target language and thus fewer opportunities to engage in lexical

restructuring process may explain such lack of facilitative relationship. More research

attention to this phenomenon is in need to provide evidence for this account.

On the whole, the result of the correlation analysis between the control variables and the

PA and reading measures revealed absence of relationship between PA and the control

variables, thus suggesting that PA is not something that is naturally acquired but needs

some explicit training (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Lundberg et al., 1988).

The students’ English PA in the two phonological units (phoneme and rhyme) were

significantly correlated with each other (r=.43, p<.001), and most of the Korean PA pairs

showed significant correlations as well. Although English PA was significantly correlated

to Korean PA, neither English phoneme nor rhyme awareness was related to Korean

rhyme awareness. More interestingly, there was no cross-language transfer for rhyme and

phoneme awareness in English and Korean. This is contradictory to previous studies

(Cisero & Royer, 1995; Branun-Martin et al., 2006; Dickinson et al., 2004; Durgunoğlu,

1998) and suggests students’ unawareness of the possibility of language transfer and

implies for the need of such training at the same time.

In order to examine whether English and Korean PA contribute to students’ English

reading abilities, higherarchical regression analyses were conducted for English word and

pseudoword reading separately. The pseudoword reading reflects students’ ability to

decode words that are novel to them, thus controlling for the effects of sight word reading

or memory effects (Oller et al., 1998). For both word and pseudoword reading, the

duration of students’ stay in English-speaking countries, amount of time they devote in

learning and studying English, the number of books they read in English, their English

vocabulary knowledge, and their listening comprehension skills in English were entered,

in order, as control variables. In both cases, the number of hours they spend for receiving

English tutoring and/or attending private English institutions contributed a significant

amount of variance after controlling for the effects of their studying-abroad experiences,

which did not contribute significantly to their reading skills. The number of English books

they read outside school did not explain additional variance in English reading skills once

their study time and oversea experience were taken into consideration, but their English

vocabulary knowledge contributed unique amount of variance, explaining as much as 6%

and 17% of additional variance for English word and pseudoword reading, respectively.

Thus, when controlling for the effects of out-of-school English-learning experiences,

students’ English vocabulary knowledge was a significant predictor for their reading skills.

Students’ oral comprehension skill in English turned out to predict a significant proportion


39

of variance in English word reading, even after controlling for the effects of the other

control variables, but it was not the case for pseudoword reading. The five control

variables together explained about 28% of the total variance in English word and

pseudoword reading.

TABLE 3

Regression Analysis Predicting English Word and Pseudoword Reading

Steps Variable R R2 ΔR2 ΔF

English Word Reading 1 Oversea Stay (Months) .045 .002 .002 .18

2 Hours Spent on Studying English

(Week) .283 .080 .078 7.56**

3 # of English Books Read per Week .304 .093 .012 1.19

4 English Vocabulary Knowledge .390 .152 .060 6.16*

5 English Listening Comprehension .526 .277 .124 14.78***

6 English Phonological Awareness .602 .362 .085 5.62**

7 Korean Phonological Awareness .671 .450 .088 3.21*

English Pseudoword Reading

1 Oversea Stay (Months) .039 .001 .001 .14

2 Hours Spent on Studying English

(week) .233 .054 .053 4.98*

3 # of English Books Read per Week .291 .085 .030 2.91~

4 English Vocabulary Knowledge .501 .251 .166 19.31***

5 English Listening Comprehension .532 .283 .032 3.81~

6 English Phonological Awareness .567 .321 .039 2.39~

7 Korean Phonological Awareness .633 .400 .079 2.63*

~p<.10 *p<.05 **p<.01 *** p<.001

When the effects of all of these control variables were controlled for, English PA proved

a significant predictor for English word reading, contributing as much as 9% of unique

variance, but only a marginally significant predictor for pseudoword reading. Most

importantly, the participants’ Korean PA predicted a significant amount of variance in

both English word and pseudoword reading over and above all the control variables and

English PA. In other words, the predictive power of Korean PA was over and beyond that

of English PA and other control variables. This is in line with previous studies that

revealed facilitative role of L1 PA in L2 reading for bilinguals acquiring typologically

similar two languages or L2 learners learning L2 in second language contexts (DaFontoura

& Siegel, 1995; Dickinson et al., 2004; Geva, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Schuster, 2000; Lafrance

& Gottardo, 2005; Quiroga et al., 2002). Students’ English and Korean PA, together with

the control variables, accounted for 45% and 40% of the variance in English word and

pseudoword reading, respectively.

Yusun Kang

40

V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This study aimed to investigate the role of L1 and L2 phonological awareness in Korean

EFL elementary students’ English reading skills. The amount of time students received

English exposure and instruction through tutoring and private-institution experiences and

their oral language skills did turn out to be important predictors for their English reading

skills. In general, those students who went through English private tutoring tended to

perform better on English reading tasks. However, most important to note is that their

English PA contributed significantly beyond the effects of those out-of-school factors in

predicting their English reading skills and that their Korean PA was a significant predictor

over and above the effects of English PA. These findings are in accordance with previous

studies with English-speaking bilinguals which revealed cross-language contribution of L1

PA to L2 reading (Gottardo et al., 2001; Shwartz et al., 2005). The findings also strengthen

the cross-language and cross-task relationship between PA and reading competence

observed in Korean English learners (Cho & Lee, 2004; Han & Lee, 2003) by providing

strong evidence that students’ L1 and L2 PA are stronger predictors than their oral

language proficiency or amount of English-schooling. At the same time, the findings have

important implications for English literacy instruction for Korean elementary EFL learners.

It is true that a big proportion of Korean students rely on private tutoring and language

instruction outside schools to promote their English language and literacy skills these days.

This further leads to educational inequalities and a huge gap in English abilities among the

students of even same ages, which creates challenges for the teachers to provide adequate

instruction for all students. However, the findings from this study suggest that given such

huge diversities in English-learning experiences among children, good PA instructions and

training for not only English, but also Korean, will promote students’ reading success in

English, despite the differences in the amount of English exposure students get outside

school. In fact, the effectiveness of PA training on reading development has been

documented in numerous studies (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1983;

Lundberg et al., 1988; Wagner & Rashotte, 1993), including those in the Korean EFL

context (Han & Cha, 2007; Park & Jeong, 2005). In particular, researchers have shown

that higher level skills including phoneme awareness can be developed by early PA

training (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Ehri, 1998).

Previous studies with bilingual children have shown that L1 PA often transfers to L2 PA

tasks, and vice versa (Branum-Martin et al., 2006; Cisero & Royer, 1995; Dickinson et al.,

2004; Durgunoğlu, 1998). Some studies, however, indicated that not all bilinguals transfer

their PA between the two languages. Bialystok, McBride-Chang and Luk (2005), for

example, showed that PA developed in response to language exposure and instruction and

that it transferred across languages only when it is fully established in their language


41

system. Some (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999) claim that ESL/EFL students need explicit

instruction and that PA is transferrable across languages in promoting successful L2

reading. The correlation analysis in this study revealed an absence of significant

relationship between L1 and L2 PA, even for the same phonological units in the two

languages. That is, there was no association between the participants’ phoneme awareness

in English and Korean; nor was there any relationship between their rhyme awareness in

the two languages. This suggests that their metalinguistic awareness, especially that which

requires them to attend to different sound units, is underdeveloped and not yet well

established to allow for a language transfer that can further promote their English reading

skills. At the same time, it calls for the need of explicit instruction on PA.

In order to obtain a more accurate account of Korean EFL learners’ literacy skills in

relation to their PA in the two languages, and to gain more insights into the interplay of

phonological and orthographical differences in the two languages in relation to their

reading abilities, however, a longitudinal study with a bigger sample across different ages

and grade levels is necessary. Nevertheless, this study made an important step forward in

highlighting the significance of L1 metalinguistic awareness for L2 literacy development

and the need to provide explicit PA instruction for Korean elementary EFL learners to

foster their English decoding skills that will play a crucial role in their later reading

comprehension abilities.

References

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press.

Ball, E. W., & Blachman, B.A. (1991). Does phoneme awareness training in kindergarten

make a difference in early word recognition and developmental spelling? Reading

Research Quarterly, 26, 49-66.

Berninger V. (2001). Process Assessment of the Learner Test Battery for Reading and

Writing (PAL-RW). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.

Bialystok, E., Luk, G,, & Kwan, E. (2005). Bilingualism, biliteracy, and learning to read:

Interactions among languages and writing systems. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9,

43-61.

Bialystok, E., McBride-Chang, C., & Luk G. (2005). Bilingualism, language proficiency,

and learning to read in two writing systems. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97,

580-590.

Bowers, P. G.. (1995). Tracing symbol naming speed’s unique contributions to reading

disabilities over time. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 7,

Yusun Kang

42

189-216.

Bowers, P. B., & Wolf, M. (1993). Theoretical links among naming speed, precise timing

mechanisms and orthographic skill in dyslexia. Reading and Writing, 5, 69-85.

Bradley, D., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read – a causal

connection. Nature, 301, 419-421.

Branum-Martin, L., Mehta, P., Fletcher, J. M., Carlson, C. D., Ortiz, A., Carlo, M., &

Francis, D. (2006). Bilingual PA: Multilevel construct validation among

Spanish-speaking kindergarteners in transitional bilingual education classrooms.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 170-181.

Bryant, P. E., MacLean, M., & Bradley, L. (1990). Rhyme, language, and children’s

reading. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 237-252.

Chaney, C. (1992). Language development, metalinguistic skills, and print awareness in

3-year-old children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 13, 485-514.

Cho, J. R., & McBride-Chang, C, (2005). Correlates of Korean Hangul acquisition

among kindergarteners and second graders. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 3-16.

Cho, J. R., & Lee, K.-E. (2004). The role of Korean phonological processing skills in

English word reading and vocabulary knowledge among Korean primary school

children. The Korean Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17, 145-157.

Cisero, C. A., & Royer, J. M. (1995). The development and cross-language transfer of PA.

Contemporary Educational Psychology, 20, 275-303.

Comeau, L., Cormier, O., Grandmaison, E., & Lacroix, D. (1999). A longitudinal study of

phonological processing skills in children learning to read in a second language.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 29-43.

Cronins, V., & Carver, P. (1998). Phonological sensitivity, rapid naming, and beginning

reading. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 446-462.

DaFontoura, H. A., & Siegel, L. S. (1995). Reading, syntactic, and working memory skills

of bilingual Portugese-English Canadian children. Reading and Writing: An

Interdisciplinary Journal, 7, 139-153.

Dickinson, D. K., McCabe, A., Clark-Chiarelli, N., & Wolf, A. (2004). Cross-language

transfer of phonological awareness in low-income Spanish and English bilingual

preschool children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 323-347.

Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, L. M. (1997). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III. Circle Pines,

MN: American Guidance Service.

Durgunoğlu, A.Y. (2002). Cross-linguistic transfer in literacy development and implications for

language learners. Annals of Dyslexia, 52, 189-204.

Durgunoğlu, A.Y. (1998). Acquiring literacy in English and Spanish in the United States.

In A.Y. Durgonoğlu & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Literacy development in a multilingual

context (pp. 135-145). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Durgunoğlu, A.Y., Nagy, W. E., & Hancin-Bhatt, B. J. (1993). Cross-language transfer of


43

PA. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 453-465.

Durgunoğlu, A. Y., & Oney, B. (1999). A cross-linguistic comparison of phonological

awareness and word recognition. Reading and Writing, 11, 281–299.

Ehri, L. C. (1998). Grapheme-phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words

in English. In J.L. Metsala & L.C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning

reading (pp. 3-40). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Geva, E., & Wang, M. (2001). The development of basic reading skills in children: A cross

language perspective. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 182-204.

Geva, E., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Schuster, B. (2000). Understanding individual differences

in word recognition skills of ESL children. Annals of Dyslexia, 50, 123-154.

Goswami, U. (2001). Early phonological development and the acquisition of literacy. In

S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of Early Literacy Research (pp.

111-125). New York: Guilford Press.

Goswami, U., & Bryant, P. (1990). Phonological skills and learning to read. Hove, UK:

Lawrence Erlbaum.

Goswami, U., & Mead, F. (1992). Onset and rhyme awareness and analogies in reading.

Reading Research Quarterly, 27, 153-162.

Gottardo, A., Yan, B., Siegel, L. S., & Wade-Wooley, L. (2001). Factors related to English

reading performance in children with Chinese as a first language: More evidence of

cross language transfer of phonological processing. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 93, 530-542.

Han, C.-S., & Lee, C.-J. (2003). The relationship between Korean children’s phonological

awareness pattern and English words decoding. The Korean Journal of

Developmental Psychology, 16, 259-272.

Han, H.-W., & Cha, K.-A. (2007). The effects of the phonics approach on elementary

school students’ reading competence and affective factors. Primary English

Education, 13, 195-228.

Kim, Y. -S. (2007). PA and literacy skills in Korean: An examination of the unique role of

body-coda units. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 69-94.

Kim, Y. -S. (2009). The relationship between home literacy practices and developmental

trajectories of emergent literacy and conventional literacy skills for Korean children.

Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22, 57-84.

Lafrance, A., & Gottardo, A. (2005). A longitudinal study of phonological processing skills

and reading in bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 559-578.

Lindsey, K. A., Manis, F. R., & Brailey, C. E. (2003). Prediction of first-grade reading in

Spanish-speaking English-language learners. Journal of Educational Psychology,

95, 482-494.

Loizou, M., & Stuart, M. (2003). PA in monolingual and bilingual English and Greek

five-year-olds. Journal of Research in Reading, 26, 3-18.

Yusun Kang

44

Lundberg, I., Frost, J., & Peterson, O. P. (1988). Effects of an extensive program for

simulating phonological awareness in preschool children. Reading Research

Quarterly, 23, 263-284.

MacLean, M., Bryant, P., & Bradley, L. (1987). Rhymes, nursery rhymes, and reading in

early childhood. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 33, 255-282.

Mann, V. (1984). Reading skill and language skill. Developmental review, 4, 1-15.

Metsala, J. L. (1999). Young children’s phonological awareness and non-word repetition as

a function of vocabulary development. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91,

3-19.

Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental

restructuring of lexical representations: Precursors to phonemic awareness and

early reading ability. In J.L. Metsala & L.C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in

beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Oller, D. K., Cobo-Lewis, A. B., & Eilers, R. E. (1998). Phonological translation in

bilingual and monolingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 259-278.

Park, M., & Jeong, M. (2005). Phonological awareness and word reading in an EFL

context: Phoneme-based vs. onset- rhyme -based method. Primary English Education,

11, 1-26.

Quiroga, T., Lemos-Britten, Z., Mostafapour, E., Abbott, R. D., & Berninger, V. W. (2002).

Phonological awareness and beginning reading in Spanish-speaking ESL first

graders: Research into practice. Journal of School Psychology, 40, 85-111.

Share, D., Jorm, A., Maclean, R., & Matthews, R. (1984). Sources of individual

differences in reading acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76,

1309-1324.

Shwartz, M., Leikin, N., & Share, D. (2005). Bi-literate bilingualism versus mono-literate

bilingualism. Written Language & Literacy, 9, 179-206.

Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1999). Preventing reading difficulties in

young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Stanovich, K. E. (1992). Speculations on the causes and consequences of individual

differences in early reading acquisition. In P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri, & R. Treiman

(Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 307-342). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Stanovich, K. E., & Siegel, L. S. (1994). The phenotype performance profile of reading

disabled children: A regression-based test of the phonological core

variable-difference model. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 24-53.

Vellutino, F. R., & Scanlon, D. M. (2001). Emergent literacy skills, early instruction, and

individual differences as determinants of difficulties in learning to read: The case

for early intervention. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of research

on early literacy (pp. 295-321). New York: Guilford Press.

Wagner, R. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1993, April). Does phonological awareness training


45

really work? A meta-analysis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the

American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA.

Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., Rashotte, C. A., Hecht, S. A., Barker, T. A., Burgess, S. R.

(1997). Changing relations between phonological processing abilities and

word-level reading as children develop from beginning to skilled readers: A 5-year

longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 33, 468-479.

Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1994). Development of reading-related

phonological processing abilities: New evidence of bidirectional causality from a

latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 30, 73-87.

Wagner, R.K., Torgesen, J. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1999). Comprehensive test of

phonological processing (CTOPP). Austin, TX: PRO-ED.

Wang, M., Park, Y., & Lee, K. R. (2006). Korean-English biliteracy acquisition:

Cross-language phonological and orthographic transfer. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 98, 148-158.

Woodcock, R. W. (1987). Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised. Circle Pines, MN:

American Guidance Service.

Yi, K. –O. (1998). The internal structure of the syllable in Korean: Onset- rhyme or

body-coda? Korean Journal of Experimental Cognitive Psychology, 10, 67-83.

Yoon, H. K., Bolger, D. J., Kwon, O. S., & Perfetti, C. A. (2002). Subsyllabic units in

reading. In L. Verhoeven, C. Elbro, & P. Reitsma (Eds.), Precursors of functional

literacy (Volume 11, pp. 139-163). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Applicable levels: Elementary Key words: phonological awareness, reading (decoding), Korean EFL learners

Yusun Kang Department of English Language Education Korea University SungBuk-Ku Anam-Dong 5-ka Seoul, Korea 136-701 Tel: (02) 3290-2354 Email: [email protected] Received in March 2009 Reviewed in April 2009 Revised version received in May 2009

Documents

The Role of Phonological Awareness in Korean Elementary