Kindergartners' Reading of Words in Hangul : Effects of Phonological Awareness and Processing

음운론적 인식과 처리능력이 4-6세 유아의 한글 단어 읽기에 미치는 영향

Causal relationships of kindergarteners' phonological awareness and processing to their ability to read words was investigated with the participation of 289 4- to 6-year-old children attending three kindergartens in Busan. Results showed gradual growth in reading ability with age. Children performed best in reading words and poorest in reading low frequency letters. They showed continuous development in skills of syllable deletion, phoneme substitution, phoneme insertion, phonological memory and naming. Discontinuous development was found in counting syllables. Longer syllables were difficult to count, and middle syllables of 3 syllable words were hard to delete. Children had poor perception of final consonants of Consonant-Vowel-Consonant syllables. Children's phonological awareness and processing were latent variables strongly related to ability to read words written in Hangul.