Is there an association between phonemic awareness and the reading ability of adolescents at secondary elementary school?Purpose To ascertain the performance of adolescent’s phonemic awareness and corroborate the association between this skill and reading.
Methods Eighty-three adolescents participated in the study consisting of 58 girls and 25 boys aged between 11 and 16 years of age all being enrolled in the 6th to 9th grades of secondary elementary school in two public schools in Belo Horizonte. Phonemic awareness tests and word and pseudoword reading test were carried out.
Results Adolescents had difficulty in performing the phonemic segmentation task, on the other hand when performing the CVC subtraction and inversion tasks there was a ceiling effect. A positive correlation was found between the phonemic awareness tasks and the reading of words and pseudowords.
Conclusion This study concluded that the development of phonological awareness is still necessary in adolescence, i.e. the development of this skill contributes significantly to good reading performance at secondary elementary school level.
Keywords:
Language; Language Tests; Reading; Adolescent; Language and Hearing Sciences