• Aarti P. Waknis

  Author

• Tabitha Virginia Chintala

  Author

• Dr. C. S. Vanaja

  Author

Phonological awareness has been considered to be a pre requisite for development of reading in
alphabetic languages like English, at least in the preschool period and found to facilitate
reading in the school age.
Aim: To study the effect of gender and age on the development of phonological awareness skills
in English in typically developing children with mother tongue Marathi and English as a medium
of instruction in school in the age range of 5 to 7 years at 4 levels of phonological awareness i.e:
Word level, Syllable level, Rhyme level and Phoneme level.
Method: A tool for assessment of phonological awareness (Chintala, 2014) consisting of 25 tasks
with 6 items each at the four levels of phonological awareness was used. 60 Marathi speaking
children studying in Sr KG (>5<6 yrs) and Std 1st (>6<7 yrs) English medium school
participated in the study.
Results: The development trend found in the children is almost similar to the development
reported in the West, but not the same. Differences are found with respect to the age of
acquisition of the tasks at different levels.
Conclusion: The assessment of phonological awareness skills in English, in Marathi speaking
children in the age range of 5 to 7 years is different than reported in the West and hence use of
separate norms for the Indian children in recommended.

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