Phonological awareness and speech perception: Skills of Grade 1 English second language learners

Abstract

BACKGROUND : Literacy achievement of learners is a concern in many developing countries, \nparticularly for English second language (EL2) learners with inadequate language development. \nIt is important to investigate foundational phonological awareness (PA), as well as speech \nperception skills to guide the development of effective intervention for EL2 learners to facilitate \noptimal literacy acquisition. \nOBJECTIVES : The study aimed to describe the PA and speech perception in noise skills of South \nAfrican Grade 1, EL2 participants, learning in an English first language (EL1) context, to \ninform evidence-based support during literacy acquisition for EL2 learners. \nMETHOD : A cross-sectional, descriptive design was employed. Twenty-five EL1 participants \nprovided normative results for the Phonological Awareness Test – 2 and South African English \nDigits-in-Noise Test, enabling between-group comparisons with 25 matched EL2 participants \nfor quantitative data analysis. Demographic and background information was obtained using \nparental questionnaires. \nRESULTS : The EL2 learners presented with PA skills below those of EL1 learners in all subtests. \nThough the speech perception in noise skills of EL2 learners were within the normative range \nfor their age, their skills are also lower in comparison to EL1 learners. \nCONCLUSION : The findings support the inclusion of explicit PA instruction for rhyming, \nsegmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution, and blending for EL2 literacy acquisition. \nDeveloping speech perception in noise skills is necessary to facilitate PA and phonemegrapheme \nknowledge. This can enable decoding for early EL2 literacy acquisition.