Students performance with and without learning difficulties in the 4th year of elementary school in phonological awareness tasks

Abstract

Objective: to know the performance of students of elementary school in phonological awareness tasks and check for the difference between the performance of students with learning disabilities compared to students without learning disabilities. Methods: it was applied the test of phonological awareness with 35 students from the 4th grade of elementary school, 23 without learning disabilities and 12 with learning disabilities. After performing the test of phonological awareness with all students, the data were analyzed by statistical test “binomial” (ratios) using Bioestat 5.0. Results: It was observed statistically significant difference between the groups in rhyme subtests, alliteration, phoneme segmentation, syllabic manipulation, phonemic and phonemic transposition manipulation, and the group with learning difficulties presented a lower performance in those subtests. Conclusion: The difference in results between the two groups was higher in subtests of phonemic skills. The phonemic awareness has great influence on the development of decoding system, essential in the learning of reading and writing, it is worth highlighting the importance of its stimulation on school age.