Performance in phonological awareness and writing errors of children under different literacy methods

Abstract

Purpose: to evaluate the phonological awareness and writing abilities of children exposed to different literacy methods. Methods: The sample consisted of 29 children (9 were literate by the Phonic Method and 20 were literate by the Syllabic Method), with ages between 7:0 and 8:0 years, without gender equation. The children were enrolled in the 2nd year of elementary school, and had attended previous classes in the same school, had not had any speech therapy intervention, and had no detectable cognitive, psychological or emotional changes. All the children were submitted to the phonological awareness assessment of the Phonological Awareness Test and the evaluation of the writing through the Orthographic Observation Guide. The hits and errors were tabulated considering the specifications of each of the tests. Subsequently the data were submitted to descriptive statistical analysis and Mann Whitney test. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in any of the aspects analyzed, although it was observed a better performance of the children of the Syllabic Group in most tasks of the phonological awareness test, except for the tests of syllabic synthesis and syllabic manipulation. In these two tests, there were more occurrences of errors and identical results, respectively. As for the results obtained in the writing evaluation, the groups presented similar results. Conclusion: in the present study, the Syllabic Group presented superior performance in most of the phonological awareness activities, and a lower average of orthographic errors per child in the evaluation of writing errors