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ABSTRACT

Phonological awareness is a type of phonological processing ability and is considered to be particularly important for early literacy development. Specific phonological awareness skills include syllable-level awareness, onset-rime awareness, and phonemic awareness. The present study aimed to profile the phonological awareness skills in Tamil-English bilingual typically developing children and children with speech sound disorders and also to compare the phonological awareness skills between both groups. The phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST) was administered to 15 typically developing children and 10 children with speech-sound disorders from 6;0-7;0 years and 14 phonological awareness skills were analyzed. The results showed that typically developing children performed better in the concept of word recognition, rhyme recognition, syllable blending, syllable deletion, phoneme isolation of initial sound, phoneme isolation of final sound, and phoneme blending. Children with speech sound disorders performed better in the concept of spoken word, rhyme recognition, and syllable segmentation skills. Comparison of these skills between typically developing children and children with speech sound disorder indicated that both groups had no significant differences in word segmentation, syllable segmentation, and rhyme recognition skills. Phoneme segmentation, deletion, and substitution skills were significantly different in both groups. Overall, a developmental trend was observed in a sequence from rhyme to syllable awareness followed by phoneme awareness in both groups.

Keywords: Phonological awareness, speech sound disorder, typically developing children, Tamil-English bilingual