Discuss the Extent That Weak Phonological Representations Can Explain Children's Reading Difficulties

Phonological awareness, or phonological sensitivity, refers to a person’s ability to consciously recognise and process specific noises within words. Phonological awareness is considered an explicit phonological processing skill, while implicit phonological skills refer to a person’s automatic phonological processes, for example when a person repeats verbal information registered in an earlier conversation. Phonological awareness can be measured by testing a child’s ability to recognise syllables, onsets & rimes, and phonemes within words presented to them.

There are strong relationships and positive correlations to be found when monitoring phonological awareness and its’ effect on reading skill, and it is important to test this relationship in order to establish a determining factor between the two.

Dyslexia is the demonstration of poor reading skills by a person that is expected to have a higher reading skill level when the level of learning of this person is taken into consideration. The phonological deficit theory proposes that phonological problems present prior to a child learning to read can cause reading problems later in life; so this theory claims that reading difficulties are a direct result of a lack of phonological proficiency. Bradley and Bryant’s study (1978) monitored phonological awareness between 12 year-old dyslexic children and a group of 8 year old children with a matched reading level. It did this comparing each group’s ability to recognise a word in a four word sequence that did not rhyme with the other three, and also by tasking the children with finding words to rhyme with a target word. The study found that children with dyslexia did not perform as well as the reading-age match group, as expected, and studies replicating the conditions of this study have since found similar results in both dyslexic children and adults when compared to a reading-age matched group.

An integral part of phonological awareness