Reading comprehension Home Exercise- 05, PASSAGE C

Studies of the factors governing reading development in young children have achieved a remarkable degree of consensus over the past two decades. This consensus concerns the causal role of phonological skills in young children as reading progresses. Children who have good spellers. Children with poor phonological skills progress more poorly. In particular, those who have a specific phonological deficit are likely to be classified as dyslexic by the time that they are 9 or 10 years old.

Phonological skills in young children can be measured at a number of different levels. The term phonological awareness is a global one, and refers to a deficit in recognizing smaller units of sound within spoken within spoken words. Development work has shown that this deficit can be at the level of syllables, of onsets and rimes, or of phonemes. For example, a 4- ears old child might have difficulty in recognizing tat a word like valentine has three syllables, suggesting the lack of syllabic awareness. A 5-year old child might have difficulty is recognizing that the odd word out in set of words fan, cat, hat, mat is fan. This task requires an awareness of the sub-syllabic units of the onset and the rime. The onset corresponds to any initial consonants in a syllable, and the rime corresponds to the vowel and to any following consonants. Rimes correspond to rhyme in single- syllable words, and so the rime in fan differs from the rime in cat, hat and mat. In longer words, rime and rhyme may differ. The onsets in Val; en; tine are / v and/ t/ and the rimes correspond to the spelling patterns.

A 6-year old might have difficulty I recognizing that plea and pray begin with the same initial sound. This is phonemic judgment. Although the initial phoneme / p/ is shared between the two words, in plea it is part of the onset pli and in pray it is part of the onset pri. Until children can segment the onset (or the rime), such phonemic judgments are difficult for them to make. In fact, a recent survey of different developmental studies has shown that the different levels of phonological awareness appear to emerge sequentially. The awareness of syllables, onsets and rimes appears to emerge at around the ages of 3 and 4, long before most children go to school. The awareness of phonemes, on the other hand usually emerges at around the age of 5 or 6, when children have been taught to read for about a year. An awareness of onsets and rimes thus appears to be a precursor of reading whereas an awareness of phonemes at very serial position in a word only appears to develop as reading is taught. The onset-rime and phonemic levels of phonological structure, however, are not distinct. Many onset in English are single phonemes, and so are some rimes (e.g., sea, go, zoo).

The early availability of onsets and rimes is supported by studies that have compared the development of phonological awareness of onsets, rimes and phonemes in the same subjects using the same phonological awareness tasks. For example, a study by treiman and Zudowski used as same- different judgment task based on the beginning or the end sounds of words , in the beginning sound task, the words either began with the same onset , as in plea and plank, or shared only the initial phoneme, as in plea and pray. In the end- sound task, the words either shared the entire rime, as in spit and wit, or shared only the final phoneme, as in rat and wit. Treiman and Zudowski showed that 4 and 5- year old children found the onset-rime version of the same/ different task significantly easier than the version based on phonemes. Only the 6 year olds, who had been learning to read for about a year, were able to perform both versions of the tasks with an equal level of success.

12.   What is the purpose of the writer behind writing this passage?

A.      To analyze the phonological awareness and its levels in children that can affect their reading process.

B.      To introspect deep into the psychology of a child and find out the capabilities of 3 to 6 year olds.

C.      To trace the skills of a child to recognize different words of a language.

D.      To compare the development of reading skills amongst children in good and poor readers.

13.   Which of the following statements is supported by the passage?

A.      A child’s ability of reading is independent of his phonological skills.

B.      Syllables, onsets, rimes and phonemes are the smaller components of sound from which words are formed.

C.      The development of phonological awareness is independent of factors like age.

D.      Phonological awareness adds to the ability of clear speech of a child.

Answer and Explanations

 

12.        A     Option A is the best option as in the passage the writer explains the meaning of phonological awareness, and the level of phonological skills in children. The writer solves this purpose with the help of examples of different words with smaller units of sound, representing some relation in either of onset, rime, phonemes or syllables. Option B is rejected since the passage is not about child psychology and thus the purpose of the writer is surely not to examine it. Option C is also rejected, since the passage does not explain larger words, but small words with small units of sound. Option D is also wrong, as the passage does not compare reading skills. This is only mentioned in the first paragraph of the passage in relation to phonological awareness.

13.   B         Option A is false since in the beginning of the passage, the writer says that children with good phonological skills become better readers, thus we cannot say that reading ability is independent of phonological skills. Option C is also wrong since the passage explains how different levels of phonological awareness develop sequentially, by taking examples of ages from 4 to 6. Thus, it is not independent of age. Option D is rejected since the passage does not explain speech defects and development. Thus, it does not explain if phonological awareness adds or does not add to the clarity in speech of a child. Option B is the correct answer option since it is mentioned in the second paragraph while explaining the meaning of phonological awareness.