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Stephens, Shaun

Communication Sciences

2004

M.S.

There is a significant positive correlation between preliterate children's knowledge of nursery rhymes and their later acquisition of phonological awareness. The correlation remains significant even after controlling for other predictors of literacy, suggesting a causal relationship between knowledge of nursery rhymes among pre literate children and later enhanced phonological awareness. This study reports an experiment (N=29 participants) in which a treatment group of (n=14) kindergarten children with speech or language deficits were exposed to a home- and school-based indirect intervention exposing them to nursery rhymes. Their scores on two measures of phonological awareness were compared with a control group (n=15) to determine whether the intervention is associated with improved phonological awareness. Overall comparison between treatment and control groups did not yield significant results. Nearly significant improvements in one aspect of phonological awareness were obtained when comparing the children who learned the nursery rhymes to those who did not.