Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15516/cje.v21i4.3130
Phonological Awareness and Letter Knowledge: Indicators of Early Literacy in Croatian
Jelena Kuvač -Kraljević
orcid.org/0000-0003-1452-0851
; Department of Speech and Language Pathology Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation SciencesUniversity of ZagrebBorongajska cesta 83F10 000 Zagreb
Mirjana Lenček
; Department of Speech and Language Pathology Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation SciencesUniversity of ZagrebBorongajska cesta 83F10 000 Zagreb
Krunoslav Matešić
orcid.org/0000-0003-3568-2892
; Department of Psychology Catholic University of CroatiaIlica 242, Zagreb
Abstract
In this paper, the relationship between phonological awareness and letter knowledge
and their inherent structures in the period of early literacy are examined. In this crosssectional
study involving 746 children, factor analysis was performed one year before
children began formal education, in order to define the latent variables that underlie
manifest variables of phonological awareness and letter knowledge in Croatian, a
language with transparent orthography. The results suggest that rhyme is equally
distributed across both syllabic and phonemic awareness. The results also confirm
a correlation between letter knowledge and phonological awareness, and phonemic
awareness in particular. The analysis identified two factors related to letter knowledge,
in which upper- and lowercase letters demonstrated partially different distributions
between the two factors. These findings have implications for educational policy in
the area of early literacy, especially in the development of preschool curricula and
language intervention programs
Keywords
education policy; phonemic awareness; preschool curricula; rhyme; transparent orthography
Hrčak ID:
235898
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2019.
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