Number, Minimum, Maximum, Means and Standard Deviations of All Phoneme Awareness Measures,
Age, Language Background and Reading Stage Values
Note. LANG = language background rating; MANNE
= English Mann Phoneme Segmentation Test; MANNS = Spanish adaptation of Mann Phoneme
Segmentation Test; PPVTE = English Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; PPVTS = Spanish
adaptation of Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; RESTAGE = reading stage rating; WORDATTK =
Woodcock Word Attack nonsense word decoding subtest in English; WORDID = Woodcock Word
Identification subtest in English; YSENG = English Yopp-Singer Phoneme Segmentation Test;
YSSPAN = Spanish Yopp-Singer Phoneme Segmentation Test.
The Analysis of variance showed a
significant effect for reading group, F (3,39) = 9.182, p < .0001. Figure 1
shows mean performance on the phoneme awareness tests as a function of reading
stage. Overall, the children who differed in the reading ability did differ in level
of performance on the phoneme awareness tasks. There was a significant difference
for reading group and the Mann English test, F (3,48) = 6.932, p < .001 as well as for
the Spanish version, F (3,48) = 5.147, p < .004. Significant differences were also
found for the Yopp-Singer tests, English, F (3,48) = 9.267, p < .0001, and Spanish, F
(3,48) = 7.913, p < .0001. This replicates previous studies' results that showed
that phoneme awareness is highly related to reading ability. No other significant
differences were found for reading stage and any other variable.
Mean scores on phoneme awareness tests as a function of reading ability.
There were no significant differences for English and Spanish versions of the phoneme
awareness tests. On the average, language of presentation did not affect the
students' overall level of performance, p>.01. Additionally, no overall
differences were found for language background of the children such that children who
differ in language control of Spanish and English differed in overall performance.
Thus, monolinguals did not perform better than bilinguals or vice versa, in general.