Korean J Child Stud. 2000; 21(1): 35-44.

The Development of Phonological Awareness in Children

아동의 음운인식 발달

박향아

Hyang Ah Park

This study examined the development of phonological awareness of 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children, 20 subjects at each age level. The 3-year-olds were given 2 phoneme detection tasks and the 5- and 7-year-olds were given 5 phoneme detection tasks. In each task, the children first heard a target syllable together with 2 other syllables and were asked to tell which of the 2 syllables sounded similar to the target. Children were able to detect relatively large segments (Consonant₁+Vowel or Vowel+Consonant₂: C₁V or VC₂) at the age of 3 and gradually progressed to smaller sound segments(e.g., phonemes). This study indicated the Korean children detect C₁V segments better than VC₂ segments and detect the initial consonant better than the middle vowel and the final consonant.