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Version 1.3 – Updated November 2024

Phonological awareness

Overview

  • Influence: Phonological awareness
  • Domain: Curricula
  • Sub-Domain: Reading, writing and the arts
  • Potential to Accelerate Student Achievement: Potential to considerably accelerate
  • Influence Definition: Phonological awareness is a broad skill which involves assessing and improving phonemic awareness (a subset of phonological awareness isolating the sounds in a word), such as phoneme isolation, identification, categorization, blending; segmentation, and deletion. Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that encompasses the awareness and ability to manipulate spoken parts of words or sentences including word awareness, syllables, onset and rhyme.

Evidence

  • Number of meta-analyses: 14
  • Number of studies: 768
  • Number of students: 88,689
  • Number of effects: 7,800
  • Weighted mean effect size: 0.83
  • Robustness index: 5

Meta-Analyses

Meta-Analyses
Journal Title Author First Author's Country Article Name Year Published Variable Number of Studies Number of Students Number of Effects Effect Size
Merrill-Palmer Quarterly Wagner USA Causal relations between the development of phonological processing abilities and the acquisition of reading skills: a meta-analysis 1988 Phonological processing abilities 16 0 1,766 0.38
Journal of Educational Psychology Bus & van IJzendoorn Netherlands Phonological awareness and early reading: A meta-analysis of experimental training studies 1999 Phonological awareness training 70 5,843 1,484 0.73
Review of Educational Research Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea, & Hammill USA Rapid naming, phonological awareness, and reading: A meta-analysis of the correlation evidence 2003 Rapid naming, phonological awareness 35 3,568 2,257 0.93
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Mayberry, del Guidice, & Lieberman USA Reading achievement in relation to phonological coding and awareness in deaf readers: A meta-analysis 2011 Phonological coding in deaf readers 57 0 57 0.35
Journal of Educational Psychology Araujo, Reis, Petersson, & Faisca Portugal Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading Performance: A Meta-Analysis 2015 Rapid automatized naming and reading 137 28,826 857 0.95
Zeitschrift fur Entwicklungspsychologie und Padagogische Psychologie Fischer & Pfost Germany How Effective Are Trainings of Phonological Awareness? A Meta-Analysis of German Language Training Programs and Their Effects on he Acquisition of Reading and Spelling Skills 2015 Phonological awareness training 19 0 22 0.36
Journal of Educational Psychology Ruan, Georgiou, Song, Li, & Shu China Does writing system influence the associations between phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and reading? A meta-analysis 2018 Phonological and morphological awareness in English and Chinese 64 18,420 127 0.87
Studies in Psychology and Behavior Pan, Deng, Lin, & Liu China A meta-analysis of the relationship between Chinese students' English phonological awareness and reading achievement. 2019 Phonological awareness & achievement 53 0 53 0.77
Journal of Educational Psychology Yang, Yan, Ruan, Ku, Lo, Peng, & McBride China Relations among phonological processing skills and mathematics in children: A meta-analysis. 2021 Phonological processing on math achievement 94 0 826 0.70
Frontiers in Psychology Chen & Zhao China Reading-related skills associated with acquisition of Chinese as a second/foreign language: A meta-analysis.  2022 Phonological skills in Chinese reading 42 1,103 79 0.90
Language Learning Míguez-Álvarez, Cuevas-Alonso & Saavedra Spain Relationships between phonological awareness and reading in Spanish: A meta-analysis. 2022 Phonological skills in Spanish 47 7,956 47 0.80
Journal of Behavioral Education Cooper, Hebert, Goodrich, Leiva, Lin, Peng, & Nelson USA Effects of Automaticity Training on Reading Performance: A Meta-Analysis 2022 Automaticity training 11 0 83 0.28
Scientific Studies of Reading Erbeli, Rice, Xu, Bishop, & Goodrich USA A Meta-Analysis on the Optimal Cumulative Dosage of Early Phonemic Awareness Instruction.  2024 Phonological instruction at maximum dosage (10 hours) 16 1,155 35 0.74
Journal of Educational Psychology Zhang, Ke, & Mo USA Morphology in reading comprehension among school-aged readers of English: A synthesis and meta-analytic structural equation modeling study.  2023 Morphological teaching 107 21,818 107 1.27
TOTAL/AVERAGE 768 88,689 7,800 0.72
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