Phonological Consciousness: Rhymes and Alliterations in Brazilian Portuguese

After discussing briefly the notions of phonological consciousness & the awareness of rhymes & alliterations in child language development, a study is described in which Brazilian children's (N = 40, aged 4 to 8) ability to recognize & produce rhymes & alliterations was tested as related to writing hypothesis (presyllabic, syllabic, syllabic-alphabetic, & alphabetic) & phonological consciousness level, the latter measured using Sonia Moojen's et al. (2003) metaphonological test CONFIAS. Three specific objectives were targeted: (1) are Brazilian Portuguese children aware of rhymes & alliterations before entering formal education? (2) which task is easier (rhymes vs alliterations; recognition vs production)? & (3) is there a positive correlation between the writing hypothesis, as defined & classified in Emilia Ferreiro & Ana Teberosky's (1991) study of writing familiarity stages, & performance on these two tasks? It is found that: (A) both preschoolers & elementary school students were capable of identifying both rhymes & alliterations, (B) alliterations were easier to identify than rhymes, (C) the identification tasks were easier than production tasks in both categories, & (D) there was a strict correlation between writing hypothesis & performance for both rhymes & alliteration & in both the recognition & production mode. It is concluded that although children at the presyllabic writing stage are already phonologically conscious of rhymes & alliterations, phonological consciousness continues to develop with their schooling, especially when exposed to reading & writing activities. 6 Tables, 1 Figure, 20 References. Adapted from the source document