From Phonological to Orthographic Knowledge. The Reach and Limitations of the Phonocentric Perspective on the Processing of Written Words

The advantages & shortcomings of the phonocentric model of written language processing are assessed. The approach originated in research, carried out in the 1970s & 1980s, of reading & writing difficulties experienced by children with deficits in phonological processing. A. Liberman's (1988) attempt to provide a solution to the apparent paradox of the ease of processing spoken language & the difficulty of processing written language is mentioned, since it led to development of a unified, phonocentric interpretation of reading & writing. The notion of phonological consciousness as a metalinguistic skill enabling children to segment speech into phonemes & discover the relationship between oral & written codes of language is discussed. The significance & limitations of the phonocentric model to account for written word processing in language with transparent (eg, Spanish) & opaque (eg, English) scripts are assessed, reviewing findings reported in the literature. Recognizing the important contribution of research conducted within the phonocentric framework, a series of challenges that need to be addressed in future studies are identified. 94 References. Adapted from the source document