Low Phonemic Awareness Skills Among Disadvantaged Families Dissertation

Low Phonemic Awareness Skills Among Disadvantaged Families - Dissertation Example Empirical research into language use shows that there exists a wide gap between language use among children from well up families and those from economically disadvantaged families. Most children from disadvantaged families have low phonemic skill awareness compared to those from well up families. The purpose of this research is to identify ways in which the problem of phonemic awareness among children from poor background. The research will use a sample of 50 students from whom phonemic awareness skills will be evaluated. To provide credible conclusions and recommendations, this research will take a quantitative approach. Previous Research Phonemic awareness is a topic that has garnered a lot of attention among researchers in the recent past, owing to the persistent language problem that has indicated phonemic awareness weakness among many students in institutions. Dickinson and McCabe (2004) researched on the existence of phonological problems among children with a bilingual orient ation. The deduction of this statistical survey is that there indeed exist numerous factors that contribute to weakness in language among these students. Among these factors, Dickinson and McCabe (2004) identified that the standards of living played a key role in determining the success of language learning among children. Although this research was not directly designed on measurement of poverty levels, it was possible to outline the link between educated parents and a better economic social status (Koutsoftas, Harmon & Gray, 2009). The major conclusion of this research was that children who were fostered by learned parents had a better phonemic expression. Nichols et al (2004) found that Latino children and children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to fail to develop phonemic awareness and concepts in print owing to the fact that they lack preschool experience, causing them to lag behind when compared to children from different ethnicities and better socioeconomi c backgrounds. Latino children are at risk because English is not their first language meaning that they will categorize phonemes in their primary language as that is how their linguistic minds are programmed. Children from these categories are seen to either lack the prior knowledge or misunderstand the instructional discourse, along with the language of the text and teacher, resulting in delayed acquisition of crucial concepts that are in print (McGee & Ukrainetz, 2009). Notably also, findings from this study indicated that gender was not linked to development of phonemic awareness. These students require instructional intervention that looks into their needs and in a broader perspective. McDowell et al (2007) found that children, who undergo early reading challenges, receive less practice than other children, miss opportunities to develop reading comprehension strategies and are likely to have a negative attitude towards reading. Callaghan and Madeleine (2012) attributed the diff erence in phonemic awareness between children from low socio-economic backgrounds and their peers from high or middle socio-economic backgrounds to varying levels of emergent literacy. This variability is in turn explained by previous home environments, level of oral language and provision of good early intervention programs. In contrast, Neuman and Dickinson (2011) suggest that genetic predispositions