Sixth Grade Pupils' Phonological Processing and ...

Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 46, No. 2, 2002

Sixth Grade Pupils’ Phonological Processing and School Achievement in a Second and the Native Language KAISA LUMME & JUHANI E. LEHTO Department of Psychology, University of Jyva¨skyla¨, FIN-40351 Jyva¨skyla¨, Finland

Phonological processing was studied in relation to academic achievement in the native and a second language in a total of 66 12–13-year-old pupils at the end of their sixth school year. Phonological ability was assessed using a pseudoword spelling and an auditory discrimination task, which were assumed to probe two domains of phonological processing: verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness. School report marks and the scores they obtained in the Finnish national test of English were used as indicators of the pupils’ academic achievement. Of the two phonological tasks, the pseudoword spelling was strongly related to success in both Finnish and English. The correlation coef cients remained statistically signi cant after the pupils’ performances in other school subjects had been controlled for. In general, the results are in agreement with ndings obtained in previous studies. The educational implications of the present results are discussed. ABSTRACT

Key words: phonological awareness; verbal short-term memory; second language; native language

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING AND LEARNING The term ‘phonological processing’ refers to three categories of abilities: phonological awareness, phonological recoding in lexical access and verbal short-term memory (McBride-Chang, 1995). Phonological awareness is commonly measured using tasks in which a participant is required to categorize or split phonological material (see for example Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Perin, 1983; Campbell & Butterworth, 1985). Phonological recoding in lexical access, on the other hand, comprises processes that are required when a non-phonological stimulus, e.g. a picture or a written word, is converted into a phonological output. The third component in phonological processing is verbal short-term memory (STM). It comprises the temporary retaining and rehearsal of phonological material ISSN 0031-3831 print; ISSN 1430-1170 online/02/020207-11 Ó 2002 Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research DOI: 10.1080/00313830220142209

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(Baddeley, 1986). It is traditionally measured using the digit span task, as in the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Wechsler, 1974). More recently, asking the participant to repeat a nonsense word has been used to test verbal STM capacity (Gathercole et al., 1994). Of these three domains of phonological processing, the present study examines phonological awareness and verbal STM. There is an ample body of evidence suggesting that phonological processes have a major role in academic achievement. Several studies have demonstrated that phonological awareness in pre-school aged children predicts later acquisition of reading skills (see for example Lundberg et al., 1980; Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Nation & Hulme, 1997). As summarized in a recent extensive review by Baddeley et al. (1998), verbal STM is the principal tool required for language learning. It is crucial in learning native language vocabulary during childhood (Gathercole et al., 1992, 1997; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993) and in the acquisition of second language words at school (Service, 1992; Service & Kohonen, 1995; Cheung, 1996). In line with this literature, Lehto (1995) demonstrated that among Finnish 9th graders second language success correlated with verbal STM, even after general working memory had been controlled for. Although McBride-Chang (1995) made a theoretical distinction between phonological awareness and verbal STM, in empirical studies these domains of phonological processing appear to be less independent. In fact, Mann & Liberman (1984) suggested that both domains re ect general phonological processing skills. Gathercole et al. (1991) found evidence for this suggestion; but they further demonstrated that in 4–5-year-old children phonological awareness was more speci cally associated with reading attainment, while verbal STM was more speci cally related to native language vocabulary. In this study we employed two tasks: Wepman’s auditory discrimination task (Wepman, 1958, 1960) and a pseudoword spelling task (Lehtola & Lehto, 2000), which, we argue, both require the two aspects of phonological processing, phonological awareness and verbal STM. We were interested to see how these abilities might be related to school achievement at the end of the sixth school year. Based on previous literature we expected that phonological processing would be related to language-related school subjects: to Finnish, the native language, and particularly to English, the second language.

METHOD Participants and General Procedure The participants were tested at the end of the 6th grade in 1998. In the Finnish comprehensive school the rst six school years comprise the primary level, which is followed by the 3 year secondary level. A total of 66 children (33 girls and 33 boys) participated in the study. They were 12–13 years old and native speakers of Finnish. They attended primary schools of a medium sized town in southeastern Finland. By the end of the 6th grade the pupils had studied 4 years of English, the

Phonological Processing

209

knowledge of which was a main focus in this investigation. The children were tested in their regular teaching groups during school hours. Academic achievement was assessed using the marks awarded in school reports in May 1998. In addition to school report marks, the national test of English was used as a tool to assess English skills. This test is constructed every year by a national teacher organization in order to help in the evaluation of 6th graders’ performance in English. Pseudoword Spelling The pseudoword spelling task was taken from the study of Lehtola & Lehto (2000). The participant heard 30 tape-recorded pseudowords and he or she was asked to write them down. Only one listening was permitted. After each pseudoword had been heard once, the tape was stopped to allow enough time for writing. The pseudowords were nonsense words, which followed the Finnish phonological system and obeyed its phonotactic restrictions. The rst 10 pseudowords were two syllable words, each of the next 10 had three syllables and the last 10 pseudowords had four syllables each. The length of the pseudowords varied from 4 to 13 letters. The number of correctly spelt pseudowords (max. 30) comprised the measure of performance. Carrying out the task successfully requires at least verbal STM (keeping the pseudoword activated), phonological awareness (awareness of phonemes in the pseudoword) and phoneme–grapheme knowledge (how to convert the heard phonemes into a written form). Auditory Discrimination Task Wepman (1958) constructed this task, which is sometimes used as a measure of auditory discrimination skills in the native language (English) (see for example Wepman, 1960; Nober, 1973). The participant heard either a similar pair (e.g. jail/jail) or dissimilar pair (e.g. gear/beer) of English words. In the present study there were 10 similar and 30 dissimilar pairs. A native speaker of English read aloud the word pairs, which were tape-recorded. Each pair was played once in the classroom and the children were asked to indicate on their answer sheets whether the words in the pair were similar or dissimilar. The maximum score was 40. The auditory discrimination task requires the child to distinguish English phonemes (phonological awareness). It also can be considered to tax verbal STM capacity, because the participant has to retain both words of the pair and compare their phonological content (cf. McBride-Chang, 1995). National Test of English In 1998, the national test for 6th graders included ve sub-tests regularly carried out in schools. In listening the pupil heard a short story from a tape-recording. On the answer sheet, 10 questions in Finnish tested understanding of the story and the participants were asked to write answers in Finnish. This sub-test produced a

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maximum of 12 points. The vocabulary and grammar sub-test consisted of incomplete English sentences (words and grammatical structures missing) and their complete Finnish translations. The children were asked to ll in the missing parts of the English text. This sub-test maximally yielded 14 points. In the text comprehension part, the pupil translated into Finnish a few underlined sentences, which were included in a short passage. Six points could be achieved. Writing a story comprised a series of four pictures. Three of them were accompanied by a number of key words in Finnish. The fourth one was supplied with instructions (e.g. to use the past tense). The children were asked to produce a written story in English. The maximum score was 22 points. Writing questions in the past tense required the child to translate at least three questions given in Finnish. The task maximally yielded six points. For the present purposes the last two sub-tests, writing a story and writing questions in the past tense, were combined to form a written use of English variable with a maximum of 28 points. The maximum total score of the national test of English was 60. For a sub-sample of 45 pupils an additional test of the oral use of English was conducted. The oral part of the national test is not usually administered in schools. For the present research purposes this part was taken from the 1994 national test (Huttunen & Kukkonen, 1995). The 1994 oral test included a situation in which the pupil was assumed to be on a ight to London and having a conversation with a co-passenger (an English teacher). The task maximally produced 5 points, which were not included in the total score of the national English test. School Achievement School report marks in four school subjects were chosen as measures of school achievement. Knowledge of the Finnish language was assessed on the basis of written and oral presentations. ‘Finnish’ as a school subject includes evidence of a knowledge of the grammar and literature. The other school subjects were English, mathematics and history. Grading in the Finnish school system is expressed in marks ranging from 4 to 10; 4 represents a failed performance in a particular school subject, whereas the marks 9 and 10 can be regarded as indicating excellence. RESULTS Descriptive statistics for all measures are given in Table I. A slight ceiling effect was found for English text comprehension. Otherwise no oor or ceiling effects were observed. We tested whether gender differences could be found in the variables listed in Table I. The girls performed better than the boys in Finnish [t(64) 5 2.97, P , 0.01]. The boys, on the other hand, scored somewhat higher in mathematics [t(64) 5 2.61, P , 0.05]. Otherwise, no gender differences were found. Correlations between phonological processing and school achievement are shown in Table II. Pseudoword spelling performance correlated statistically signi cantly with all other variables except auditory discrimination and listening


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TABLE I. Descriptive statistics for phonological processing and school achievement

Phonological processing Pseudoword spelling (max. 30) Auditory discrimination (max. 40, n 5 National test of English Total (max. 60) Listening (max. 12) Vocabulary and grammar (max. 14) Text comprehension (max. 6) Written use (max. 28) Oral use (max 10, n 5 45) School report marks English (range 4–10) Finnish (range 4–10) Mathematics (range 4–10) History (range 4–10) n5

65)

Mean

SD

19.36 35.37

3.77 1.91

43.83 9.77 10.46 4.95 18.64 3.39

10.68 1.98 2.54 1.22 5.96 0.80

8.08 7.83 7.88 7.65

1.09 0.92 1.18 1.14

66, unless otherwise shown.

skills in English. The low non-signi cant correlation coef cient between pseudoword spelling and auditory discrimination suggests that these tasks shared little in common in our sample. The auditory discrimination score (the third column in Table II) correlated positively with the other variables except mathematics. However, only in English did the correlation of this score with the pupils’ school marks reach statistical signi cance. Somewhat surprisingly, the pseudoword spelling task correlated signi cantly with mathematics (r 5 0.41, P , 0.001), suggesting that the solely verbal pseudoword task may be involved even in predominantly non-verbal school achievement, in mathematics. Therefore, we partialed out the common variance between mathematics and pseudoword spelling performance. The second column (1P) in Table II shows the partial correlations between pseudoword spelling and other measures. The correlations were lower than those shown in column 1, but nonetheless most of them were statistically signi cant, suggesting that the pseudoword spelling test was able to explain mathematics-independent variance in English and Finnish. Interestingly, controlling mathematics had no effect on the relationship between pseudoword spelling and the oral use of English. In general, the intercorrelations between the national English test and school achievement were positive and highly signi cant. However, there were two exceptions: mathematics showed non-signi cant correlations with English listening skills (r 5 0.21) and the oral use of English (r 5 0.09). This nding suggests that mathematical skills share only a very small portion of common variance with both the ability to understand and the ability to produce spoken English. Phonological processing ability, as expressed in terms of pseudoword spelling, was strongly related to teacher-rated competence in Finnish and English when

0.27c 0.12 0.29c 0.18 0.28c 0.41b 0.42d 0.43d

0.40b 0.19 0.41b 0.30c 0.42d 0.41b 0.52d 0.54d 0.41b 0.36b 0.21

0.21

1Pa

0.16

1

2

0.25c 0.19 0.09 0.21

0.20 0.19 0.20 0.15 0.17 0.15

2

0.85d 0.64d 0.43d 0.53d

0.80d 0.93d 0.82d 0.96d 0.74d

3

0.59d 0.46d 0.21 0.44d

0.72d 0.64d 0.66d 0.62d

4

0.82d 0.60d 0.39b 0.52d

0.76d 0.84d 0.68d

5

0.72d 0.55d 0.34b 0.46d

0.73d 0.64d

6

n 5 65–66; for the oral use of English, n 5 44–45. a 1P, partial correlations between pseudoword spelling and other variables with mathematics controlled for. b P , 0.01. c P , 0.05. d P , 0.001.

Phonological processing 1. Pseudoword spelling 2. Auditory discriminatory National test of English 3. Total 4. Listening 5. Vocabulary and grammar 6. Text comprehension 7. Written use 8. Oral use School report marks 9. English 10. Finnish 11. Mathematics 12. History

Measure

TABLE II. Pearson correlations for phonological processing and school achievement

0.83d 0.63d 0.47b 0.48d

0.71d

7

0.78d 0.59d 0.09 0.44b

8

212 K. Lumme & J. E. Lehto


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mathematical skills were controlled for (Table II). Therefore, the effects of both history and mathematics were further partialed out simultaneously. When this was done, pseudoword spelling still correlated signi cantly with Finnish and English (rs 5 0.39 and 0.38, Ps , 0.001, respectively). Thus, the relationship between pseudoword spelling performance and language skills appears to be independent of success in other school subjects, such as mathematics and history. The correlation coef cients shown in Table II were calculated separately for boys and girls. Many of the boys’ correlations were higher than those for the whole sample. In general, relations between pseudoword spelling and other measures were lower for the girls than for the boys. Notably low non-signi cant correlations were observed between girls’ pseudoword spelling and listening (r 5 0.05), as well as between pseudoword spelling and the oral use of English (r 5 0.25). Nevertheless, mathematics and pseudoword spelling were strongly related in the girls (r 5 0.56, P , 0.01). Therefore, controlling for the effect of mathematics, as had been done in column 1P (Table II), caused a substantial drop in the magnitude of correlation coef cients. To investigate the role of phonological processing in more detail we carried out a series of hierarchical regression analyses. Mathematics, pseudoword spelling and auditory discrimination explained Finnish [F(3,61) 5 13.11, P , .001, r2 5 39%], English [F(3,61) 5 11.53, P , 0.001, r2 5 36%] and the total score in the English test [F(3,61) 5 9.41, P , 0.001, r2 5 32%]. Hence, as a whole the three independent variables signi cantly explained performance in English and Finnish. Table III provides detailed information about regression coef cients. Mathematics explained 23% of the variance in Finnish. Entering pseudoword spelling increased the explained variance by 14% but auditory discrimination was unable to increase the explained variance statistically signi cantly, as indicated by the nonsigni cant b coef cient. English performance (school report marks) was explained signi cantly by all three independent variables: mathematics (17%), pseudoword spelling (an additional 14%) and auditory discrimination (an additional 5%), hence the three variables accounted for a total of 36% of the variance of the English performance. The total score of the national English test showed a different pattern. Mathematics explained 22% of the total variance but, as indicated by the nonsigni cant b coef cients, neither pseudoword spelling nor auditory discrimination added anything to the amount of variance explained. DISCUSSION The present study was undertaken with a view to examining the role of phonological processing in school achievement, with a particular focus on the second language, English, and the native language, Finnish. Employing two tasks designed to test phonological awareness and verbal STM, we demonstrated a fairly strong relationship between language competencies and phonological processing. Perhaps due to the multifaceted nature of pseudoword spelling, this task, compared with the auditory discrimination task, exhibited much stronger connections with indicators of academic achievement. Unlike most previous studies, this study investigated

For interpretation, see text. a P , 0.05.

0.26 0.09 0.08

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

Mathematics Pseudoword spelling Auditory discrimination

B

Variable 0.09 0.03 0.05

SE B

Finnish B 0.26 0.11 0.13

b 0.33a 0.38a 0.16 0.11 0.03 0.06

SE B

English

0.28a 0.37a 0.22a

b

3.60 0.58 1.11

B

1.05 0.33 0.60

SE B

0.41a 0.21 0.20

b

National test of English

TABLE III. Summary of hierarchical regression analyses for variables explaining school achievement in Finnish and English

214 K. Lumme & J. E. Lehto


215

phonological processing in relation to both native language and second language achievement within the same design. Phonological processing in early childhood is known to predict later acquisition of basic reading skills (Lundberg et al., 1980; Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993; Nation & Hulme, 1997; Passenger et al., 2000; for counterevidence see Layton et al., 1998). Our results suggest that phonological skills have a major role in literacy and native language skills even after the phase of learning to read, namely at the end of the sixth school year. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has addressed this issue. The present ndings are in agreement with earlier research that has provided evidence suggesting that phonological processing, and particularly verbal STM, is closely related to foreign language learning (Service, 1992; Service & Kohonen, 1995; Cheung, 1996; Downey & Snyder, 2000). Service (1992) found that among Finnish primary school pupils verbal STM, measured before second language instruction, strongly predicted later success in second language skills. In particular, learning new words is assumed to be dependent on verbal STM capacity (Service & Kohonen, 1995; Cheung, 1996; for a review see Baddeley et al., 1998). The national test of English did not include a pure measure of vocabulary knowledge, but did have a vocabulary and grammar sub-test, which correlated strongly with pseudoword spelling. Pseudoword spelling also correlated with the written use of English, a sub-test requiring the control of vocabulary. These relationships were of considerable strength even when boys and girls were treated as separate samples. The relationships between school marks in Finnish/English and pseudoword spelling were highly signi cant and remained signi cant when the effect of achievement in other school subjects was controlled for. In regression analyses, pseudoword spelling signi cantly predicted teacher-assessed English and Finnish after mathematics was entered into the equation. In the third step, auditory discrimination further accounted for English, but not Finnish. In contrast, the phonological processing tasks were not able to account for the score in the national test of English after mathematics had been entered into the regression analysis. These ndings suggest that during the school year teachers tend to evaluate pupils’ performances in English and Finnish using criteria which also tap phonological skills. Despite rather straightforward results, our investigation has some limitations. First, our sample of pupils was rather small. In the future, larger numbers of participants may be necessary. Extensive samples might reveal gender-speci c relations between phonological processing and language skills. Second, the psychometric abilities of our measures are poorly known; many of the tests might need to be developed further. Nevertheless, as reported in the present study, they appeared to work satisfactory. The present study was not primarily targeted at having an in uence on educational practice. Some speculations can, however, be put forward. First, phonological processing was strongly related to native language skill several years after the acquisition of basic reading ability. Training programmes targeted at improving phonological awareness have proved to bene t the acquisition of basic reading skills during the rst school years (see for example Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Passenger, et

216


al., 2000). Hence, it remains an open question, whether training in phonological skills would improve literacy and native language skills after the elementary school years. Second, we con rmed Service’s (1992) ndings concerning second language learning and phonological processing. Service (1990) has recommended that at least the pupils who are at risk of impaired second language learning would bene t from the explicit teaching of English grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules embedded in age-appropriate instruction techniques. We believe that paying more attention to grapheme–phoneme rules might improve most beginning learners’ English skills during the 2nd or 3rd grade in Finnish comprehensive schools. Materials and methods (e.g. phonics) that are used to teach reading in Englishspeaking countries might help in instructing these grapheme–phoneme rules. Third, with regard to phonological processing, teachers appeared to be more sensitive in evaluating English than was the national test of English. The national test, with its scoring instructions, appears, however, to be useful in providing English teachers with general criteria for performance (cf. Huttunen & Kukkonen, 1995). Moreover, if the full test version is administered, the teachers also obtain some information about how their pupils use English orally. Indeed, we suppose that oral communication skills should be more extensively taught in Finnish schools. Our data, although based on a small number of children, suggest that, unlike other second language skills, the oral use of English is unrelated to mathematics. Perhaps second language teachers could make use of this nding; using oral communication in the classroom might enhance language learning in academically less successful pupils. Previous research suggesting that poor language learners bene t from fostering oral communication skills (Kristiansen, 1992) supports our conclusion. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to thank Professor Emerita Anna-Liisa Leino, the teachers and the pupils of the Primary Schools of Tyysterniemi, Lauritsala and Voisalmi. Ms Catherine Camille read the tape-recorded items of the Wepman test. Asko Tolvanen and Ari Ma¨kiaho gave valuable advice on statistical matters. This article has been written while Juhani E. Lehto was working on the project (44858) ‘Human Development and Its Risk Factors’, nanced by the Academy of Finland (Finnish Centre of Excellence Programme, 2000–2005). The University of Helsinki has provided nancial support. REFERENCES BADDELEY , A. (1986). Working Memory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. BADDELEY , A., GATHERCOLE , S. & PAPAGNO , C. (1998). The phonological loop as a language learning device. Psychological Review, 105, 158–173. BRADLEY , L. & BRYANT , P.E. (1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read—a causal connection. Nature, 301, 419–421. CAMPBELL, R. & BUTTERWORTH , B. (1985). Phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia in a highly literate subject: a developmental case with associated de cits of phonemic processing and awareness. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37A, 435–475.


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