• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.199-216
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• 1999

The 121 five-year-old Korean subjects of this study were divided in 3 groups based on their experience in learning a foreign language (English). A battery of tests was administered to measure spoken and written language ability and the 3 metalinguistic domains of phonological, semantic, and syntactic awareness. Spoken language ability was positively correlated with semantic and syntactic awareness. The relative importance of each metalinguistic domain varied with level of written language development. Phonological awareness was the only predictor of decoding. Syntactic awareness and phonological awareness were significant variables in sentence comprehension. Metalinguistic ability was a better predictor of written language development than spoken language ability. Foreign language learning experience had an effect on syntactic awareness: low experience was superior to no experience, but high experience was not superior to low experience.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.15-25
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• 2005

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the characteristics of metalinguistic awareness of children with specific language impairment. Forty-five children participated in this study; 15 children with specific language impairment (SLI group) whose range of the language age was 4;6-6;6, 15 normal children chronological age matched (CA controls) and 15 normal children language age matched with the SLI group (CA controls). A metalinguistic task involving the identification and revision of syntactic, semantic, and phonologic errors was used. The SLI group performed significantly poorer than CA controls as well as LA controls in identifying and correcting error sentences, especially sentences with syntactic error. These results revealed the relation between language problems of children with SLI and metalinguistic abilities.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.125-146
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• 2015

This study investigated the contribution of Korean phonological awareness to English phonological awareness and the relations of phonological awareness with reading and writing in Korean Hangul and English among Korean 5th graders. With age and vocabulary knowledge statistically controlled, Korean phonological awareness was transferred to English phonological awareness. Specifically, syllable and phoneme awareness in Korean transferred to syllable awareness in English, and Korean phoneme awareness transferred to English phoneme awareness. In addition, English phoneme awareness independently explained significant variance of reading and writing in Korean and English after controlling for age and vocabulary. Syllable awareness in Korean and English explained Hangul reading and writing, respectively. The results suggest cross-language transfer of phonological awareness that is a metalinguistic skill. Phoneme awareness is important in reading and writing in English whereas both of syllable and phoneme awareness are important in literacy of Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.51-63
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• 2020

Phonological awareness is a metalinguistic awareness ability of phonology and is known to predict language skills, such as reading and vocabulary skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between phonological awareness, phonological processing, and language skills in 4- to 6-years-old typically developing (TD) children and children with language delay (LD). A total of 32 children (TD=18, LD=15) participated in this study. They performed a phonological awareness task consisting of counting, deletion, and discrimination at syllable level. Nonword Repetition, Digit Backward, Receptive & Expressive Vocabulary Test, and Grammaticality Judgment Task were performed to analyze the correlation between phonological awareness, phonological processing, and language ability. A multiple stepwise regression analysis was performed to examine the phonological awareness subtasks that predict language ability. In the TD group, the syllable categorization task significantly predicted the receptive vocabulary and the performance of the Grammaticality Judgment Task. The LD group showed that the syllable counting task significantly predicted the receptive vocabulary, the expressive vocabulary, and the performance of the Grammaticality Judgment Task. The results showed that the phonological awareness performance was significantly different between the two groups. Further, correlation analysis and regression analysis showed different results for each group. The result of the phonological awareness performance predicted the language ability of each group significantly, suggesting the importance of the meta-linguistic awareness ability of phonology.