Abstract:

Phonological awareness (PA) as an index of emergent literacy has received much research concern. Research on this key metalinguistic concept provides ample evidence in favor of its relevance to early reading development (e.g. Ball and Blachman, 1991; Ehri et al., 2001; Littleton, Wood and Chera, 2006; Tamimi and Rababah, 2007). In other words, phonological deficits have been found to be a precursor to reading disabilities (e.g. Wagner and Torgeson, 1987; Wanzek et al., 2002). Thus, monolingual or EFL children with weak PA have, for instance, difficulties in analyzing words into their constituent phonemes, and hence regarded as disadvantaged in learning how to decode words. This, in turn, can lead to difficulties in word decoding and to further futuristic problems related to fluent reading and comprehension (Leafstedt, Richards, and Gerber, 2004).
Such evidence amassing over the past four decades brings attention to PA as a critical phonological aptitude, and raises the point as to the more effective approach for developing it: formal classroom instruction versus PA interventions. While the traditional strategy represented by the pure-whole language approach assumes that PA is only truly naturally acquired (Foormn and Liberman, 1989), there is some growing evidence, suggesting that PA can be explicitly taught, and can yield more fruitful outcome (e.g. Snow, Burns and Griffin, 1998; Brady et al., 1994).
Evidence in favor of the new approach comes primarily from research on monolingual children (e.g. Bus and Van Ijzendoorn, 1999; Ehri et al., 2001), and secondarily, from studies on EFL students (e.g. Lundberg, Frost, and Petersen, 1988; Foorman et al., 1991). Arab EFL learners have not, to my knowledge, provided evidence (if any) in this direction. It is only in Tamimi and Rababah (2007) that one may find some initial indications against the pure-whole language approach as their main concern was studying the correlation between PA and the development of Jordanian EFL first-graders' early word-reading. Contributing to the debate stated above requires a thorough and a more focused investigation of the subject matter.
Tamimi and Rababah's findings of noticeably very low first-graders' mean scores in word-reading even after being exposed to some PA training suggest that experimenting on Jordanian EFL second-graders may reflect more transparent responses. This will still be quite acceptable in PA research as the Jordanian second-graders' age average (7.1) remains within the normal age group (5-8 years-old) eligible for such investigation (Catts et al., 2001). Besides, basing the study on second-graders gets more interesting when one considers the Jordanian English Language National Team's (2006) challenging phonological expectations by the end of the school year.
Using Jordanian EFL second-graders in a state school in Amman as subjects, the purpose of the present study is to test the hypothesis that explicit PA interventions can be more effective in building their PA skills than formal classroom instruction currently practiced in Jordanian schools, as most likely the case elsewhere. Further evidence corroborating any of these competing approaches may contribute to settling this dispute, and to providing insight into how this core metalinguistic ability can be more effectively developed.

Keywords:

Phonological awareness, segmentation, isolation, deletion, substitution, blending, PAT test, Action Pack.