1 Lancaster University, UK.
2 Sebastian Kolowa Memorial University, Lushoto, Tanzania.
J Learn Disabil. 2018 Sep/Oct;51(5):463-472. doi: 10.1177/0022219417728051. Epub 2017 Sep 11.
Literacy levels in Africa are low, and school instruction outcomes are not promising. Africa also has a disproportionate number of unschooled children. Phonological awareness (PA), especially phoneme awareness, is critically associated with literacy, but there is little evidence about whether PA is gained through literacy, schooling, or both, because most children studied are in education and can read at least letters. Our previous study of PA and reading in children in and out of school in Tanzania found that PA was associated with reading ability, not schooling or age, and many unschooled children learned to read. We retested 85 children from the baseline study, on measures of PA and literacy, approximately 2 years later. We found that more unschooled children had now learned to read but PA had generally not improved for these children. Unschooled children were still poorer at PA than schooled children. At 2 years, schooling now independently predicted PA and literacy. PA also predicted literacy and vice versa. Explicit phoneme awareness was again poor, even in accurate readers. More unschooled children have now learned to read, possibly because local literacy is in their first language; however, schooling improves reading and PA.
非洲的识字率较低，学校教学成果也不容乐观。非洲还有大量失学儿童。语音意识（PA），尤其是音位意识，与读写能力密切相关，但对于 PA 是否通过读写能力、学校教育或两者兼而获得，几乎没有证据，因为大多数接受研究的儿童都在接受教育，至少可以阅读字母。我们之前在坦桑尼亚对在校和校外儿童的 PA 和阅读进行的研究发现，PA 与阅读能力有关，而与学校教育或年龄无关，许多失学儿童学会了阅读。大约 2 年后，我们对基线研究中的 85 名儿童进行了 PA 和读写能力的复测。我们发现，现在有更多的失学儿童学会了阅读，但这些儿童的 PA 总体上并没有提高。失学儿童的 PA 水平仍低于在校儿童。2 年后，学校教育现在可以独立预测 PA 和读写能力。PA 也可以预测读写能力，反之亦然。即使是准确的读者，音位意识也很差。现在，更多的失学儿童已经学会了阅读，这可能是因为当地的识字是他们的母语；然而，学校教育可以提高阅读和 PA。
