Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Acquisition

Abstract

The ability to read is a traditional criterion of academic achievement and is basic to success in almost every aspect of the school curriculum. It is a prerequisite skill for nearly all jobs and the primary key to lifelong learning. Despite its importance, however, it is well documented that not all children attending school attain full literacy in their native language. With regard to monolingual English-speaking children it is estimated that somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of school children having no apparent visual, hearing, or mental deficits encounter unusual difficulty of one kind or another in learning to read [Downing and Leong, 1982]. A significant number of children never learn to read efficiently or effectively. For those of us who can read, it is hard to understand why anyone should have trouble acquiring the skill, since once acquired reading seems so easy and natural. But even the average child does not learn to read easily. Citing the results of standardized reading achievement tests as evidence, Gough and Hillinger [1979] argue that "children almost never learn to read without instruction and even when given explicit, devoted, daily instruction, the average child learns to read very slowly, and with great difficulty" [p.4].