Construction and Validation of a Phonological Awareness Test Battery for Nursery School Pre-Reading Children

Many studies have shown that the level of development of phonological skills at nursery school is a good indicator of future success in reading acquisition. The aim of this project was to construct and validate a comprehensive phonological awareness test battery for French speaking children. For preschool-level French speaking children, validated phonological awareness test batteries are still lacking. A longitudinal study design was used from a sample of sixty-four children provided education for in the French Community of Belgium. The battery was designed to assess phonological awareness at the rhyme, syllable and phoneme level. A further characteristic of this battery was to use attractive pictorial material enhancing task compliance, and to use identification tasks targeting epiphonological processes as well as manipulation tasks targeting metaphonological processes. At first grade, the same children were given spelling and reading tests in order to determinate the predictif characteristic of this battery. This article briefly presents normative data of the most predictive and discerning tasks of future success in reading and spelling acquisition.