Letter-sound knowledge in Icelandic children at the age 6 years-old

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine letter-sound knowledge when children start at school in Iceland. 392 children aged 5–6 years completed assessments of letter-sound knowledge, i.e., the names and sounds of uppercase and lowercase letters of the Icelandic alphabet (uppercase letter-name; uppercase letter-sound; lowercase letter-name; lowercase letter-sound). Whether the child had broken the reading code (could read words) was also recorded. The results revealed no significant difference between girls and boys in the four factors (letter name, letter sound). The results indicated that 56.9 % of the children had broken the reading code when they started school. 58.2 % of the girls and 55.6 % of the boys, not significant difference between the genders. There was a significant difference between the group which had broken the reading code and the group which have not in all the four factors. There was also a high significant correlation between all 4 variables from 0.915 between uppercase letter and lowercase sound to 0.963 between uppercase sounds and uppercase letter.

Based on these data, it seems reasonable to advocate learning letter-sound correspondences early in the first year of school to form the best possible basis for breaking the reading code and further reading development.