Beginning Reading Instruction: Syllables or Phonemes? An Experimental Training Study With Arabic-Speaking Preliterate Preschoolers

This study addressed four research questions: (1) Does teaching using syllables or using phonemes lead to better progress in beginning reading and spelling? (2) Does the effectiveness of syllabic or phonemic instruction depend on children’s preferences for these units as predicted by Ziegler and Goswami’s (2005) “availability” hypothesis? (3) Do children taught via syllabic consonant–vowel (CV) units spontaneously develop insight into the phonemic basis of an alphabetic writing system, and (4) Do individual differences in reading and spelling gains in phoneme-based instruction depend more on working memory, short-term memory, and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) owing to the greater number of units that must be rapidly retrieved and processed? To test these hypotheses, 104 preliterate preschool children were taught to read and spell using an unfamiliar script. Across 14 training sessions, children were taught using either whole CV units, phoneme units, or demiphoneme units. Retention and generalization were evaluated during training and 1 week later. Our results showed that CV-based teaching was found to be significantly and substantially more effective in terms of reading accuracy and speed than teaching via phonemes or demiphonemes. Ziegler and Goswami’s (2005) availability hypothesis was not supported: All groups learned more easily with CV-based instruction regardless of their preferred phonological unit. In addition, some children taught solely via whole-syllable units showed evidence of spontaneously induced insight into the phonemic basis of alphabetic writing. Finally, working-memory, short-term memory, and Rapid Automatized Naming predicted learning via phonemes but not via CV units. We discuss the implications for beginning reading instruction in different languages and writing systems.