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Phonological awareness and literacy skills in Korean: An examination of the unique role of body-coda units

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2007

YOUNG-SUK KIM
YOUNG-SUK KIM
Affiliation:
Harvard Graduate School of Education
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Abstract

This study examines a salient intrasyllabic phonological unit in Korean, the body-coda unit, its role in literacy skills in Korean, and a possible source of the salience of body-coda units in the spoken language. Data were collected from Korean-speaking, monolingual beginning readers (41 kindergarteners, 40 first graders). The results indicate that body-coda boundary (e.g., ca-t) is more salient than onset–rime boundary (e.g., c-at) for Korean children and show that children's body-coda awareness is an important predictor of word decoding and spelling in Korean. Furthermore, the analysis of phonological neighbors and frequency of syllable types suggests that a phonotactic feature in Korean, the frequency of consonant–verb syllable type, may be a possible source of the saliency of the body-coda intrasyllabic division for Korean children.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 2007 , pp. 69 - 94
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

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