Rhyming in the Context of the Phonological Awareness of Pre-School Children - Theoretical background and research results

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by kopisore

Rhyming is presented as a core skill linked to phonological awareness, with the paper setting out theoretical foundations and reporting research findings on preschool children’s rhyming abilities. The study involved 866 Slovak children aged 4 to 7 and assessed rhyming skills through three independent tasks: completing a nursery rhyme, recognizing rhymes, and producing rhymes. The text also explains how rhyme identification supports phoneme-level processing and predicts later reading success, emphasizing phonological training for children at risk.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages24

Reading Time1 h 0 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Theoretical background

Research design and tasks

Completing nursery-rhyme

Rhyme awareness

Rhyme production

doi: 10.26529/cepsj.685 Rhyming in the Context of the Phonological Awareness of Pre-School Children Soňa Grofčíková*1 and Monika Máčajová2 • Rhyming is one of the basic skills associated with phonological awareness. This paper aims to introduce theoretical starting points and the results of research into children’s rhyming in the context of phonological awareness. The text explains theoretical circumstances pertaining to the theme and defines key concepts. The main part of the paper includes the results of the research of pre-school children in Slovakia. There were 866 respondents (children) of 4 to 7 years of age. The subject of the research was the rhyming skills of children, which was tested in three independent areas: completing the rhyme in a nursery-rhyme, awareness of rhymes, and the production of rhymes. Keywords: rhyming, rhyme, phonological awareness, nursery-rhyme, rhyme awareness, rhyme production 1 *Corresponding Author. Faculty of Education, Constantine the Philosopher University Nitra, Slovakia; [sgrofcikova@ukf.sk](sgrofcikova@ukf.sk). 2 Faculty of Education, Constantine the Philosopher University Nitra, Slovakia. 116 rhyming in the context of the phonological awareness of pre-school children Rima v kontekstu fonološke ozaveščenosti predšolskihotrok Soňa Grofčíková in Monika Máčajová • Rimanje je ena izmed osnovnih veščin fonološkega zavedanja. V pri-spevku so predstavljena teoretična izhodišča in izsledki raziskav o rimanju otrok v kontekstu fonološkega zavedanja. V nadaljevanju so podana teoretična dejstva v povezavi z navedeno temo in opredeljeni njeni ključni termini. Osrednji del prispevka je namenjen izsledkom raziskavepredšolskih otrok na Slovaškem, v kateri je sodelovalo 866 otrok v starosti od 4 do 7 let. Predmet raziskave so bile veščine rimanja pri otrocih, preverjene na treh neodvisnih področjih: dokončanje rime v otroški pesmi, zavedanje rime in rimanje. Ključne besede: rimanje, rima, fonološko zavedanje, otroška pesem, zavedanje rime, rimanje Introduction The initial teaching of reading as well as the preceding preparation of children for reading have long been primarily associated with the development of sight perception and focused on the mutual harmonising of eye movements with the movement of the hand. When a child was failing in the acquisition of reading and writing, the reason was sought specifically in the area of the processing of visual information; this was supported by many research studies in reading, which were connected with a relatively intensive interest in sight-perception or sight-spatial processes in reading. However, research into language teaching began to indicate that problems with reading and writing largely result from the shortcomings in processing not visual but acoustic information. Recently, theoretical and empirical findings have shown that phonological factors are involved in the process of mentally representing written words (Ehri, 1992 in Wimmer et al., 1994). There have been growing doubts that we read primarily with sight, especially in connection with the growing knowledge regarding the importance of phonological skills in reading. Many studies have shown that the awareness of the phonological structure of spoken speech, distinguishing phonological units (words, syllables, morphemes and, especially, phonemes), including the ability to work effectively with them at the level of operational memory, is, from the aspect of learning to read, much more important, if not even decisive (Adams, 1990; McBride-Chang, 1995; Mann & Foy, 2007; Torgesen, 2002) . Theoretical background Each of the elements of literacy is unique; talking, listening, and paying attention are expected to occur without any specific interventions. However, reading and writing are activities based on experience, relying on the child’s capabilities (hear, see, say, and store words) and on specific activities encouraging the skills of visual and auditory discrimination,

FAQs

What is the main focus of the paper on children’s rhyming?

The paper introduces theoretical starting points and research results on how children’s rhyming relates to phonological awareness.

How were the preschool children’s rhyming skills tested in the study?

Rhyming skills were tested in three independent areas: completing a nursery rhyme, awareness of rhymes, and production of rhymes.

Why is rhyme awareness important for later reading development?

Rhyme identification requires children to hear sounds within words, supporting the idea of word division into sound parts, and rhyme task performance predicts later reading success.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by kopisore