LINGUIST List 20.468

Sat Feb 14 2009

Diss: Lang Acq/Phonology/Psycholing: Harakchiyska: 'Phonemic ...'

Editor for this issue: Evelyn Richter <evelynlinguistlist.org>


        1.    Tsvetelina Harakchiyska, Phonemic Awareness Development in 9-10-Year-Old Children Who Study English in the Primary


Message 1: Phonemic Awareness Development in 9-10-Year-Old Children Who Study English in the Primary
Date: 13-Feb-2009
From: Tsvetelina Harakchiyska <tsvetelina_ilievayahoo.com>
Subject: Phonemic Awareness Development in 9-10-Year-Old Children Who Study English in the Primary
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Institution: University of Rousse Program: 05.04.11 General and Comparative Linguistics Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2008

Author: Tsvetelina Harakchiyska

Dissertation Title: Phonemic Awareness Development in 9-10-Year-Old Children Who Study English in the Primary

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics                             Language Acquisition                             Phonetics                             Phonology                             Psycholinguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
Dissertation Director:
Assoc. Prof. Dimitrina Tsoneva
Dissertation Abstract:

Phonemic awareness is a key factor in the formation and development of thefour skills of speech perception and production - listening, reading,speaking and writing and therefore it is the focus of analysis and study incontemporary linguistic theories and disciplines such as: neurophysiology,psycholinguistics, speech disorders, language teaching and learningmethodology, medicine, speech perception computer programmes.

Phonemic awareness is also analysed in the context of the Bulgarianeducation system where its implications in the teaching and learningprocess are examined in the light of the school curricula for first andsecond language learning (grades one to four), English language textbooksfor third grade used in Bulgarian schools and teacher development programmes.

The fundamental role of phonemic awareness in the acquisition of foreignlanguages is confirmed by phonemic awareness tests applied to 9-10-year-oldBulgarian children who study English in the primary school. The testresults are compared with the results from the contrastive analysis ofcontemporary Bulgarian and English language, the prognosticated targetlanguage problem phonemes for Bulgarian learners of English and theexcerpted mistakes (in the written and spoken language) of the tested pupils.

The end results inevitably prove that the level of phonemic awareness of9-10-year-old Bulgarian learners of English to the target language is lowand therefore they experience problems both in phoneme discrimination andin written and spoken production of those English language sounds that haveno equivalent in Bulgarian.