Syllabic Schemes and Knowledge of the Alphabet in Reading Acquisition: Onset or Nucleus Variation

<p class="apa">Although there is a growing consensus that, in reading acquisition, it is essential to provide children with learning activities that promote the development of reading cognitive schemes, particularly intra-syllabic related patterns, there is no agreement on which kind of syllabic schemes should be worked out in the first place. The main aim of the present study is to analyse the readings of preschool Spanish-speaking children showing the development of syllabic schemes in the early stages of reading acquisition. Basically, we analyse their responses in relation to their previous knowledge of Spanish grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) or alphabet knowledge. Our results show that children’s recognition and construction of syllabic schemes, from the very first steps in preschool reading acquisition programmes, is facilitated by reading activities presenting shell-nucleus syllabic patterns, for which the only requirement, although not indispensable, is to know the five or six Spanish vowel GPCs. This kind of activity seems to be more adequate than reading drills involving onset-rhyme syllabic analogies that require previous knowledge of consonant GPCs. The conclusion we have reached is that the development of onset-rhyme syllabic reading schemes shows a stronger relation to alphabet knowledge that shell-nucleus syllabic reading schemes, at least in the early stages of reading learning.</p>