RELATIONSHIP OF THE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM AND PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN LOW INCOME PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN
Child Language, Speech, Learning, Socioeconomic Need.
Introduction: The written language is an extension of the oral language and its development occurs under the influence of several factors, among which we can highlight in the oral language, the phonological level and among the phonological processing skills, the phonological awareness. The phonological level is related to the system of sounds present in a given language and it has demonstrated a possible relationship with the development of reading and writing. Phonological awareness is one of the phonological processing skills of greatest influence for the acquisition of written language. Objective: To evaluate the phonological system and phonological awareness in low-income preschool children and correlate the skills with each other. Method: Observational, cross-sectional, retrospective and documentary study. Sample made up of 93 children from level IV of early childhood education, students from Municipal Centers of Early Childhood Education (CMEI) from 3 regions of the city of Natal / RN (West, South and East), aged between 5 and 6 years and 11 months, of both sexes. The results of the phonology evaluations of the Child Language Test - ABFW and the phonological awareness of the CONFIAS instrument were analyzed. For the analysis of the phonological level, it was considered the Percentage of Consonants Correct (PCC), Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised (PCC-R), Index of Occurrence of Processes (PDI) and the productivity of phonological processes and, for phonological awareness , the correctness of syllabic and phonemic skills and the total score were considered. Results: In study 1, adequacy of the PCC and PCC-R values was observed in most participants (PCC: 82 children - 88,2%; PCC R: 84 children - 90,4%), productivity of the processes of liquid simplification (SL), simplification of consonant clusters (SEC), simplification of final consonant (SCF) and frontalization palatal (FP) and very strong negative correlation between the variables PCC x PDI and PCC-R x PDI. In study 2, on the other hand, the sample presented a performance below the expected in all CONFIAS scores, showing weaknesses in the phonological awareness skills. The correlation between PCC and phonological awareness and PCC R and phonological awareness and PDI and phonological awareness was weak.