PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS AS MEANS TO EVALUATE CHILDREN WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES

Purpose:  the phonological awareness, which is the capacity of reflecting about the sounds of a language, determines the steps of the acquisition of written language. The aim of this research was to evaluate and analyze the performance of tasks involving phonological abilities of 2^nd and 3^nd grade students in a school of the city of Sao Paulo.

Methods:  the Phonological Abilities Profile, was applied to a group of 40 children, aging from 7 to 11; from these, 20 complained about low school performance.

Results:  in both grades, the children without difficulties had a significantly better performance than the rest in all tasks, being phonemic addition and subtraction the ones with the greatest difficulties.

Conclusion:  children with school problems tend to have a lower performance in tasks that involve phonological awareness and the grade and age helps the development of phonological awareness.

Keywords:
language; child; learning; education; education measurement; reading; learning disorders.