Phonological awareness tasks: Accuracy in predicting reading and writing difficulties.

This study evaluated the accuracy of the at-risk/not-at-risk classifications of reading and writing difficulties of different measures of Phonological Awareness (PA). A total of 213 Brazilian children in kindergarten performed six PA tasks (varying in phonological unit and cognitive demand). One year later, 176 of those children performed a writing task and 174 performed a reading task. Receiver Operating Characteristic curves were constructed based on the scores of the reading and writing tasks. The results indicated that the complete set of PA tasks presented the greater area under the curve. However, two PA measures with fewer items, supra-phonemic awareness and phonemic awareness, also presented adequate sensitivity and specificity values for screening purposes. These results are encouraging, since those measures could be used to detect children at risk of reading and writing difficulties in kindergarten (about one year before formal reading and writing instruction in Brazil). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]