Does phonological awareness help children learn to read?

在阅读习得领域，一种几乎被普遍接受的观点是，语音意识，即感知和操纵语音的能力，会使儿童擅长学习阅读。我们认为，尽管有大量关于这个问题的文献，但还没有最终确定这种因果联系的存在。要做到这一点，需要这里提出的一个项目，在这个项目中，完全识字前的儿童被挑选出来，测量他们的语音意识，然后测量他们与随后的识字能力的关系。解决这一问题对阅读习得和阅读障碍的理论和实践都具有重要意义。

An almost universally-accepted view in the field of reading acquisition is that phonological awareness, or the ability to perceive and manipulate speech sounds, causes a child to be good at learning to read. We argue that, despite the voluminous literature on this issue, it has not been conclusively established that such a causal link exists. To do so requires a project, proposed here, in which completely pre-literate children are selected, their phonological awareness measured, and its relationship with subsequent literacy acquisition followed. Settling this issue will have significant consequences for both theory and practice in reading acquisition and dyslexia.