The Development of Graphophonemic Awareness in Korean Young Learners of English

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which Korean young learners of English are able to match up graphemes to phonemes within words correctly, the relationship between their graphophonemic awareness (GPA) and decoding skills, and the way they analyze graphophonemic units (GPUs) within words. The participants were 103 sixth graders from a local public elementary school in Seoul. Two measures were administered to the participants: GPU marking test and the Names Test. Results showed the students’ relatively low performance on the GPU marking test as compared to their decoding scores. GPU test scores were also weakly correlated with decoding skills. The students were better able to segment short words whereas they found it harder to segment multi-syllabic words as well as words with inflectional morphemes, vowel digraphs, and silent letters. Their GPU marking performances appeared to be influenced by various factors including word length, syllable structure, the presence of inflectional morphemes and complex GPUs, and the impact of the Korean writing system. Results are discussed in relation to Ehri’s phase theory of word reading acquisition, and directions for further research are presented.