ABSTRACT
Some researchers see children's linguistic awareness as developing in stages or phases; these may be linked to their cognitive development and to their exposure to facilitating experiences (e.g., instruction in reading). Based on the work of Leontev, Andresen, and Slobin, Valtin (1984) has proposed three stages of language awareness: I) unconscious awareness or automatic use of language, 2) actual awareness, and 3) conscious awareness . Of particular concern to those interested in kindergartners and first graders is the transition from actual awareness to conscious awareness. Actual awareness implies that children are "increasingly able to abstract the language from the action and the meaning context and to think about some of the properties of the form of the language" (p. 214), but knowledge of language units is still implicit. Spontaneous creative manipulation of language and answers to interviews suggest that children are able to think about some aspects of language. Conscious awareness, on the other hand, implies that children can "deliberately focus on and manipulate linguistic units" (p. 215); children's knowledge of language units is more explicit. Valtin believes that conscious awareness is dependent on instruction and that reading and writing enhance conscious awareness . (See Gombert, 1992, for a similar theory of metalinguistic development.)
Gleitman and Rozin (1977) have argued that explicit awareness of the structure of the language is particularly related to learning to read: "Learning to read requires a rather explicit and conscious discovery and building from what one already knows implicitly for the sake of speech: the structure of one's language and, particularly, the sound structure of one's language" (p. 3). Awareness of the sound structure of the language and an ability to manipulate sounds in words appear to facilitate children's mastery of the alphabetic code; for this reason, phonemic awareness may be the aspect of metalinguistic development that is most closely related to early achievement in reading and spelling (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Liberman et aI., 1989). Somewhat similarly, Mattingly (1984) has argued that it is access to one' s knowledge of the structure of the language that is the central feature of linguistic awareness, insofar as it is related to learning to read. He reminds us that English orthography generally preserves the identity of the morphemes, even in the face of semantic and phonetic variation (e.g. , heal,
These arguments focus our attention on phonological and morphological awareness as important links to the reading process . Of all aspects of metalinguistics, phonological awareness has unquestionably received the most attention, presumably because it is related to children's learning of the alphabetic principle. The premise explored in this chapter is that morphological awareness is also closely linked to the process of learning to read . It draws on phonological knowledge, but it is also integrally related to other aspects of children's language knowledge and awareness, including syntax and semantics. In fact, because it draws on various aspects of linguistic knowledge, morphological awareness may provide a more general index of metalinguistic capability than anyone of these areas considered alone.
