ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several issues relating metalinguistic awareness to reading acquisition: task analysis, segmentation and classification of speech units, conceptual and methodological aspects of “causality”. Metalinguistic awareness in different languages varies according to the mapping or transcription of lexical or sublexical units and phonology. The English alphabet transcribes syllables, phonemes and the intrasyllabic units of onsets and rimes; the Japanese hiragana and katakana script of the biscriptal syllabary transcribes syllable-like morae; and Chinese characters transcribe primarily morphemes with phonetic recoding at some stage. In addition to phonological processing, morphological processing also plays an important role in learning to read English.
