Abstract

This study was conducted to examine the relationship among phonological awareness, visual perception and reading of Hangul in 60 preschool children of the ages of 4 to 6. In phoneme detection tasks, children were able to detect relatively large segments (Consonant₁ + Vowel or Vowel + Consonant₂: C₁V or VC₂) pretty well at the age of 4 and gradually progressed to smaller sound segments (e.g., phonemes). In addition, children could detect C₁V segments better than VC₂ segments and detect initial consonants and middle vowels better than final consonants. The findings showed that phonological skills significantly predicted the children's reading performance even after controlling for the effect of age, whereas visual skills did not. It is implied that preschool children mainly used phonological strategy based on intra-syllable units, C₁V or VC₂. in reading Hangul.