Initial Consonant Phonological Awareness of Thai Children with Reading and Writing Disabilities

Abstract

This study aimed to 1) classify initial single consonant variations in
the speech of Thai children with reading and writing disabilities and 2)
analyse the types of initial single consonant variations in the children’s
speech. The data was collected from 102 Prathom Suksa 4 – Prathom
Suksa 6 students who had medically been diagnosed with reading and
writing disabilities. A reading diagnostic test which contained 21 non-words
was used to collect the data. The children’s speech was recorded and transcribed into phonetic symbols in order to classify the variations of
initial single consonants and to analyse the types of the variations. The
findings reveal that, of all the 21 non-words used in the reading diagnostic
test, the subjects demonstrated all initial single consonant variations
except the sound /j/ in the word /ju:ŋ³/. Three types of initial single consonant
variations were found, namely 1) phonetic variations which are classified
into two categories; allophones such as /p/ » /b/, which display the same
type of sounds sharing the same articulator, and free phonetic variables
such as /t/ » /w/, which display different types of sounds from different
articulators, 2) phoneme changes such as /cʰ/ - ช» /s/ - ซ, and 3) double
variations of the phonetic and tonal forms such as /ph ⁻ ⁴/ - ผ » /ph ⁻ ⁰/ - พ.