Phonological awareness in illiterate adults

Abstract: PURPOSE: to analyze the estimation of ability in phonological awareness of illiterate adults. METHODS: forty four adults, over the age of twenty eight and of both sexes, participated in the survey. The adults were divided into two groups, namely: (1) illiterate and (2) literate in childhood. The following instruments were used: Data on demographic data; Predictors of Reading Skills Test (THPL) test consists of tasks of rhyme, alliteration, and segmentation, administered individually and on a tablet. RESULTS: it occurs a significant difference in estimating ability in phonological awareness between the two groups. It is noteworthy that the ability to rhyme in the task was significantly higher in adult literacy. It was observed that the task of segmenting words has been considered more difficult. The results suggest a standard of skill, namely Alliteration> rhyme> targeting. An interesting finding relates to the execution time of the task, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference with regard to the execution time of the tasks of alliteration, rhyme and segmentation between the two groups. CONCLUSION: when verified the correlation between runtime and skill in the task, it was revealed that the correlation did not occur in both groups the same way: the group of positive correlation literate and illiterate group of negative correlation.