Correlates of Korean Hangul Acquisition Among Kindergartners and Second Graders

In two separate studies, 100 South Korean kindergartners and 100 second graders were administered tests of speed of processing and phonological-processing skills as well as a Korean Hangul reading test. Speed of processing tasks were significantly correlated with most of the reading-related tasks but not with Hangul reading itself. Across studies, only tests of syllable and phoneme awareness (either onset or both onset and coda), as well as naming speed, were significantly associated with Korean word-reading. In both studies, in regression equations including all measured skills and age, only syllable and phoneme awareness uniquely predicted Hangul word recognition. Results underscore the uniqueness of the Korean Hangul orthography, which requires children to be sensitive to both syllable- and phoneme-level linguistic and orthographic units.

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