Phonemic awareness stimulation and its effects regarding the variable gender.

BACKGROUND Phonemic awareness stimulation and the comparison of its effects between genders. AIM To determine the possible gain in performance in tasks involving phonemic awareness skills in boys and girls, following the development of a program to stimulate phonemic awareness. METHOD Participants were 18 boys and 18 girls, all with typical language development, in their second grade of Elementary Education. The study involved three steps. The first and third steps consisted of an auditory screening, speech and language assessments and the assessment of phonemic awareness skills, through the Phonological Awareness Tasks Protocol. The second step involved the planning of the phonological awareness stimulation program and its application in the classroom. RESULTS Boys and girls presented an improvement in their performance in all of the phonological awareness tasks after the application of the stimulation program; this improvement was statistically significant. Regarding the influence of gender, it was observed that prior to the application of the stimulation program, there was a significant difference between boys and girls in the task involving the detection of a phoneme in the last position. After stimulation, this difference remained significant in the same task, and was also statistically significant for the tasks of phonemic segmentation of words with six phonemes and phoneme reversion of words with two or three phonemes. CONCLUSION It is observed that girls performed better in the majority of the phonemic awareness tasks, and that the program was effective in stimulating these tasks.