Many studies have shown that phonological awareness is related to the acquisition of alphabetic scripts. However, alphabetic scripts are not faithful to their phonological basis and to acquire orthographic patterns children need to be aware of other levels of language structure. Recently, researchers have turned their attention to the role played by syntactic awareness. A study with British children have shown that syntactic awareness is related to children´s progress in the acquisition of morpho-syntactic rules in spelling. The present study investigated this relationship in a sample of 46 Brazilian lower-middle class children. The children were evaluated in metalinguistic awareness in the beginning of the first grade and for spelling at the end of the first and second grades. The results indicated that syntactic awarenesss is specifically related to the acquisition of morpho-syntactic rules in spelling while phonological awareness contributes to the acquisition of contextual rules involving grapho-phonic analyses.
syntactic awareness; spelling; phonological awareness